This document provides an analysis of narrative techniques used in the novels Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee and The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. It discusses the unreliable narrators, fragmented narratives, postmodern narrative styles, and themes of truth and memory construction in both novels. The document also compares the narrative devices used, such as dreams, psychoanalytic techniques, and the exploration of dilemmas faced by the protagonists.

1. Narrative Style in Waiting for
the Barbarians and The
Sense of an Ending
Prepared by Komal Shahedapuri

2.  Roll No : 13
 MA English : Sem-4
 Batch : 2016-18
 Enrollment No : 2069108420170027
 Email ID : komaltara1311@gmail.com
 Submitted to : Smt. S .D Gardi
 Department of English , M K Bhavnagar University
Paper : African Literature

3.  Narrative Techniques
 Narratives are works that provide an account of connected events. It provides
deeper meaning for the reader and help the reader use imagination to
visualize situations. Narrative literary techniques are also known as literary
devices.
Types of Narrative Techniques
 Style
 Plot
 Narrative Perspective

4. Mark Schorer in his work ‘Technique as Discovery’ (1948)
He writes that, Technique alone objectifies the materials of
art, hence technique alone evaluates those materials ……
under the “immense artistic preoccupations” of James and
Conrad and Joyce, the form of the novel changed, and with
the technical change analogous changes took place in
substance, in point of view, in the whole conception of fiction.
And the final lesson of the modern novel is, that technique is
not the secondary but a deep and primary operation, not only
that technique contains intellectual and moral implications,
but that it discovers them.
“The difference between content, or experience, and
achieved content, or art, is technique."

6.  Narrative Style in Waiting For the Barbarians
 The novel’s success depends on how it is narrated and also what it conveys.
 Post modern narratives - Coetzee’s rejection of realist devices such as linear plot, well rounded characters,
clear settings and close endings, are all part of his postmodern approach to his narrative material. Infact ,
Coetzee’s rejection of realism can be understood as an act of decolonization. Its loquacious, elderly
protagonist narrator, who prefers “fancy, questions speculations” to “facts”.
 Truth about Barbarians is constructed. Facts and falsehood are interchangeable, there is no such thing as
absolute truth. Not providing much information about character/setting.
 Sign- object /character Signifier – given meaning Signified – meaning given by interpreter.
 Open to interpret, non- judgemental, open end, Unreliable narrative, non linear narration, Contradictory,
ambiguous vision
 Dreams of narrator, Theme of truth –individual and constructed & Metaphorical language
 Magistrate’s ironic situation – he ironically feces remarkably uncivilized psychological problem.

7. • Present Tense Narration, as a technique as it is a way of escaping the “Time of
History”
In this novel every moment is present; past fades; future is hidden; cause and effect
remain to be unraveled and pondered.
“I have never seen anything like it ………………… Is he blind?”(WFB, P.1)
• Psychoanalytic Theory - Jacques Lacan (theory of Gaze) gave the aspect of Subject
(observer) and Object (observed by others) Dream of the Magistrate about children.
Victims of empire – mental torture, Magistrate is tortured and humiliated publicly by
the Empire’s officials.
• Unreliable narration by Unreliable Narrator (Magistrate)
Generally unreliable narrator said that ‘I Tell the truth even when I lie.’
He said, ‘I am impotent in sex and writing’, confused about his own feelings
The post-modern concept of fragmentation leads the narrator to have different images
that characterize what is known in postmodernism and in Jean Baudrillard’s
Simulations (1981) as ‘the loss of the real.’

8. Fantasy and Reality Technique : Dreams of the Magistrate. Through the figures of Colonel Joll, The
Magistrate and the Barbarian girl of Waiting For the Barbarians the author therefore presents
torture and question of power through the technique of Fantasy and Reality. Coetzee depicts the
barbarian girl’s body as a medium of excavating the realities of torture through the Magistrate’s
sexual fantasies.
Even in this novel Magistrate also tries to escape from history and from reality. He fails to excavate
the wooden slips and torture of barbarian girl. Also the Magistrate’s efforts to visualize the girl
before she was tortured. Takes the form of a recurrent dream about snow castle and children in the
snow. Here fantasy takes the form of excavation (uncover) of reality.
Intertextuality: By Julia Kristeva ‘Text’ as a system of signs, whether in literary works, spoken
language or symbolic systems, so that intertextuality is defined as the transposition of one or
several systems of signs into another.
Waiting for the Barbarians is richly intertextual with echoes of Kafka, Hawthorne and Beckett. The
novel infact directly thematises intertextuality in a care. Coetzee turns to an African intertext –
Constantin Cavafy’s poem ‘Waiting for the Barbarians.’

9. Continue…..
Full strategy of Barbarism, The Tartar Steppe Giovanni Drogo, a young officer in an unnamed
country, is posted to Fort Bastiani, located in a dead stretch of frontier, beyond which lies a great
desert, the Tartar Steppe. Long ago there may have been Tartars but, as in Waiting for the
barbarians, none have appeared in living memory.
Exactly like many ‘real situations in which interrogation and torture are used to elicit the ‘truth’ and
‘protect’ the Empire, ‘this is what happens – first lies, then pressure, then more lies, then more
pressure, then the break, then more pressure, then the truth’ (WFB, P.5)
Time and Space : Waiting for the Barbarians is set outside of historical time, on the borders of an
unnamed empire, towards the end of its period of dominance over surrounding, territories.
Technique of Diaries, Letters and Records : Historical facts, one could say, are like manufactured
wooden slips engraved with indecipherable signs. Indeed, these slips appear in Waiting for the
Barbarians where the Magistrate understands them to be historical data from a lost society

10. Narrative Technique in The Sense of an Ending
• Unreliable narrator: Recall Memory (postmodern )
“Was this their exact exchange? Almost certainly not. Still, it is my best
memory of their exchange.” (Pg 19) – Tony Webster
• Fragmentations – Often going into the memory of Youth
• Memory Narrative (unreliability of memory)- In particular, memory known for
its trickiness has the ability to transform an account of an individual’s narration
into an unreliable one. Unreliable memory of Tony Webster.
The Changing Face of Memory and Self by Oakes & Hyman: False Memories,
False Self state that ‘Memory is always constructed. What people remember will
be constructed from remaining materials and from general schematic knowledge
structures…

11. Narration based on recollected memory and narrator who is well aware of his faulty
memory and who acknowledge the unreliable and fallible nature of his narratives.
‘People create false memories....Because the self is constructed from memories, the
self will be a false self, based on beliefs and memories that do not accurately
represent the past.’
• Post Modern Technique:
Truth is constructed. Facts and falsehood are interchangeable. Postmodernism only
does not mourn the loss of meaning but celebrates the activity of fragmentation.
Deconstruction – by Tony Webster, the Part- 1 narrative based on memory and part-2
based on the documents. Deconstructive lines
• Was this their exact exchange? Almost certainly not. Still, it is my best memory of
their exchange.
• ‘ I shouldn’t have been surprised. From my knowledge and memory of her,
outdated though it was,…’

12. Repetition and Recurrence
• Memory revisited
• Adrian’s dialogues and answers
• Veronica’s satire
“You still don’t get it. You
never did, and you never will”
Words like back then, history, memory,
damage, suicide are repeated which dipper meaning in it.
• Humorous
• “pregnant” seemed to hover like chalk dust.
• “I trust you’ve counted the spoons, darling?”

13. Compare & Contrast of Narrative Style in both the Novels
Waiting For Barbarians
 Magistrate as a Unreliable narrator , Deconstructing
his own narration and he creates the story.
 Impotency of Writing – ‘as narrator said ‘I am not a
good writer’
 Fragmented Narration as Magistrate often see
dream in-between
 Dilemma of Narrator - Magistrate has questions
about relation with Barbarian Girl, he feels pity on
Nomads but can’t do anything to protect them.
Like Hamlet has dilemma ‘To be or not to be ‘
The Sense of an Ending
 Tony Webster as a Unreliable narrator who
create an image of himself from memory
“I can’t be sure of the actual events anymore; I
can at least be true to the impressions those
facts left. That’s the best I can manage.”
 Deconstructing his own narration
 Fragmented Narration as Tony often go into the
past memory of him, Adrian and Veronica during
the narration.
 Dilemma - Romantic dilemmas.

14. Continue….
 Psychoanalysis - Dreams of Magistrate
 Post Modern Techniques
Coetzee’s Postmodern Bodies, Torture on
magistrate Excessive torture makes him think:
“There is no way of dying allowed to me, it
seems, except like a dog in a corner” (p. 115)
 The narration is constructed in the present
tense without names of places, people, and
time.
 SETTING : Unknown Place and Time
 Psychoanalysis
 Barnes used language to express the anxieties of Tony
 Post Modern Techniques
“we live in time but I‘ve never felt, I understand it
very well, I remember in no particular time.
 Post Modern Thinking
 Lacan – Otherness of Language
Kristeva – Strangers to ourselves
 TENSE · Past, Present
 SETTING TIME & PLACE - 1960s, present, England

15. To Conclude…..
Both the texts have their own narrative techniques which
give the meanings to the texts which readers can easily
understand. There are some similar aspects like Post modern
narratives. So, the narrative techniques and devices are very
important to make readers more thinkable to find the
hidden meanings of the texts with use the narrative devices.

16. Works Cited
 Jadeja, Poojaba. "Writing style of Julian Barnes in The Sense of an Ending." slideshare.
<https://www.slideshare.net/poojabajadeja/writing-style-of-julian-barnes-in-the-sense-
of-an-ending>.
 Palani, M Kumar. "Memory in Julian Barnes’ the Sense of an Ending and Salman
Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children." IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science (n.d.): 64-
67.
 Rajesh Subhash, Maknikar. "CHAPTER IV NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES USED IN J.M.
COETZEE’S NOVELS." Shodhganga (2012).
 Warner, Connie. "Narrative Techniques in Writing: Definition, Types & Examples."
www.study.com. <https://study.com/academy/lesson/narrative-techniques-in-writing-
definition-types-examples.html>.

17. Thank You