Shame in Disgrace Essay

Disgrace defined by Webster is to be humiliated by a superior showing or to be a source of shame. In J.M. Coetzees book Disgrace the title is exactly what the book is about a sure disgrace of a professor who has an illicit affair with one of his students which leads to his disgrace where is loses his job, and has to leave town to cope with this disgrace. The second disgrace is when the main character David Luries daughter, Lucy, is brutally raped by three men. Although two forms of disgrace occur in the book

"Disgrace," by J. M. Coetzee, is about the whites and the blacks in the newly post-apartheid South Africa no longer governed by the whites. On the one hand, the decades of white political supremacy were at their end. All values are shifting. If the whites want to survive in today's South Africa, they have to be adaptable or even under the blacks' protection. On the other hand, insofar as the blacks were prevented from encroaching on white areas, restricted to certain type of jobs, forbidden to most social contacts and to intermarry with the whites for a long period of time before the all-race national elections in 1994, some of them now attack the whites, try to be superior to the whites, rob the whites of their properties in revenge for their lost under the legislated Apartheid over the decades. In this essay, I am going to examine how the blacks and the whites in the story change in response to the new political order in the new Republic of South Africa.

Although some of the white South Africans adapt to the new order, there are still some who are unable or unwilling to change. Indeed, it is totally unacceptable for them to live next to the blacks' houses. It is because in accordance with the Group Areas Act of 1950 the blacks were barred from living in white areas (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2001). Notwithstanding the fact that this act has already been abolished, the whites still do not want to live in a place in which the blacks live here. In Disgrace, Lurie hates to live next to a black man, Petrus. Lurie says "we live too close to Petrus. It is like sharing a house with strangers, sharing noises, sharing smells" (127). On top of that, the South Africans are now allowed to intermarry, but inter-marriage is also not accepted by some of the whites. Needless to say, they cannot accept a black man intermarries with a white woman, so Lurie says that as a Westerner, he cannot believe his ears when Petrus tells him that he would marry his daughter Lucy.

Lucy, unlike her father, accepts the post-apartheid situation. When she joins Petrus' festivities, she speaks a few words in Xhosa. It was surely impossible before the last president of the white government, F. W. de Klerk repealed most of the social legislation providing the legal basis for the racial segregation. Above all, she seems to share the justifications of the black attackers of her house, and as soon as she discovers that she is pregnant as a result of the rape by them, she refused to have an abortion. On the contrary, she expects to have the child whose father is a black guy Pollux. Apart from this, she agrees to offer her farm to Petrus and to become his third wife in name only in return for his protection:

'I don't believe you get that point, David. Petrus is not offering me a church wedding followed by a honeymoon on the Wild Coast. He is offering an alliance, a deal. I contribute the land, in return for which I am allowed to creep under his wing. Otherwise, he wants to remind me, I am without protection, I am fair game' (203).

However, in the past, the whites were dominant in every aspects, though they only number nearly five million in the country which has an estimated population of around 42 million. After all, they now become powerless because, in the first place, the society as a whole is no longer under the influence of the whites, and in the second place, they may see that any attack on the whites is a kind of reparation. As far as most of the blacks are concerned, the language of the whites - English and Afrikaans may be unfit for today's South Africa as it has totally 11 official languages, including Xhosa. In 1976, there were Soweto riots caused by the white government's attempt to enforce Afrikaans language requirement for the black students (Encyclopedia Britannia, 2001). In Disgrace, Lurie is convinced that another language of the whites, English, is not fit for the country: More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa... Like a dinosaur expiring and settling in the mud, the language has stiffened (117).

In the story, Lucy's reaction to the rape and ransack is not to press charges on the grounds that she sees the rape and ransack as the historical reparation. I remember when I had my dinner in a Dutch restaurant in Johannesburg, I saw a group of black guys destroying a car. The restaurant owner told me that this car was owned by a white family which ran a pharmacy located at Alexandra. Surprisingly, no one, including the whites, inside the restaurant phoned the police and when I left the restaurant half an hour later, I still could not see any police officers there. At that time, I could not understand why the people did not report the sabotage to the police, but now I think I may grasp the reason behind. Therefore, to a certain extent, the whites are now powerless. In the story, Lurie does have a sense of powerlessness: "He speaks Italian, he speaks French, but Italian and French will not save him here in darkest Africa" (95).

In this essay, I have tried to describe and analyze the changing relationship between the blacks and the whites in the post-apartheid South Africa. Actually, the country has been transformed from an autocracy into a democracy. Yet, does it mean that both races can live peacefully? Has brutal tyranny been replaced by brutal anarchy? Since the whites still control the country economically, the blacks will still be jealous of the wealth of the whites and degrade them as far as possible. Iannone (2000) quoted a black Anglican priest's remarks about the whites that "one day when they turn to loving they will find we are turned to hating." In the story, the three black men attack Lurie and gang-rape Lucy. Petrus, once Lucy's assistant, becomes her co-proprietor. So, does the restoration of political power to the blacks bring hope or revenge to every South African"