Foe

by

J. M. Coetzee

Young girl Character Analysis

Though she claims to be Susan Barton’s daughter (and to share her name), it is never clear who this girl actually is—or even who she actually believes herself to be. What is clear, though, is that the young girl really does feel connected to Susan, though Susan insists that Mr. Foe is simply manipulating the girl to feel this way. In some ways, then, the young girl is a human manifestation of what happens when the lines between narrative and reality get blurred: even she herself does not understand which of her relationships is real and which is manufactured.

Young girl Quotes in Foe

The Foe quotes below are all either spoken by Young girl or refer to Young girl. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Storytelling and Power Theme Icon
).
Part 2 Quotes

“You are father-born. You have no mother. The pain you feel is the pain of lack, not the pain of loss. What you hope to regain in my person you have in truth never had.”

“Father-born,” [the girl] says—”It is a word I have never heard before.”

Related Characters: Susan Barton (speaker), Young girl (speaker), Mr. Foe
Page Number: 84
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3 Quotes

I am not a story, Mr. Foe. I may impress you as a story because I began my account of myself without preamble, slipping overboard into the water and striking out for the shore. But my life did not begin in the waves. There was a life before the water which stretched back to my desolate searchings in Brazil, thence to the years when my daughter was still with me, and so on back to the day I was born. All of which makes up a story I do not choose to tell. I choose not to tell it because to no one, not even to you, do I owe proof that I am a substantial being with a substantial history in the world. I choose rather to tell of the island, of myself and Cruso and Friday and what we three did there: for I am a free woman who asserts her freedom by telling her story according to her own desire.

Related Characters: Susan Barton (speaker), Friday, Mr. Foe, Cruso, Young girl
Related Symbols: Islands
Page Number: 122
Explanation and Analysis:

“But since we speak of childbearing, has the time not come to tell me the truth about your own child, the lost daughter and Bahia? Did you truly give birth to her? Is she substantial or is she a story too?”

“I will answer, but not before you have told me: the girl you send who calls herself by my name, is she substantial? You touch her; you embrace her; you kiss her. Would you dare to say she’s not substantial? No, she is substantial, as my daughter is substantial and I am substantial; and you two are substantial, no less and no more than any of us. We are all alive, we are all substantial, we are all in the same world.”

“You have omitted Friday.”

Related Characters: Susan Barton (speaker), Mr. Foe (speaker), Friday, Young girl
Page Number: 142
Explanation and Analysis:
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Foe PDF

Young girl Quotes in Foe

The Foe quotes below are all either spoken by Young girl or refer to Young girl. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Storytelling and Power Theme Icon
).
Part 2 Quotes

“You are father-born. You have no mother. The pain you feel is the pain of lack, not the pain of loss. What you hope to regain in my person you have in truth never had.”

“Father-born,” [the girl] says—”It is a word I have never heard before.”

Related Characters: Susan Barton (speaker), Young girl (speaker), Mr. Foe
Page Number: 84
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3 Quotes

I am not a story, Mr. Foe. I may impress you as a story because I began my account of myself without preamble, slipping overboard into the water and striking out for the shore. But my life did not begin in the waves. There was a life before the water which stretched back to my desolate searchings in Brazil, thence to the years when my daughter was still with me, and so on back to the day I was born. All of which makes up a story I do not choose to tell. I choose not to tell it because to no one, not even to you, do I owe proof that I am a substantial being with a substantial history in the world. I choose rather to tell of the island, of myself and Cruso and Friday and what we three did there: for I am a free woman who asserts her freedom by telling her story according to her own desire.

Related Characters: Susan Barton (speaker), Friday, Mr. Foe, Cruso, Young girl
Related Symbols: Islands
Page Number: 122
Explanation and Analysis:

“But since we speak of childbearing, has the time not come to tell me the truth about your own child, the lost daughter and Bahia? Did you truly give birth to her? Is she substantial or is she a story too?”

“I will answer, but not before you have told me: the girl you send who calls herself by my name, is she substantial? You touch her; you embrace her; you kiss her. Would you dare to say she’s not substantial? No, she is substantial, as my daughter is substantial and I am substantial; and you two are substantial, no less and no more than any of us. We are all alive, we are all substantial, we are all in the same world.”

“You have omitted Friday.”

Related Characters: Susan Barton (speaker), Mr. Foe (speaker), Friday, Young girl
Page Number: 142
Explanation and Analysis: