Waiting for First Impressions

Waiting for the Barbarians makes its point through the eyes of a tired old official of the Empire; this perspective gives a sort of inside look at the empire's evolution from the Magistrate's younger days to the unjust modern government. The first line reveals his out-of-touch relation with the current affairs of the more important areas of the Empire. The numerous conflicts he has with the officials from the capital give them the impression of his supposedly provincial nature, but it’s clear that this provinciality is a superior outlook. His speaking and thought style gives insight not only into the politics of his world, but also into his life, his struggle to find meaning as his life and zeal wanes.

The relationship between the magistrate and the barbarian woman, while somewhat creepy, shows their perspective on life. The woman has taken on the role of a passive observer, watching life go by, living out the days complacently, while the magistrate tries to find the pleasures of his younger years but ends up failing to even carry out the motions. It is not until the barbarian woman is about to return to her people that they find some sort of meaning to their relationship.

The uncertainty the magistrate always expresses makes him a very sympathetic character. He wonders if it would have been better if he had never visited the prisoners that night; if he never felt any sympathy at all for the captured fishermen and agreed with whatever the Colonel proposed. But the audience knows just as well as he that this is not possible; that to do so would be, quite simply, an affront to our sense of morality, even though the Empire’s “new morality” would claim otherwise: anything for peace, a notion the Magistrate entertains for just a moment.