Disgrace

Author: J. M Coetzee

"For a man his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well." Thus we are introduced to David Lurie, a Communications professor at a technical university in Cape Town. And throughout the book, although it is written in the third person, it is very much written from Lurie’s perspective.

We first get to know Lurie from his scheduled visits to a prostitute named Soraya, who he stops meeting after he sees her with her children. He then seduces his student, Melanie, whose father lodges a sexual harassment complaint to the university, forcing Lurie to resign and retreat to his daughter Lucy’s farm, where she grows flowers and cares for dogs. He suspects her of being a lesbian and not too pleased with her lack of care for her appearance.

In an attempt to rekindle his relationship with Lucy, he gets to know her neighbours, including Petrus, who helps out at the farm. Another neighbour is a lady, Bev Shaw who runs an animal clinic. He finds her unattractive but has an affair with her.

One day three black strangers show up at the farm, asking to make a telephone call. Lurie is locked inside a bathroom and put on fire while his daughter is gang-raped. Later Lurie discovers that one of the rapists is related to Petrus, who was away when the attack happened. He thinks Petrus intentionally allowed the hoodlums to attack Lucy as a way of asserting his growing authority in the area. Lurie urges his daughter to leave the country, but she stubbornly refuses, and when she discovers she is pregnant, decides to keep the baby. Although unhappy about this, Lurie comes to accept her decision and eventually reconciles with her.

Throughout most of the book Lurie comes across as an arrogant intellectual who thinks he is too good for the modern world and can do no wrong, a remnant of the colonial times. He is condescending even when admitting his guilt to the academic committee, claiming to be a servant of Eros acting upon his rights of desire. His relationships with women are merely a means to satisfy his need for sex. The only situation in which he truly cares for someone was also the only time he could not act upon it, which was the attack on Lucy. This event, and those that follow, makes him realise that he is losing his place in the world, that he is no longer a mover and shaker in the world.

In the end Lurie accepts his fate, his fall from grace. As he carries a dog he has grown attached to into Bev’s clinic to be put to sleep, he tells her that, “Yes, I am giving him up.”