Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
Introduction:
Disgrace was first published on July 1, 1999 by Secker & Warburg in the United Kingdom. The same year it won for Coetzee his second Booker Prize, the first being for life and times of Michael K(1983). When Disgrace first appeared, many criticized it as a bleak critique of post-apartheid South Africa. Many whites in and outside South Africa found appalling the novel's seeming justification of rapes of white women by predatory African males as an inevitable consequence of the year of domination of the blacks by an oppressive white regime. Many blacks were appalled, on the other hand, by what they saw as the re-energizing of the stereotypes about African males so prevalent during the history of colonialism. Disgrace, however works in a way that seems to provoke and undermine both these responses, says suresh Raval.
Theme in Disgrace:
According to The Guardian,"Any novel set in post-apartheid SouthAfrica is fated to be read as a political portrait, but the fascination of Disgrace is 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 way and Laurie and his daughter become victims. Yet the main character is no hero. On the contrary he commits violence in his own way too. This characterization of violence by both the "white" and "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, in the change in power dynamics of group that were once solely dominate or subordinate, in the shift in material wealth etc. This state of transition means that Coetzee cannot make concrete classification for each character again emphasizing that no one is wholly good or evil or both.
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 courageous 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 should have a right not to. This theme about the challenges of again 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 W.B. Yeats's poem, sailing to Byzantium. Furthermore a quote taken up by South African writer Andre Brink for his novel, The Right of Desire.
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