The Magistrate's Relationship with the Barbarian Girl through a Close Reading of "Waiting for the Barbarians" by J. M. Coetzee.

"All this erotic behavior of mine is indirect: I prowl about her, touching her face, caressing her body, without entering her or finding the urge to do so. ... But with this woman it is as if there is no interior, only a surface across which I hunt back and forth seeking entry. Is this how her torturers felt hunting their secret, whatever they thought it was?" - pg.43. One of the central figures in J. …

…stands between the two men as a one-way mirror that they both use, but gradually becomes two-way for the Magistrate, allowing him to see the Joll alter ego mingling with his own reflection. Coming to accept this also means collapsing some of the distance that he had mentally established between himself and Joll, and likewise accepting a certain share in the responsibility for all the atrocities committed by Joll in the name of the Empire.