Waiting for the Barbarians Lesson Plan

How does the magistrate's feelings for the nomadic woman change when they are on their journey?

On their journey through the desert, the magistrate begins to feel more natural around the woman. They have sex and he refers to his prior reluctance as "senseless hesitancy". He attributes this to the fact that she is leaving soon, confessing, "it would not have been done if I were not in a few days to part from her." But students should also be encouraged to read the narrator against himself, to question whether his explanation for his actions are correct. One could also attribute this newfound comfort to the fact that they are no longer in the empire, and that as a result...