Disgrace
Disgrace is a novel
by J. M. Coetzee,
published in 1999. It won the Booker
Prize. The writer was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature four years after its publication.
Plot
David
Lurie is a South African professor of English who loses everything: his
reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his dreams of artistic success, and
finally even his ability to protect his own daughter. He is twice-divorced and
dissatisfied with his job as a 'communications' lecturer, teaching a class in romantic literature
at a technical university in Cape
Town in post-apartheid South Africa.
Lurie's sexual activities are all inherently risky. Before the sexual affair
that will ruin him, he becomes attached to a prostitute and attempts to have a
romantic relationship with her (despite her having a family), which she
rebuffs. He then seduces a secretary at his university, only to completely
ignore her afterwards. His "disgrace" comes when he seduces one of
his more vulnerable
students, a girl named Melanie Isaacs, plying her with alcohol and other
actions that arguably amount to rape; later, when she stops attending his class
as a result, he falsifies her grades. Lurie refuses to stop the affair, even
after being threatened by Melanie's erstwhile boyfriend, who knocks the papers
off Lurie's desk, and her father, who confronts him but whom David runs from.
This affair is thereafter revealed to the school, amidst a climate of
condemnation for his allegedly predatory acts, and a committee is convened to
pass judgement on his actions. David refuses to read Melanie's statement,
defend himself, or apologize in any sincere form and so is forced to resign
from his post. Lurie is working on an opera concerning Lord Byron's final phase
of life in Italy which mirrors his own life in that Byron is living a life of
hedonism and excess and is having an affair with a married woman.
Dismissed
from his teaching position, he takes refuge on his lesbian daughter Lucy's farm
in the Eastern Cape.
For a time, his daughter's influence and natural rhythms of the farm promise to
harmonise his discordant life; for example, in attending farmers markets where
Lucy sells her wares, and in working with Petrus, a polygamously-married black
African whose farm borders Lucy's and who nominally works for Lucy as a
"dog-man" (Lucy boards dogs). But the balance of power in the country
is shifting. Shortly after becoming comfortable with rural life, he is forced
to come to terms with the aftermath of an attack on the farm. Three men, who
claim to need Lucy's phone to call for aid for a sick relative, force their way
into the farmhouse. The men rape Lucy and attempt to kill David by setting him
on fire. In addition, they also shoot the caged dogs which Lucy is boarding, an
action which David later muses was done since black people in South Africa are
taught to fear dogs as symbols of white power and oppression. The men drive off
in David's car: it is never recovered and they are never caught, although
police once contact David to come pick up "his" car, which is in fact
evidently not his car (different colour and registration number, different
sound system). To David's relief, newspapers spell Lurie's name inaccurately
("Lourie"), meaning nothing will tie his disgraced academic persona
to the news story describing the attack on his daughter's farm.
Lucy
becomes apathetic and agoraphobic after the attack. David presses her to report the full
circumstances to the police, but she does not. Lucy does not want to, and in
fact does not, discuss the attack with David until much later. The relationship
between Lucy and David begins to show strain as the two recover from the attack
in different ways. Lurie begins work with Bev Shaw, a friend of Lucy's, who
keeps an animal shelter
and frequently euthanizes animals, which David then disposes of. Shaw has an
affair with Lurie, despite David finding her physically unattractive.
Meanwhile, David suspects Petrus being complicit in the attack. This suspicion
is strengthened when one of the attackers, a young man named Pollux, attends
one of Petrus's parties and is claimed by Petrus as a kinsman. Lucy refuses to
take action against Pollux, and she and David simply leave the party. As the relationship
between Lucy and David deteriorates, David decides to discontinue living with
his daughter and return to Cape Town
Returning
home to his house in Cape Town, David finds that his house has been broken into
during his long absence. He attempts to attend a theatre performance starring
Melanie, but is harassed into leaving by the same boyfriend who had earlier
threatened him. He also attempts to apologize to Melanie's father, leading to
an awkward meeting with Melanie's younger sister, which rekindles David's
internal passion and lust. David finally meets with Melanie's father, who makes
him stay for dinner. Melanie's father insists that his forgiveness is
irrelevant: Lurie must follow his own path to redemption.
At
the novel's end, Lurie returns to Lucy's farm. Lucy has become pregnant by one
of the rapists, but ignores advice to terminate
the pregnancy. Pollux ultimately comes to live
with Petrus, and spies on Lucy bathing. When David catches Pollux doing this,
Lucy forces David to desist from any retribution. David surmises that
ultimately, Lucy will be forced into marrying Petrus and giving him her land,
and it appears that Lucy is resigned to this contingency. Lurie returns to working
with Shaw, where Lurie has been keeping a resilient stray from being
euthanised. The novel concludes as Lurie "gives him up" to Bev Shaw's
euthanasia.
Reception and interpretation
According
to Adam Mars-Jones,
writing in The Guardian,
"Any novel set in post-apartheid South Africa is fated to be read as a
political portrait, but the fascination of Disgrace is the way it both
encourages and contests such a reading by holding extreme alternatives in
tension. Salvation, ruin." In the new South Africa, violence is unleashed
in new ways, and Lurie and his daughter become victims, yet the main character
is no hero; on the contrary, he commits violence in his own way as is clearly
seen in Lurie's disregard for the feelings of his student as he manipulates her
into having sexual relations with him. This characterization of violence by
both the 'white' and the 'black' man parallels feelings in post-apartheid South
Africa where evil does not belong to the 'other' alone. By resisting the
relegation of each group into positive and negative poles Coetzee portrays the
whole range of human capabilities and emotions.
The
novel takes its inspiration from South Africa's contemporary social and
political conflict, and offers a bleak look at a country in transition. This
theme of transition is represented in various forms throughout the novel, in
David's loss of authority, loss of sexuality and in the change in power
dynamics of groups that were once solely dominant or subordinate.
Sarah
Ruden suggests that:
As
in all of his mature novels, Coetzee here deals with the theme of exploitation.
His favorite approach has been to explore the innocuous-seeming use of another
person to fill one's gentler emotional needs.
This
is a story of both regional and universal significance. The central character
is a confusing person, at once an intellectual snob who is contemptuous of
others and also a person who commits outrageous mistakes. His story is also
local; he is a white South African male in a world where such men no longer
hold the power they once did. He is forced to rethink his entire world at an
age when he believes he is too old to change and, in fact, should have a right
not to. This theme, about the challenges of aging both on an individual and
societal level, leads to a line, "No country, this, for old men," an
ironic reference to the opening line of the W.
B. Yeats poem, "Sailing to Byzantium". Furthermore, Lurie calls his preference for younger
women a "right of desire", a quote taken up by South African writer André
Brink for his novel "The Rights of
Desire".
By
the end of the novel, though, Lurie seems to mature beyond his exploitative
view of women. In recognizing the right of Lucy to choose her course in life,
he finally puts "their strained relationship on a more equal footing"
— the first time in his relationships with women. His pursuit of a sexual
relationship with Bev Shaw also marks something of a path toward personal
salvation, "by annihilating his sexual vanity and his sense of
superiority."
This
is Coetzee's second book (after Life and Times of
Michael K) where man is broken down almost to
nothing before he finds some tiny measure of redemption in his forced
acceptance of the realities of life and death. Coetzee has always situated his
characters in extreme situations that compel them to explore what it means to
be human. Though the novel is sparse in style, it covers a number of topics:
personal shame, the subjugation of women, a changing country, and romantic
poetry and its allegory
and symbolism.
Another
important theme in the novel is the difficulty or impossibility of communication and the limits of language. Although Lurie teaches communications at Cape Town
Technical University and is a scholar of poetry, language often fails him.
Coetzee writes:
Although
he devotes hours of each day to his new discipline, he finds its first premise,
as enunciated in the Communications 101 handbook, preposterous: 'Human society
has created language in order that we may communicate our thoughts, feelings,
and intentions to each other.' His own opinion, which he does not air, is that
the origins of speech lie in song,
and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and
rather empty human soul.
A
2006 poll of "literary luminaries" by The
Observer newspaper named the work as the
"greatest novel of the last 25 years" of British, Irish or
Commonwealth origin in years between 1980 and 2005.
A
film adaptation of Disgrace starring John
Malkovich had its world premiere at the Toronto
International Film Festival in 2008,
where it won the International Critics' Award.
References
· ""Disgrace" by J.M.
Coetzee". Salon. 1999-11-05. Retrieved 2019-12-25.
· · Adam Mars-Jones
(1999-11-25). "Guardian
review of Disgrace".
London: Books.guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2011-06-06.
· · the complete
review – all rights reserved. "Complete
Review of Books".
Complete-review.com. Retrieved 2011-06-06.
· · Ruden, Sarah
(August 16, 2000). "Disgrace.
By J. M. Coetzee – Review – book review, Christian Century". Findarticles.com. Archived from the
original on December 31, 2004.
·
Lindsey, Peggy (July 9, 2002). "Disgrace – Review". Mostly Fiction Review.
Mostlyfiction.com. Retrieved June 6, 2006.
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