FOE

                             FOE

“Castaway…..I am cast away.I am all alone.” Foe is a critically acclaimed novel written by the Nobel Prize winning South-African

Novelist John Maxwell Coetzee.It tells the story of a castaway,Susan Barton who ventured to find her

missing daughter and in the process got trapped in an isolated island.Susan along with Crusoe and

Friday lived on that island for a comparatively long time and later she and Friday would be saved and

taken back to England.Unfortunately Crusoe wouldn’t make it to England.Having been rescued,Susan

met Daniel Foe,a writer and compelled him to write a novel based on her story.As he was interested

in the project he agreed to it and began documenting her story.Willing to know the struggles of Susan

on the isolated island and her escape from there?Then spare some time to read Foe.Since it’s a small

novel it won’t demand much of your time.I would like to put in a word here-It is a re-telling of Daniel

Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Foe has attracted much attention as it employs a female protagonist.In other

words,the main character of this novel is a woman.So the readers would have a curiosity to know how

a woman survived in such a hostile island.This distinguished Foe from other “castaway stories” which

usually employ a male protagonist.We are given an idea of the struggles of Susan Barton in the first

line itself. “At last I could row no further.My hands were blistered,my back was burned,my body ached.” Being a woman,this struggle was a difficult endeavour for Susan Barton especially because

she was not very agile and muscular like Friday or Crusoe.At the onset itself we find Friday carrying

her on his back.She was not willing to let him carry her but she had no other option as her leg was

swollen owing to a thorn.In the beginning of the novel Susan experienced solitude as Friday never

communicated with her(At that point of the narrative we are not told that Friday was a mute)She was

not content with the animals and insects present around her.She lamented over the lack of human

voice and company of her fellow beings.Though she would meet Crusoe,a European and master to

Friday this was of little comfort to her as Crusoe was indifferent to the happenings around him and

never acknowledged Susan as his companion and only used her as a means of his comfort.He was not

even compassionate towards Susan when she cried out of despair thinking of all the calamities she

had gone through.Susan displayed almost all of the feminine qualities like

compassion,love,submission and also agony.But at the same time she was strong enough to endure

the affliction and was able to get out of it successfully. Susan went in search of her daughter who was abducted by an Englishman.She endured

denials,threats and disappointments.Later she headed for Lisbon on a Ship and to her misfortune

there arose a fight among the crew members and eventually she was cast away.But against all odds

Susan managed to get ashore.Patriarchy deems woman to be fragile and weak.They think that even a

breeze of misery would break her.But Susan endured a Tornado of tribulation.She was alone in the

ship along with the corpse of the Captain.She rowed with much effort despite the blisters on her

hands.Later she was deprived of energy and fell overboard.She swam and eventually reached the

current island.Usually this courage is not expected of a woman.Women are stereotyped to give up at

the face of Calamity.She was expected to get intimidated,give up and perish like most of the voyagers

who fell overboard and succumbed to death.But with her grit and strong desire to live Susan was able

to get ashore.This proves wrong the age old idea which proclaims that women are incapable of

surviving miseries. Another quality which Crusoe lacked and Susan had in abundance is Gratitude.Friday was

Crusoe’s servant and he was the one who did all of the menial works.Crusoe took this for granted

and never acknowledged the works done by Friday.But Susan was thankful to Friday for saving her

life by carrying her towards Crusoe and also for hunting the fish and making it edible. “Grateful to have my belly full and my feet on solid earth again,I expressed my Thanks to this

singular saviour of mine.” This gratitude of Susan was not volatile or malleable.In return for his generosity towards

her,Susan stood by Friday’s side till the end irrespective of the dire circumstances,she sheltered him from all the problems and even saved him from the hands of Slave Traders.She almost

became a mother to Friday.She was not sympathetic but rather empathetic towards him. There are many instances where Coetzee subtly attacked the patriarchal norms where

women are considered inferior to men.In an instance where Crusoe warned Susan not to leave their

abode as the apes would not be afraid of a woman like they were of Crusoe and Friday who were

men.Susan’s reply to this deserves a loud applause,It goes like this “Was a woman,to an ape,a different species from a man?” This is a question we should ask ourselves-How is a woman different from a man?How is Susan

different from Crusoe and Friday?Three of them were cast on the same shore and all of them survived

the shipwreck with their ingenuity.For that matter,Susan was more composed than Crusoe.Crusoe

lost all hopes of returning but Susan was still anticipating an escape.Though women excel in all fields

and constantly prove that they are never inferior to men,they are still considered to be “The Second

Sex.” Foe is primarily a retelling of Robinson Crusoe by voicing the subaltern- Women.Coetzee

deliberately employed a woman as the protagonist to show that if a man can survive a shipwreck

alone,a woman can survive as well-ALONE.Many other drawbacks of Robinson Crusoe have been

pointed out in Foe.The title itself is a reference to Daniel Defoe.To know more of Coetzee’s

unconventional approach…Grab the book and start looking through the pages..It’s worth your time and effort!

-Santhwana Thomas