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Dystopian and cathartic
Jan 08, 2005 09:05 PM 16319 Views
(Updated Jan 08, 2005 09:08 PM)

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Man is a social being infected by vices and blessed with virtues. It is the summation of the right and the wrong, the just and unjust deeds he does, his vile and his goodliness that ultimately decide what he leaves behind him, and what kind of a life he leads. Thomas Aquinas laid down, the seven cardinal sins, lust being one of them and how men fall from grace if they indulge themselves to a life guided by his carnal desires.


The book that I am going to present to you today, talks about the sins of a man and his retributions. The price he has to pay for his heinous deeds and how he falls from grace due to his moments of weakness. It also talks about the changes in the social system in the background where the novel is based. It talks about the post-apartheid South Africa and how the nation is going through a shift in socio-politico powers. How the changes are affecting the common populace and what repercussions it has on the daily life. Let me present to you folks, winner of the 1999 Booker Prize, J M Coetzee’s The Disgrace.


Coetzee is a prolific writer from South Africa, author of books like Life & Times of Michael Kane which won him his first Booker in 1983, Waiting for the Barbarians, Dusklands et al, who went on to win the highest literary award, the Noble prize in 2003 for his exemplary contribution to the literary world. Coetzee writes with a socio-politico-economic backdrop of South Africa in most of his works. His characters seek refuse beyond the realms of power; they seek life where there exists none. Be it Michael Kane who seeks freedom through passivity from the violence of racist tyranny or in his Waiting for the Barbarians how the protagonists overcomes the threats of a totalitarian society to come together. Or for that matter the retribution and fall from disgrace of his central character in Disgrace.


Coetzee's work runs like a high-tension cable across an inhospitable South African landscape. Writer Per Wastberg says for Coetzee, during his presentation speech for the 2003 Noble Prize, With intellectual honesty and density of feeling, in a prose of icy precision, you have unveiled the masks of our civilization and uncovered the topography of evil. Coetzee is certainly one of the most powerful voices in contemporary English literature. He writes with a dark, impacted intelligence the kind which led critics to describe his books as obscure and difficult.His works are critical, damning yet allegorical at the same time. A forceful writer who builds his stories in a unnatural terrain, and forces you to think and twitch uneasily as you encounter the unexpected and unrecognizable flow of the plot.


Disgrace is a dystopian novel about the life of Prof David Lurie, his placid yet aimless life which is rocked subsequent to his flings and physical intimacy with one of his students, Melanie. It charts his fall from grace, his shames and his disgrace as he goes from one ignominy to the other. It is also the story of his daughter Lucy and in her plight lays David’s biggest disgrace until he is reduced to the lot of the animals read a dog’s life. So much so for the story of the novel, for the rest as always, I would let you read it yourself.


Disgrace is a journey through contemporary South Africa and the themes of the work are race and gender, ownership and violence and the moral and political complicity of everyone through such times.It is both powerful yet sublime, gripping yet disturbing, poignant yet apathetic, subtle yet provocative, silent yet loud and pungent yet prolific at the same time. It leaves the reader spell bound as he follows the disgrace and life of the protagonist, his struggle to come to terms with the changes in his life and his troubled existence as his past keeps revisiting to haunt him.


Disgrace talks about the social system in post apartheid South Africa and how socio-politico forces are dismantling existing setup and how the emerging assemble is affecting the lives of people who are undergoing the change. It talks about the catharsis of the people who have been subjected to centuries of oppressive life and how they react to the changes which place power in their hands. It depicts the changing social equations as the erstwhile powerful becomes the powerless and it also talks about the mental and psychological changes in brings about at the mass level. The book is a fine blend of the political undercurrent sweeping contemporary South Africa and the day to day life of the people in the changing times.


Disgrace talks about the larger themes of retributions, forgiveness and the reversal of fortunes. The protagonist David gives up everything in his life as he falls from grace and as he forced to give up more then a dog ever could. He is forced to give up his position, his ideas about justice and language and his dreams, as he tried to regain some lost pride. He is reduced to a man tending the sick and senile dogs and it is in this work that he seeks his retribution for the sins he has committed all his life.


The classof Coetzee is stamped all over the book, his honest and powerful oratory comes out loud and clear in the dialogs between his central characters, Coetzee portrays the scenes between the dramatis personae sans any emotion, touching on brute and apathetic, consider this dialogue by Lucy “Perhaps that is what I must learn to accept,'' she tells her father. ''To start at ground level. With nothing ... No cards, no weapons, no property, no rights, no dignity ... Like a dog.''. The way he charts the fall of David through the noble is disturbing yet believable, in ways more then one a pointer to the changing times and his own requital. Coetzee speaks differently and the sadness and layers unfold endlessly in Disgrace as David is reduced to an animal existence. Check this out as David speaks about the language he and the others use had become ''tired, friable, eaten from the inside as if by termites'' and that he, an expert practitioner, is also hollow, ''like a fly-casing in a spider web.''


Whose brew is it? Disgrace is definitely not a pleasure coffee table book. It is also not something you would want to pick up on a leisure trip and flip through waiting for your train or bus. It is a compelling read meant for the discerning, a student of cultures, history and philosophy would find it compulsive read. It is also a must read for those who have read Sidney Seldon, John Grisham et al and are looking at serious read. Disgrace is a gripping, riveting and enchanting book which would leave you with a tinge of sadness and a sense of unease after you have kept it down.


Word of caution for those teenyboppers who never liked the history classes during schools and those who shunned any sermons of moral science, this is not your types then folks. Coetzee doesn’t come across as a common day to day writer; he belongs to a different league and should be read with care and caution. For someone who has made the transition from lofty novels to the thought provoking ones, this a piece de resistance.


For those who have read it, I would love to know your views: - in what ways can the events dramatized in Disgrace be seen as a result of South Africa's long history of racial oppression, how does it imply about the larger themes of retribution and forgiveness and reversals of fortune and how does it talk about the relation between the powerful and the powerless?


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