The Booker Prize-winning novel Disgrace by the celebrated South African novelist J.M. Coetzee has been widely recognized as a relevant resource dealing with the themes very close to the historical background of the nation. The literary implication of the novel may be found in that this provides the prospect of numerous interpretations. No wonder, the novel has been identified in the literary circles as a serious but complicated creation with numerous interpretations. More significantly, the historical background of South Africa provides the most effective setting for the essential interpretation of the novel. Therefore, it is remarkable that J.M. Coetzee’s novel Disgrace relates the violent attack on David Lurie and his daughter Lucy which is a central incident in the novel to the environment as well as the history of South Africa. It is generally accepted that such a historical background incorporates pertinent concepts including colonialism, imperialism, class, and race exploitation.
The contemporary Western notions tend to comprehend such concepts as problematic and wrong. Certain views understand these as evil, particularly in the background of racism that occupied South African history. The novelist makes David Lurie, the central character, make a relevant statement immediately following a serious attack that his daughter and he encountered at the hands of a group of blacks. The statement reads, “Too many people, too few things. What there is must go into circulation so that everyone can have a chance to be happy for a day. That is the theory; hold to the theory and the comforts of theory. Not human evil, just a vast circulatory system, to whose workings pity and terror are irrelevant.” (98) Although, this remark may be interpreted in several important ways, one most applicable interpretation would suggest that the novelist has been proposing an alternative understanding to the conventional understanding that he is dealing with the social evil of racism.
It, however, does not mean that a theme as social evil of racism does not find relevance in the interpretation. Rather, it is possible to view the statement in several ways and the novelist seems to suggest the underlying system of South African culture which provided the Blacks with violence provisions. Disgrace deals with several themes during its narrative. Its broadest theme is life in the post-apartheid period in South Africa. Other underlying themes include violence, sex, father-daughter relationship, and forgiveness. This paper deals primarily with violence. It is to analyze the violence that is inflicted upon David Lurie and his daughter Lucy and the underlying reasons for such violence. Is this violence inflicted upon father and daughter of the black backlash for crimes committed against them for decades or a crime that could have happened anywhere in the world?
The protagonist of the story is David Lurie, a white professor of English teaching in a university in Cape Town. He is fifty-two years old, twice divorced, and has a daughter named Lucy from his first marriage. From his age, it is clear that he had lived in a white-dominated society his entire life since the system of apartheid was adopted in the country in the late 1940s. But to his credit, it could be said that he was quite ‘liberal’ in his views towards the blacks and this is the only redeeming feature of his otherwise self-centered behavior. The part of the story that is relevant here is when David comes to live with his daughter on her farm. During this time Lucy is gang-raped and David is assaulted.
To come back to the statement made by David, it seems that the novelist is talking about a way of life in South Africa that he calls a theory, one that came about through poverty and exploitation. It is s situation where the feeling of what is right and wrong is blurred to the extent of being invisible. Whenever something becomes scarce, it has to be shared. A person starved of something will tend to enjoy that thing even if it is for a day. The statement is a telling one for if one applies the same situation to other parts of the world the reactions would have been similar if not the same. In the setting of the story, the situation was such that this theory has transformed itself into a system. Coetzee compares it to the circulatory system. This was to show that it had become so ingrained into the society that it had become like a circulatory system of the body, so essential that without it, life would come to an end.
But when he considers women in the same vein, as a commodity, a new outlook comes into the picture. But considering the history of South Africa, this too does not come as a surprise. South African men have a feeling that they are entitled to have relationships with women and the latter has no right to object. So what Coetzee tries to convey in that sentence is inherently true. That theory has become so embedded in the county’s psyche that violence is no longer considered to be evil. It is as if violence and evil are as natural as breathing. Yes, it is true that to Western sensibilities such an attitude may be considered wrong and even shocking. But the situation that exists in the two regions is very different. But go back a few hundred years when slavery was practiced widely in the west. The same category of people, the blacks, were subjected to life that is very similar to the one that exists in South Africa today even after apartheid has come to an end. Contrary to public belief, the economic conditions of the blacks have worsened when compared to the pre-apartheid era. A critical study of the statement does show that the sentence by David is true. It is only because it comes from the father of the girl on whom violence has been committed that one fails to see the situation as it is. Maybe Coetzee had intended to shock the reader into having a different set of feelings. It is a feeling of having sympathy towards Lucy and loathing towards her father for sounding callous. In such a situation it is only natural that a critical analysis of the truth behind the sentence is often overlooked.
But this is a very bleak future for South Africa that is shown here. A circulatory system can be cleaned but only with the cooperation of the mind. A system that is so ingrained in society too can be cleaned. It can only be done with the minds of the people who are a part of the system and hence, a very difficult task to achieve. To achieve that one has to come outside the book and take a look at the realities of the situation. That, at present, is beyond the scope of this paper
As mentioned earlier the genius of this work is that it is possible to interpret the actions in other ways also. The point to be considered is whether the evil that Lucy faces is a result of past indignities visited. Coetzee does give a hint that this too is true. Lucy finally opens up and talks to her father about the incident and she says while the rape itself was understandable, what she could not understand was the apparent hate shown on her by her attackers. This hate could be the underlying feeling of the blacks for the kind of life they were made to live in the past. Again what Lucy says can be related to David’s views on evil. That Lucy is not surprised at the rape shows that her view on the realities of the time concurs with that of her father.
As to whether there was an evil system that was the cause of evil does not seem to be true. It would be like equating the situation to a child’s fairy tale where an evil emperor had created a reign of terror on the citizens of his country. The blacks indeed suffered during apartheid. But it was not because their minority rulers were inherently evil. If that was the case, both whites and blacks would have suffered the same fate. The whites ruled in a way that they thought was best for both groups. It was heavily in favor of the whites, but it was not a system created for evil. It was just that it was amenable to violence against the blacks creating resentment and hatred in them. Is there any other view that may explain the situation? Was this situation a result of something else altogether? David’s and Lucy’s views do not suggest that such a different situation exists. They have adequately given enough reasons for such a thing to happen. To bring a new factor here would be meaningless and superfluous.
Coetzee’s Disgrace had been accepted worldwide as a masterpiece of story-telling. But back home he was attacked for showing the country in poor light especially when the country was passing through a critical and difficult period.
So, what ultimately was the reason for evil in Disgrace? The fact is that it is a little of everything. It is the system that develops in a society that is deprived of most of the necessities of life and the resulting way of life. The way of life where there is no place for kindness or pity and violence is a part of everyday life. People take whatever is available by whatever means so that it can be enjoyed at least for a day. It is also a result of the pent-up frustration and hatred that have built up in the black population after years of apartheid rule.
The average reader will see the book as a disturbing story of human greed, violence, and retribution and also a story of love, forgiveness, and transformation.
But for the more serious one, it is Coetzee’s choice of words, told through David Lurie that beautifully illustrates the situation in post-apartheid South Africa. No individual is at fault and nobody is blamed for the acts of violence. The events that happen were inevitable in real life for post-apartheid South Africa and Coetzee just masterfully adopts it and weaves it into his story.