the substantial and the real

is there truth beyond a corporeal body? that is the "real" that i refer to here -- that something can be substantial, in that it exists as a material body; yet it is not real, because it is not what it claims to be.

the character of "Susan Barton, Jr.", or so she claims, seems to give us an example of that. the older Susan Barton casts doubt on the identity of that young girl, and asks, "the girl who calls herself by my name -- is she substantial?" (152) here, she seems to mean "real", as defined above, meaning to ask if that girl were really her daughter, the daughter she claims to have lost years ago. but in Foe's reply, we see the other meaning of the word "substantial":
"you touch her, you embrace her; you kiss her. would you dare to say she is not substantial?" (152)
aferwhich susan barton also submits to the idea that corporeality equates to sustantiality equates to reality. but the nagging question for the reader is still, 'is that her real daughter?' and her being substantial as a physical body within the text does not lend any deeper reading to uncovering the truth of her identity.

in the same way then, seeing words as a body of text, does the existence of a body of text make something real, or existent? when i was a kid i used to think that for everything that has a word to represent it, it must exist. so imagine the kind of life i led, thinking that ghosts and vampires and dragons and witches and pixies existed...thankfully i knew words like "angel" as well. but now that i (ought to) have put away these childish things, the question is raised again. is susan's narrative, simply because it is written out into a body of text, completely true and reliable?

coetzee seems to suggest otherwise. he raises an alternative -- that the truth of the story, what really happened, can exist formless, without words. the experience untold and unrepresented by language is not any less that the experience duly recorded and worded. this is expressed in the silence of friday, and the plausibility of a much richer experience than susan can guess. is it any lesser? coetzee's writing of the last part of Foe seems to suggest otherwise. going to friday, he hears a myriad sounds of the island, which seems to be all that susan has failed to uncover, unleashed on the narrator (154). the last bit of the novel is especially poignant -- that the master narrator, presumably coetzee, should want to listen to friday, of all people, and though not hearing words, hearing sounds that lead the narrator to realise that there is, within, a story. this story, though wordless, is true. just as some stories, though worded, are fictional.

allow me to offer an anecdote as an example. one year, about a week or two before my birthday, two good friends came to me and began telling me about this girl they met outside school at some community service thing. her name was anne, and my two friends insisted that she was a really sweet and nice girl. they then excitedly told me more about her, and that they should arrange for us to meet one day, as they thought anne and i would make really good friends. i must say i was not a little excited, because the way they made her out to be, she was as sweet and gentle as anyone could expect. so i kept wondering who this anne was, what she looked like, which school she was in, what her voice would be like, etc.

then on my birthday, i found on my desk a beautiful doll with a little blue cap and blue pyjamas, and next to her was a note, written in child-like writing and with a red crayon, "dear peiyong, my name is anne. i am your new friend. i think we will have good times together, and i hope you like me too. -XX anne"

it actually took me quite a while to make the connection and realise that there was no new human friend called anne who was so sweet and gentle...yet, anne is a substantial figure, is she not? as a doll she has a material body. furthermore, she had a text to represent her! the little note was written not only in the style of a little child as anne my doll was (and is, i sure hope), it looked just like something a little girl would write. and to top it all off, my anne has a voice too. when you wind her up, she hums to the tune of "it's a small world after all, it's a small world after all, it's a small world after all, it's a small, small world." (oh i just realised the irony of it!) so by all counts anne is substantial, physical, bodied. yet, she does not exist the way i'd expected her to...she's not human, she doesn't do community service, she can't make conversation etc etc..she's not real in our world of reality.

so, it's a small world after all, yet even if there's no more space for more bodies, there'd still be space for ideas, for stories that do not take words and physical beings to put across!