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John Maxwell Coetzee- Disgrace
In Disgrace, Coetzee has created a character much like himself - a divorced professor of
literature in postapartheid South Africa - through whom he experiences the horrors of the
society around him: the profound fear, the racism and the absurdities relating to identity
in the postcolonial world at large. In South Africa - as a result of the apartheid era - the
problems relating to identity are perhaps particularily strong and Brazillian analyst Thomas
Bonnici uses the phrase 'former colonizers, who to a certain extent are natives too' about
White South Africans to underline the complexities of the problems.
David Lurie is - or rather becomes through the story - a postmodern, nearly absurd character.
Initially he is merely reclusive, isolated and an outsider, removed from the job he liked to
teach communication: ironically, miscommunication becomes the very source of his own problems
when David makes love to one of his female students and ends up moving to his daughter's farm
in disgrace. Here they are assaulted by a gang of young, black men and his daughter is
raped. In the light of this event, a new side of David's character is revealed - as a man
deprived of his pride through 'historical guilt': David reasons that the assualt "was history
speaking through [the rapists,] a history of wrong. […] It may have seemed personal, but it
wasn't. It came down from the ancestors." David decides to give up life in South Africa and move
abroad - indeed, like Coetzee himself has done - as he has lost faith in his home country and
reasoned that he and his fellow white men are out of place and unwanted in South Africa.
It is tempting and can indeed be fruitful to consider Coetzee a postcolonial author. To his
black readers, however, his writing is still too 'white'; too 'colonial'. While his writing is
undoubtedly within an European tradition, the themes and symbols seem to the European reader
to fit a postcolonial pattern: the narrative is often symbolic rather than explicit, there
are few clear conclusions and when there are they are closely followed by uncertainty (related,
perhaps, to some form of negative capability, as discussed by Philip Dickinson for Coetzee's
'Waiting for the Barbarians') as when David decides to move and, as discussed, there is the
theme of identity and personal interracial relationships. Nevertheless, Coetzee represents a
'white' form of postcolonialism that will necessarily be different from other forms of
postcolonialism.
Classification of literary works seem to me to be more destructive than constructive, however,
and classifying Coetzee as a postcolonial author is merely a technique for exploring some traits
of his work. Have a look at my Extended Essay for further
analysis of the novel, especially a more thorough analysis of its racism and pessimism.
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In Disgrace, Coetzee has created a character much like himself - a divorced professor of
literature in postapartheid South Africa - through whom he experiences the horrors of the
society around him: the profound fear, the racism and the absurdities relating to identity
in the postcolonial world at large. In South Africa - as a result of the apartheid era - the
problems relating to identity are perhaps particularily strong and Brazillian analyst Thomas
Bonnici uses the phrase 'former colonizers, who to a certain extent are natives too' about
White South Africans to underline the complexities of the problems.
David Lurie is - or rather becomes through the story - a postmodern, nearly absurd character.
Initially he is merely reclusive, isolated and an outsider, removed from the job he liked to
teach communication: ironically, miscommunication becomes the very source of his own problems
when David makes love to one of his female students and ends up moving to his daughter's farm
in disgrace. Here they are assaulted by a gang of young, black men and his daughter is
raped. In the light of this event, a new side of David's character is revealed - as a man
deprived of his pride through 'historical guilt': David reasons that the assualt "was history
speaking through [the rapists,] a history of wrong. […] It may have seemed personal, but it
wasn't. It came down from the ancestors." David decides to give up life in South Africa and move
abroad - indeed, like Coetzee himself has done - as he has lost faith in his home country and
reasoned that he and his fellow white men are out of place and unwanted in South Africa.
It is tempting and can indeed be fruitful to consider Coetzee a postcolonial author. To his
black readers, however, his writing is still too 'white'; too 'colonial'. While his writing is
undoubtedly within an European tradition, the themes and symbols seem to the European reader
to fit a postcolonial pattern: the narrative is often symbolic rather than explicit, there
are few clear conclusions and when there are they are closely followed by uncertainty (related,
perhaps, to some form of negative capability, as discussed by Philip Dickinson for Coetzee's
'Waiting for the Barbarians') as when David decides to move and, as discussed, there is the
theme of identity and personal interracial relationships. Nevertheless, Coetzee represents a
'white' form of postcolonialism that will necessarily be different from other forms of
postcolonialism.
Classification of literary works seem to me to be more destructive than constructive, however,
and classifying Coetzee as a postcolonial author is merely a technique for exploring some traits
of his work. Have a look at my 
