God Complex

A popular saying goes “God created all mankind in his image.” By this, people have rationalized (for their own peace of mind) that God resembles the human form rather than that of a great beast. In class on Thursday, we began to toss around the idea that Coetzee possibly wished to present himself as a sort of god in the novel, and I believe that there is in fact at least a playful credence to this idea. I believe that a more concrete argument can be made however that Coetzee presents Foe as the god-figure in the novel. Foe brings up the idea that God is likely an author which is an interesting idea for Mr. Foe (an author) to entertain lest he is thinking of himself as he postulates. From a very literal viewpoint, Mr. Foe does in fact act as God for the other characters in Foe if we take for fact his definition of a god as someone who “writes the world, the world and all that is in it” (pg. 143). As the author of the story of Susan, Cruso, and Friday, Foe becomes a God to them for he writes their world into substance, but he does not allow them to read the story as “we cannot read it…since we are that which he writes” (pg. 143). This quote is spoken by Foe, and, although he speaks of God as a separate entity in the passage, I believe that this is good evidence to his acting as God for the statement was proclaimed much less for Foe’s own satisfaction than to subtly explain to Susan why she cannot read the story which Foe is writing: because the story created her, and she cannot read a book which is actually she.