Initial Insecurities

When I began reading Foe, I was initially struck by the quotation marks used by Coetzee. I was confused as to who the narrator was, whose story this was, and how much of the story was true. We are not given the female cast away’s name until page 10 which leaves us with an unknown identity and we continue to question who she is apart from the brief introduction she gives us. On page 12, she says that ‘ (she) did not know what was truth, what was lies, and what was mere rambling,’ when talking about the stories Cruso would tell. When I read that line, I began to question how much of the story I was reading was truth, lies, or mere rambling. As I read on, the captain that saves her suggests that she write about her story and have it published. In response she says, “ (she) will not have any lies told.” This again made me think about how many ‘lies’ were being told in Foe. I began to experience the same complication when I acknowledged that this was again, a story within a story. On one hand, we had the story that the author, Coetzee, is telling and then we have the story that Susan is telling. This leaves me with the question of if and when these two stories will integrate.