Who is Friday’s real foe, Defoe or Foe? - A Post-Colonial Reading of Coetzee's Foe

Who is Friday’s real foe, Defoe or Foe?

  Coetzee"s recent earning of Nobel Prize seems to imply that he is a successful writer who portrays the marginal in South Africa in a postcolonial way. My argument is, however, that his portrayal of the marginal contains what Edward Said criticizes against colonialism in Orientalism. Unlike Friday in Robinson Crusoe, Friday in Foe is described as "irrational, childlike, different" and uttering himself "only in music and dancing." According to Said, westerners tend to think of the Oriental people as mysterious and inscrutable and this is the way Coetzee describes Friday in this story. Friday here is tongueless and have no access to civilization. He does not have a gun, which is a very important weapon for fighting against colonialists. To most western critics, this work may seem to symbolize the reality of the oppressed marginal in an artistic way, but I argue that the native African should not be portrayed as beings who should be far from civilization and stay in nature forever without worrying about being colonized, as if they were born in that way. Foe can be said to be artistic or creative but it should not be called "postcolonial" in the sense that it resists colonial perspectives.