Text:  J. M. Coetzee's Foe
Task:  Analysis of Chapter 4

OBJECTIVES
Cultural: reflecingt on postmodern writing
Intertextual: finding connections with other texts and media
Linguistic: improving writing skills

The fourth chapter of Coetzee's novel, Foe, is the ending chapter. Right from the start the reader can notice that chapter IV is very short in comparison to the first three chapters of the novel; it is only four pages long. The narration is in the first person and the reader doesn't know the narrator, moreover he is not sure of what happened. The technique used is the one of telling.

In the  4th chapter, where Coetzee uses the unknown narrator, he expresses, what reality is from his point of view, so something that changes  from reader to reader.

By reading the chapter the reader immediately notices that it is made up of short and simple sentences, as if someone were telling a dream. The reader is not sure if the narrator knows all reality. Space and time are not fixed.

The narrator also uses an intelligent way to speak of the body that appeals to the language of senses. Using the pretext of darkness he must touch everything he finds.

The fourth chapter is divided into two parts. In the first one the narrator goes through Foe's room finding every character of the story's corpse, while in the second one he/she almost solves the mystery of Friday's lack of tongue but the novel ends.

The novel doesn't end in the chapter. The truth can only come from Friday, it is moving on and cannot be expressed in a storyline.

The situations presented are quite strange and could seem the reporting of some strange dream or an hallucinatory trip.

Chapter four is a demanding part of the book: the reader can't understand the text at all, that's why a high level of icooperation is required.