The Fog of Time in "Waiting For The Barbarians"

One of the most interesting stylistic aspects of J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting For The Barbarians is the persistent use of the present tense in the Magistrate’s narrative. While such a convention is certainly not unique in writing, it is nevertheless slightly out of the ordinary, and even rare in literature, to read a story that is happening as the narrator is recounting it. This stylistic facet gives the novel a very personal and in-the-moment feel that not only creates a link between the Magistrate and the reader (through which the desired philosophical ideas of the story are conveyed), but also implies the active passing of time. Within this temporal context, the reader is trapped with the Magistrate in a metaphysical fog of the unknown, for the story is actively developing and therefore unknown to neither the reader nor the narrator. While the novel does not explicitly cast any such active recognition of limited knowledge into the reader, the feeling of being trapped with a narrator who does not know what the future holds is inescapable. The uncertainty that is created is fitting for the world into which time is taking the Magistrate.
When taken together, the personal and the temporal aspects of the novel strengthen the presentation of the Magistrate’s dilemma: the onset of a dark period of tyranny, abuses, and general unease. The fog of the present adds to the development of this unease and leaves both the narrator and the reader looking into the horrors to come. (248)