It's a common thing: an innocent, kind, humane person joins the army, goes to war and comes back as a psychological disaster. They either become paranoid, depressed, or anything of that nature. However, there are also individuals who go to war with previous psychological problems. The novel “Waiting for the Barbarians” by JM Coetzee reflects these two situations. In the novel, war breaks out between an Empire and a group of nomads, the barbarians. Between all of this is the protagonist, the magistrate, a man in a position of power in the army, who opposes the war. Much like in real-life war, there are a range of different psychological disorders depicted across the characters, with some characters having disorders before that which influence their performance in combat, or those experiencing them afterwards, due to the horrific acts of torture and of violence they suffered. either see or experience. While characters like Colonel Joll and Mandel have psychological conditions that make them ideal torturers, their victims exhibit their own psychological disorders resulting from the torture inflicted on them. And although the citizens do not fight directly in this war, they fall victim to the pressures of the war and Colonel Joll and compromise their personal beliefs and morals in favor of the majority government. Colonel Joll's disregard for the well-being of his prisoners during interrogations exhibits traits of antisocial personality disorder that connect him to many other high-ranking people in the military who were known to be merciless torturers. From the beginning of the novel, we see that Colonel Joll takes his position of power very seriously, imprisoning anyone who might pose a potential threat. Once these people become pr...... middle of paper ......ames M. Hudson and Amy S. Bruckman study a specific component of the bystander effect: social cues. This component states that “individuals actively look to each other for cues on how to behave in the situation. The inaction of others will likely result in the inaction of the individual” (Hudson and Bruckman 170). Humans always worry about what others think of them. Therefore, if there is a situation that requires help, but the majority just watches, a person willing to help will quickly change their mind. This is the case of the magistrate. Since so many people watched and viewed his torture as a spectacle, those who wanted to help did not for fear of being noticed. This fear of helping the Magistrate and going against the Empire is a result of the pressure war puts on remaining completely loyal to a person's nation...