Silent Power

 

            Throughout Foe, the true story and its author are unclear. As readers, we don’t know who owns the story; we don’t even know what the actual story is. Does it belong to Susan Barton and her time on the island? Or does it belong to Daniel Foe and his desire to write about a woman in search of her long lost daughter? Or does it belong to Friday and his silence? I don’t think I will ever know the answers to these questions and I believe this is exactly what Coetzee’s intentions were. The only thing I can be sure of is that Foe started with Barton’s discovery of Friday and it ends with the anonymous narrator’s discovery of Friday. On page 154 he/she says of Friday, “From his mouth without a breath, issue the sounds of the island (154). This speaks to the silent power that Friday possesses throughout the entirety of the novel. As much as Barton and Foe disagree about what the content of Barton’s story should be, they both desperately want to hear Friday’s story, and make it a part of their own stories.

            But despite all of Friday’s influence, I still don’t think that Foe is really his story. After all, only “the sounds of the island” came from his mouth—not his time in enslavement or his time with Barton in England. On pages 156 and 157 the narrator uses flowy, almost ethereal imagery to describe what he sees in the cabin. He/she describes “petals floating,” a “rain of snowflakes” and limbs that “float like stars.” There is nothing concrete or sure about these descriptions, just like there is nothing concrete or sure about the “real” story and its author. We go along reading the novel in confusion about what story and whose story are meant to be told, and Part IV is no exception. All we can be sure about is that Friday is an essential part of everyone’s stories, and the true story's—whatever that may be.