DISGRACE From the time I could read some of the laureate Coetzee , I felt that most of his novels, if not all their work, may be condensed together, present on a single. The author's prose works Africa as a war correspondent, a reporter, as a literary traveling shows the status of Cape Town, even, why not, a South African living between two times . Analytical novels Coetzee writes described in an almost unconscious trance experienced by the author's homeland.
In Disgrace, Lurie David is a university professor of 52 years who has two failed marriages and who sleeps with a student, Melanie . Among other things, Lurie tells Melanie " The beauty of a woman does not belong only to her. It is part of the richness it brings to the world, and his duty is to share it." When it comes to light, the teacher will be in the midst of a situation that exceeds: apologize in public or leave teaching. However, this leaves the university in the midst of scandal and decide to move to the countryside with her daughter Lucy . There you will find several well-defined characters such as Petrus, resident and assistant to his daughter or Bev Shaw. One afternoon, three men enter the house of Lucy and then set fire to her father raped her. The result of this violation, Lucy get pregnant.
Lurie, after the scandal to surface, is justified by an uncontrollable desire , inexplicabe and very intense. The men are reflected in an almost animal: Lurie is a man who is moved by their sexual desires and finds a haven in carnal pleasure, hence his passion for prostitutes as Soraya. Remarkable is that in the novel there is a nearly ubiquitous presence of animals, namely dogs. David Lurie has lived like a dog.
In a society that repentance and forgiveness should be public humiliation, in a society where language has become a dirty, unclean and perverted what is left? Is not this a sign that society begins to make water?
When Lucy , animal lover, independent and asexual , a victim of rape to the police decide to report only the theft of the car and various material elements house (somehow, Lurie feels bound by the parent-child relationship). His father, a former scholar, does not understand: " can not get in my situation." Thus, the father appears as a disturbance in the balance and peace of Lucy .
At some point in history is found to Petrus, a character who manages to raise an unprecedented Lurie revulsion and that it transmits to the reader, father of one of the rapists. Nobody says anything, "all has been a 'mistake ' but now things are fine."
Why
Lucy not report the rape? Lucy, a white woman is the victim of two times: he has to pay for the mistakes of whites in the past. You must pay for all the atrocities they did to blacks. Now, to balance the scales, the violence has a justification . It is here in this figure, where Coetzee is to think again about apartheid.
Lurie, far away and not only to understand but to accept what is happening, decides to escape somehow engaged in various tasks such as working as assistant in a clinic where they kill the stray dogs are young, old, lame, or writing an opera about Byron's life and a woman named Teresa. David is no longer an old man unable to change, and no choice to take her daughter's decision not to abort (the first time it did, this time not willing to go through it)
Lucy assumes that he has to live with the rapist and say nothing: "I'm ready for whatever, for any sacrifice, in order to get peace."
This closed society, rural, sexist, racist, hypocritical and providing protection a criminal may not be so far from a reality that can be seen in this country. Are we required to pay for the mistakes we made? Is it justifiable hatred and violence for damages?
Peace yes, but not at any price.
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