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9/4/02

‘Disgrace’ an unflinching look at South African race relations

SMN
Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee.
Penguin Books, 2000. $13 — 220 pp.


Although the news here in the United States has of necessity focused on terrorism in the Middle East, other places in the world are also flashpoints of hatred, political clashes, and religious and racial warfare. One of these places is Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia.

Robert Mugabe is the leading political figure in Zimbabwe, a fighter for freedom and racial justice who has become a repressive, murderous tyrant. Mugabe’s latest plan is to take the large farms from the country’s remaining whites and turn them over both to his confederates and to the masses of unemployed thugs who act as his Gestapo. Despite protests from several European countries, notably Britain, Mugabe has allowed these gangs to run off farmers, to rape and kill those who help the farmers, and to kill the farmers who won’t leave. Farmers who now remain on their land are also subject to possible imprisonment.

One further consequence of Mugabe’s greed and hatred for whites is the looming catastrophe that is following on the heels of his lunatic policies. These farms helped feed Zimbabwe. By attacking the farms, by killing and driving off the men and women who made these farms work, Mugabe has issued a death sentence to many of his fellow citizens.

Like Zimbabwe, South Africa is experiencing strained relations between blacks and whites. In his novel Disgrace, South African novelist J.M. Coetzee takes a hard look at the complex situation in his native country. He performs this examination of his country, of the relations between black and white and between men and women, through the eyes of Professor David Lurie, a twice-divorced philanderer who loses his job at the university for sleeping with a student.

Following this loss, Lurie moves to his daughter Lucy’s small farm while trying to find a direction for his life. Here he does odd jobs, meditates on his past and his philosophy involving the rights of desire, sleeps with yet another woman, and still pursues in odd ways the student with whom he has had the affair.

Lurie’s dispassionate nature is shattered when three black men invade the farm. They beat David senseless, nearly burn him to death, rape Lucy, and steal the car. Although it first appears that the violence has occurred randomly, we soon see that the black neighbor who wants Lucy’s farm has helped arrange the attack. He hopes either to drive her away or else force her to realize that she cannot live without his protection, that she must become one of his wives and eventually turn her land over to him.

Disgrace is an unforgettable novel for two reasons. First, there is Coetzee’s powerhouse prose. In spite of the complexity of the issues in the book, Coetzee tells his story in clear, strong, simple sentences. In the following passage, Lurie reflects on his condition following the assault:


He cannot expect help from Lucy. Patiently, silently, Lucy must work her own way back from the darkness to the light. Until she is herself again, the onus is on him to manage their daily life. But it has come too suddenly. It is a burden he is not ready for: the farm, the garden, the kennels. Lucy’s future, his future, the future of the land as a whole — it is all a matter of indifference, he wants to say; let it all go to the dogs, I do not care. As for the men who visited them, he wishes them harm, wherever they may be, but otherwise does not want to think about them.


Lurie’s last sentiments in this passage lead us to a second reason that this novel is unforgettable, which is in its portrait of Lurie. Here is a weak man, a spineless man, a man who advocates the ‘rights of desire’ and the necessity for following one’s instincts like an animal, but who seems to have no understanding of the responsibility that accompanies the rights of desire. Lurie comes across as a spineless weakling who cannot defend his daughter or himself, who seems unable to take any sort of stand in life. He is like a twig in a stream, unable to battle the current or change his course.

Here Coetzee leaves the reader in confusion. Is the portrait of David Lurie simply Coetzee’s rendition of a single man, a broken professor paying for his flaws? Or is it the portrait of white men in South Africa these days—weak and ineffectual, seeming closer to children than adults in terms of their emotions? If such is indeed Coetzee’s intention, then the book fails because there simply can’t be that many despicable people gathered in any one place on the planet.

Disgrace is not a pleasant read, but its characters and observations will stay with you long after you have finished the last sentence.

(Jeff Minick lives in Waynesville. He can be reached at saintsbookco@aol.com)