Coetzee's Writing Style in his Waiting for the Barbarians

Louis Marain Mokoko Akongo

doi:10.32996/ijllt.2021.4.12.7

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to scrutinize Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians to discover whether, while writing the novel, the author uses the Rhetoric Triangle. That is, he uses ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos deals with credibility, the trust the audience has in a speaker or writer. Pathos has to do with any text or scene that arouses emotions on the side of its audience or readers, and logos has to do with reasoning when it comes to depicting or writing work. After the investigation, which has been carried out through the New Criticism approach, it has been found out that Coetzee uses the Rhetoric Triangle in the novel. However, all the three components of the rhetoric triangle are not ubiquitous in the novel. Unlike logos and pathos, which are used several times throughout the novel, ethos is scarcely used.

Highlights

Louis Marain Mokoko Akongo Lecturer of Anglophone Africa Literature, Department of Literaure and Languages, Université Marien Nouabi, BrazzavilleRepublic of Congo
Coetzee uses the three components of the rhetoric triangle coined by Aristotle: ethos, pathos, and logos
Ethos deals with ethics; pathos is the use of words that entail emotions on the reader's side, and logos has to be with logic in writing to convince the audience or readership

Summary

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to scrutinize Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians to discover whether, while writing the novel, the author uses the Rhetoric Triangle. That is, he uses ethos, pathos and logos. As far as writing is concerned in African literature, there is a debate about Africans' language to write their works Bringing his contribution to the issue, Norman Mackenzie compares Tutuola with Achebe in his article entitled 'African Literary Aesthetics and the English Metaphysical Empire'. We can only hope that African writers will not adopt some debased form of English in an effort to titillate the British palate. (Mackenzie 22)

Objectives

Conclusion