Text: Coetzee's Foe

Task: Writing an argumentative text

OBJECTIVES

Cultural: See colonization from the point of view of the colonized

Intertextual: Robinson and Cruso

Linguistic: Improve productive skills

In the novel by Daniel Defoe, the title has the function of introducing the protagonist: Robinson Crusoe. It is the classical function of the title: normally it introduces the main character, the topic of the novel or, in some cases, the enemy itself.
In Coetzee's "Foe", instead, the title says "foe": "enemy", nothing else. It has the function of making the reader curious and it also has a double meaning. The reader, from reading the title, understands that there is an enemy, and maybe it's the novelist, mr.Foe. But you can't be sure about that. Everybody in the novel can be a potential foe.
  The text is divided into four chapters. The first one introduces, of course, the main character -Susan- but it also makes a sort of summary of Daniel Defoe's story. In the first chapter Susan meets Friday and Cruso, and this part deals with the story of her life on the island. From that chapter we know that mr. Cruso is a sort of slaver for Susan and Friday. We also know that Cruso doesn't want to be saved.
We have a description of Friday, too: Susan says he is a "Negro" tongueless and we can understand that he is the one who knows the real story of mr. Cruso.
  In the second chapter, they are saved by a ship, on board of which mr. Cruso dies.
Susan is very sad about that: is she sad for sincere feelings or is she simply sorry because she can't now discover his real story?
From this chapter, Susan tries to generate a dialogue with Friday to know te truth, but her effort is in vain.
  In the third chapter Susan and Friday are in London. They have found a novelist, mr.Foe, who is maybe writing their story. But he's joking with Susan. The reader understands that he doesn't really want to publish the book.
  The last chapter is a sort of conclusion without conclusion; it consists of just three pages but it explains everything of this new modern rendering of Defoe's novel.
An unnamed narrator, maybe the reader himself, is walking in Foe's room, where there are the main characters of the novel: Susan, mr.Foe, the girl who says to be Susan's daughter: they are dead. Friday is still alive.
The reader understands that Friday is the most important in the novel: he's the one who knows the truth.
There is the roar of the waves in his throath. The real home of Friday is among the waves:a place where you can't speak.
In the novel of Defoe there is more story and less symbolism. Is is a classical novel of 46 chapters where the protagonist is described as well as the place where the story is set and the narration of facts; there are a lot of words, a lot of phrases.
  The ideal reader of Defoe is everyone: you can read the story of Robinson Crusoe just relaxing and imaging the places, the island, the sea.
Coetzee is writing for a reader who can understand his symbolism and also for they who want just to read a nice novel. The reader of Defoe was a colonialist in potential, maybe racist and chauvinist. The reader of Coetzee is a new modern person, who knows that racism, chauvinism and colonialism are not the answer to our problems.-I hope so-
  The message that Defoe wanted to hand over was just a colonial idea of the world.
Coetzee wants to revalute black people and women. He writes a gender-marked story.
  Coetzee mixes many narrative styles: epistolary, narrative, metaphisical.
Defoe wrote just a narrative novel. Defoe lived in a colonialist age, where black people and women were marginalized.