Waiting for the Barbarians- First Response

Waiting for the Barbarians, as far as I am able to tell thus far, is both similar to, and also quite different from any of the other works of literature that we have read and analyzed this year. I cannot presently bring to mind any measurable connection between Waiting for the Barbarians and The Sound and the Fury, though a myriad of parallels immediately spring up when comparing Waiting for the Barbarians to Conrad's Heart of Darkness. First, both narratives are accounts of men who are on the edge, the frontier of what they consider to be civilized society. In Heart of Darkness, Marlow is on an expedition into the “wilds of the Congo,” whereas in Waiting for the Barbarians, the unnamed narrator is a military personnel stationed at a fortress at the edge of an also unnamed “Empire.” In Heart of Darkness, Marlow and Britain represent civilization, as opposed to the barbarism of both the African natives and the ruling Belgians, and in Waiting for the Barbarians, the narrator and his budding sense of the humanity of the “barbarians,” represent true civilization in opposition to the barbarism of both the desert nomads and the soldiers of the Empire. Another parallel I see is that of there being romantic involvement between members of the conquering groups and members of the people who have been conquered. In Heart of Darkness, there is the hinted relationship between Kurtz and the anonymous African “princess,” and in Waiting for the Barbarians we see the clear relationship between the narrator and the barbarian woman that he has taken into his care in his home. As far as style, the writing in Waiting for the Barbarians is more reminiscent of Heart of Darkness than it is of The Sound and the Fury, simply by being coherent and comprehensible. However, there is a recognizable difference in writing style between Waiting for the Barbarians and Heart of Darkness as well. As discussed, Conrad’s status as a non-native speaker of English led him to use a great many words of Romance origin, while Waiting for the Barbarians, having been written by an English-speaking author, exhibits language that is much more colloquial than that seen in Heart of Darkness.

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I can't turn off the italics for some reason. I apologize.