Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Disgrace is my first book by Coetzee. I wonder why I hadn’t read him yet. For, I must admit that I found myself hooked to the work. So much so that this is easily the first book I have read with a compulsive eagerness. This is the sort of writing which, as Marlow says, is haunting and strangely beautiful. I completely agree.

David Lurie, the disgraced one. Really? Well, in a world where morality belong to people who are ostentatiously right, even if their rightness stands out boldly in their little acts of dishonesty, haughtiness, cunningness, lies and conceit, which do not really harm others directly, it is but established that people like Lurie are to be condemned. It is not that I am saying that what David did was right, it is just that I am asking who is to set the rules for what is right here and what is not, who should be condemned and who shouldn’t be? True, David engaged in liaisons, but one thing that I cannot overlook is that he, not even once, engaged in illicit relations without the consent of others involved. So, if David is disgraceful, aren’t the ones involved with him too? That does include Melanie, his student who brought up charges against him. I am not trying to make David seem innocent but then neither was she; remember that Melanie herself stayed back with him for the first time. A young women who is over eighteen years and has an ability to take her own decisions, should as well know what she is plunging into. If she finds it distasteful she can step back, like what she did afterwards. But she is shown to be timorous, one who is afraid even to look straight in the eyes. I wonder if she only accepted the proposition the first time because she, being a country girl, was afraid to offend her Professor, but then she didn’t hesitate to file charge against him even if it was under pressure from his boyfriend. What also perplexed me about her was that she announced herself unexpectedly late night once and cried over hysterically. We aren’t shown much of her character, not even her race. At best we are supplied with ambiguous details like her dark eyes and black hair. Even when Melanie’s boyfriend warns David to stay with his ‘own kind’, we don’t know if he is referring to race or age. If she is black, then the work takes an entirely different perspective.

It then come a complete circle, when David’s daughter Lucy is raped by black men. Lurie says to Lucy that ‘a history of wrong was speaking through Lucy’s rapists’. We are drawn to apartheid in South Africa. A history of personal abuse, but if Melanie was black then perhaps what David refers to is his own history as well. In that case, Melanie’s submission in the first place is something which might have come from a history of surrendering oneself to racial abuse.

David has been honest, through out. But his honesty doesn’t make him sympathetic. He is unaware of the hurt he has caused, cannot give in to feel sorry for what he has done until he is the suffering father. Then he realizes how important it is to accept and say the words, which cannot undone what is done, but can at least bring some respite.

Lucy’s character was one which really roused me. I couldn’t understand her will to stay back in the place where she was raped. She said that it was like staying in someone’s place and paying taxes; Her rapists were debt collectors who were asking to violate her physical territory so that they might let her live on their territory which belonged to them geographically. Really? Did she mean to amend all the bad that were ever done to the African people by whites? She chose to stay back because she couldn’t live with a feeling of accepting defeat, but she could live with a feeling of being crushed or being nothing else than a debt that must be paid for the wrong done to the native people by her race? Well, it was really complex for me. I felt angry with Lucy because I do not believe that a person can alone stand for the unethical done by his/her race. But then I think this is why this is such a sensitive issue. It is also not possible to shirk off the lurking shadows of the unjust done against a race easily. It takes time and patience.

What also held my attention was the piece of Opera, David wanted to write. Being a scholar and comparing himself to his favorite poets, he wanted to write something musical about Byron and Teresa. Towards the end he says:

Well, he is too old to heed, too old to change. Lucy may be able to bend to the tempest; he cannot, not with honor. That is why he must listen to Teresa. Teresa may be the last one left who can save him. Teresa is past honor. She pushes out her breasts to the sun; she plays the banjo in front of the servants and does not care if they smirk. She has immortal longings, and sings her longings. She will not be dead.

What is it that David refers to here? Is it Melanie or his desires? Or something which will help him achieve a state where his longings just go away? His decision to come back to the country and helping Bev Shaw with animals is one way he finds he can do that. By giving himself to bring grace to the animals in their death, he hopes he can undo the disgrace which hovers about him. Redemption at last.


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