Of Politics & the Male Itch. Review on Disgrace - J M Coetzee

J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace is a novel that could make one ponder:-

~~ Is a man to be faulted for his libido? This isn’t something that he specifically asked for. He was born with it. What is he supposed to do if not satisfy it in a legal and lawful manner? Castrate himself?

~~ Does libido always necessary mean carnality? Isn’t a libidinous man also driven by the need for companionship and a need to cope with life’s drudgery? Or no, maybe that’s too kind an interpretation; lets just call him a womanizer instead.

~~ After a consenting affair has soured between a man and a woman, is it being fair to the man to charge him of molestation? Or do courts of justice have ears only for the woman, turning deaf towards the man?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

There aren’t any easy answers to morality, but it is a wonder why such debates only end up vociferously attacking the male. It is considered a sacrilege even to think of giving an equal blame to the women involved. Why does it not merit even a passing thought?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

~ A sense is unfairness is what one feels for David

Disgrace is about David Lurie a 52 year old professor of Romantic Poetry, who is forced to publicly repent a physical dalliance with one of his students. He is made to endure psychological abasement and physical torment. Like David, many readers would fail to understand how such a relation could be termed molestation when she was compliant, submissive and even forthcoming.

~ Is he merely a slave to his sexual needs?

He is a person with two broken marriages behind him, given to purchasing sexual release from local prostitutes, later seduces one of his willing students. The taint of yesterday’s broken relationships fails to leave his present, his professional and personal doom adds on to his overall decline. David is compelled to leave his respectable job and seek refuge is his daughters farmhouse.

David’s desperation

Unable to do anything to the perpetrators of a crime against his daughter, during and after it was committed; anyone can empathize with David’s sense of helplessness. This is easily the most gruesome section of the novel. He lives with the taunt that he was not there to save her.

One does tend to romanticize life in a farm, but Disgrace displays the horrors, power equations in such a setting that city folk are completely unprepared for. It is shocking the way David’s daughter Lucy resignedly accepts situations, sacrificing her beliefs, and her very innate nature, merely to survive & live in subjugation, after a series of cataclysmic events shake the foundations of her life.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Disgrace throughout its course also subtly underlines the changing moods and shifting stances in a post-apartheid South Africa, painting a grim and discomforting picture.

However one chooses to view the conduct of its main protagonist David Lurie, whether get disgusted by him or feel sympathetic regrets for him, Disgrace is sheer pleasure to read. It is remarkable how powerfully J.M. Coetzee writes without feeling any need to flaunt his language skills, the prose is minimalist yet forceful and effective in this 220 page novel.

Near universal in its appeal, no one can afford to miss this powerfully written novel that was the winner of the Booker and Commonwealth Book prize in 1999

JM Coetzee has authored other books like Dusklands, In The Heart of The Country and Life and Times of Micheal K, besides being the only author to have won the Booker twice, he was also awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------