Magda isolates herself from both society and history, sacrificing her story with a "beginning, a middle, and an end" for some form of rebellion (she does not search for truth, but for an "end" to her struggle) against the society she lives in. Following her isolation in her room Magda reveals her fabrication of Arthur, an imaginary companion (whether brother or lover is unclear). 
	Arthur is one the many stories Magda creates in her narrative, she uses these stories as possible pasts, presents, and futures for herself, in place the story of her life she creates these fragments of not-quite-rebellion. Magda uses her stories and imaginations as her lifeline, they separate her from reality, while keeping her among the living (or the vaguely conscious). Her "uncomprehending space" is, to her, "irreducible," it is the "consolation that keeps [her] from closing [her] eyes, folding [her] arms, and rocking [herself] forever into vacancy." Her perception of others as misusing words, and her enormous investment in their meaning to her, do not allow her to move past anything but force her to remain in isolation. For Magda it is only the stories she creates and the language she knows that create her identity and allow her to, in some ways, subvert the system that she despises. The inconsistencies in her narrative are merely the various possibilities she sees and the expression of the "babble of words within [her] that fabricate and refabricate [her] as something else, something else" (48-49). 
	Coetzee has Magda end this section with a short sentence that is seemingly, at first glance, unrelated to the previous discussion. However, Coetzee's belief that culture, and the ideas and structures of that culture, are inherently imbedded in its language connects her conclusion to the remainder of her discourse. Magda ends this piece and transitions on to the next with her wish, "Would that I had never learned to read." She can read and write in the language born of a society she cannot tolerate with fluency and elegance, Magda wants to disable the foundation of this society, not become trapped and limited in the language. Notably, she hasn't displayed such prowess in spoken language, and there is little dialogue in the novel; perhaps she merely doesn’t wish to express herself in spoken words as she does in written, likely because of the imposed limits on societal interaction guiding public expression, and the necessity of participating in the system this would bring about. 
	Magda's anger at the patriarchal society has centered and materialized in her father, she begins the following section with "the beast" (49).  She feels as though this beast "stalks [her] through the afternoon…[she can] hear his velvet pad, smell his fetid breath." (49). Magda perceives her current adversary as a monster, one that is intelligent and focused on her, one that is a part of the society around her, and is thus represented by her father and impervious to her use of its language, to "[her] prattle" (49). 