Text   Foe by J.M.Coetzee
Task: Analyzing Foe. Chapter IV

OBJECTIVES
Cultural:Postcolonial and Postmodern writing
Intertextual:links with other forms and text
Linguistic:Practicing the writing skill

The fourth chapter of Foe is very complex.
First of all it starts with the same words of the third chapter ("the staircase is dark and mean"): maybe it is a symbolical choice of the author. But it is important to remember that the narrator is not Susan Bartonas it happened in the previous chapters but he/she is an unnamed narrator.
This narrator does not tell the reader anything about his/her identity so the reader can find some difficulties in analyzing the sequence.
The mysterious narrator revives the story: maybe this is the reason why  he/she adopts the same words of the third chapter.
The narration starts with the description of a woman, maybe Susan Barton, who sleeps in the house. The narrator provides a lot of details about her("her feet drawn up inside a long grey dress, her hands folded under her armpits"). But then he/she pays attention to a very important figure: Friday.

The first piece of information is that Friday is "stretched at full length on his back". A very important consideration is that the narrator goes near him and finds his mouth open. Why is this important? Because he/she seems to know that only Friday can tell the true story of the shipwreck.
But he/she knows that Friday doesn't have a tongue therefore he cannot speak! This is important because it underlines the symbolical choice of the author: a mutilated man becomes central  in the economy of the text.
In fact the unnamed narrator hears a lot of sounds coming out of Friday's mouth ("the chirp of sparrows, the thud of a mattock, the call of a voice"). But he/she dissolves  narration in an act of renunciation, so the reader cannot know the truth about the story. Has all this an allegorical function? Yes , it has  because it hides the meaning of the book which doesn't consist simply in the sory of  a shipwreck.
The problem of racism is hidden in the fourth chapter and the author wants to show it!
Even if there are 4 characters inside the chapter, Coetzee provides only Friday's characterization that is a peculiar characterization: it consists of the narrator's perceptions through Friday's mouth.
It is also important to underline that Coetzee rewrites a modern version of Robinson Crusoe. As a matter of fact he is considered a Postmodernist!
You can note that the fourth chapter has a conclusive function in which a possible interpretaton of the meaning of the title is perhaps provided: the real Foe  may be the rewriter of the story.