Violence and
Victimization in the Postcolonial landscape: Dilemma, Morality and conflict
Resolution in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace
Dr. Sree Prasad R.
Assistant Professor,
PG Department of English,
NSS College, Pandalam,
Pathanamthitta, Kerala, India.
Abstract: J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace is a straightforward reflection of identity exerted by racism and
negligence. The impact of racism was so much so that when the once colonized
received the chance to penalize, they have exerted vengeance. It can be termed
as a revolt against the colonizer, who has done the same in the countries under
dominated supremacy. The post-colonial representatives faced many tremors than the original inflictors of pain. More
than race and clan, individuals face difficulties in the world of fuss.
Therefore, creating a new space and life situation is the idea that could be
decimated from the novel. This paper titled Violence and Victimization in the Postcolonial landscape: Dilemma,
Morality and conflict resolution in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace enumerates
the impact of violence exerted over the colonized and the paths of reconciliation
in the contemporary world of changing frameworks. (Keywords- Violence, Victimization, Postcolonialism, Dilemma &
Resolution)
Introduction
The international reputation to Coetzee results from the genuine
depiction of the post-colonial sufferings and hurdles delineated in his
writings. The main reason for the same is that Coetzee is a writer who is
always trying to demystify the regional sufferings of postcolonial lives in the
global context. Though the prejudices of the white South African community
cannot be escaped from some of the personal views of Coetzee to the subject
matter for introspection is something more than white African suffering. The
sorry figuring out of both the natives and the whites is the intention of the
writer. That is why he is such a prolific writer of merit.
The man of knowledge and education in an exalted institution was
deliberately carried out by passions rather than common sense. David Lurie was
having a short yet firm relationship with Soraya, a prostitute. Although his
societal position elicits doubtful stigmas over ethical parameters, he was
happy. But the sudden break up of this relation directed David and his aroused
passions towards a student. Melanie did not attract him not quite that way
earlier, but the situational desire to quench his thirst for flesh-play drove
him to incite in him sinful, sensual thoughts. Although Melanie reacted
positively to his invitation, the intention from the part of her tutor was
something unknown to her, and it was more than having a tea. In the next few
days, he slowly started to behave in tune with his instinct. Moreover, twice in
mutual arousal, they engage in sex. It was said to be mutual because there was
not much reluctance from the part of Melanie: ‘though she is passive
throughout, he finds the act pleasurable....’ (19). Even she helped him to
undress her. The incident ousts David out of the university, and he seeks
refuge in the distant farm owned by her daughter, Lucy.
Changing
Considerations
The post-colonial period of the land is trying to point out the reversal
of the oracle. The political dominion which exerted influence in the African
land till the latter half of the twentieth century is brought to question here.
The lack of justifiable politics in the land also aggravated the issue of the
colour bar. To face intolerance in our land by a foreigner is quite unthinkable
in the present-day situation as well. Because of her extended stay on the farm,
Lucy knows the condition of the white settlers in the land of hatred than the
newly arrived Lurie. Centuries-old tales are there to dig at to find out the
passionless lust and their domineering violence. She says to her father: ‘Not
slavery. Subjection. Subjugation.’ (159)
David thinks of the duties he had to fulfil as the father to Lucy. He
knows that Lucy was not interested in the institution called marriage but
waited for a companion after her lesbian friend left her place. As a
traditional father who wished a healthy life for his daughter, he was not
reasonably interested in her lesbian friend. Even though her father is sharing
life along with his daughter, this is not the end. In a way or the other, ‘he
becomes his second salvation, the bride of his youth reborn’ (86). Earlier
Petrus, ‘the gardener and the dog-man’ (64) also reminds David of Lucy’s
isolated life on the farm, which could prove to be very dangerous these days.
These thoughts troubled him and perplexed while thinking of Lucy’s future,
which is clearly in front of him.
On a Wednesday, the father and daughter were having a stroll and talk
about the university life and plans of future. Lurie was aware of what happened
in the past will remain a black mark in his later life, and there is no escape
from it. However, this seemed to be unfair. No one can forbid the instincts of
living beings. He also alludes to one earlier experience of a neighbour’s dog
which usually felt uneasy at the smell of a bitch outside the gate. For this,
the bitch was always beaten. But Lurie says: ‘No animal will accept the justice
of being punished for following its instincts’ (90).Lucy replies in a very
jovial manner, but she was so interested in her father’s lecturing. About his
present condition, Lurie said; ‘Doctoring dogs. Playing assistant to a woman
who specializes in sterilization and euthanasia (91). While returning from
their walk, they heard the dogs in the kennel bark at three strangers, two men,
and a boy. Earlier, these men passed through their way and waited for them in
front of Lucy’s house.
To make things worse, the days of comfort and solace that Lurie
experienced here were not carried out far too long. There awaited more bitter
days of testing in the life of the white settlers in this African land. The
three strangers asked Lucy to help them with the telephone, and the unfortunate
owner of the house invited them into the room without knowing the real
intention of the intruders. The worse things have taken place next, and all the
three took advantage and were monstrous in taking their sexual satisfaction in
Lucy. While David was kept silent by the beating his daughter Lucy, the poor
woman proved to be a real puppet in the hands of the owners of the land. They
made her pay the price for her isolated stay in the land:
Something
is wrong; he knows at once. ‘Lucy, come out here! he calls, unsure for the
moment whether to follow or wait where he can keep an eye on the boy … A blow
catches him on the crown of the head. He is aware of being dragged across the
kitchen floor. Then he blacks out. (Coetzee 93)
This is evidently exposes of the situations happening in the land after
the fag end of colonialism. In the post-colonial facet of Africa, the oracle
has been reverted, and the natives ply their vengeance over the once privileged
class. It may be not the same everywhere in the land, but crime should be
treated as a crime, nothing more. Coming back to the situation of the father
and daughter, it is quite tragic to note that David was kept silent by more
vicious attacks from the thugs. A hand extended to help is brutally kicked at
by the hooligans, an aftermath of the evil deeds in the past done by the
ancestors:
So it
has come, the day of testing. Without warning, without fanfare, it is here, and
he is in the middle of it. In his chest, his heart hammers so hard that it too,
in its dumb way, must know. How will they stand up to the testing, he and his
heart?
His
child is in the hands of strangers. In a minute, in an hour, it will be too
late: whatever is happening to her will be set in stone, will belong to the
past. But now it is not too late. Now he must do something.
(Coetzee 94)
Before leaving the house, the hooligans murder the poor dogs in the cage
which bark at them in hurried anger and hatred. Lucy was brutally enjoyed by
them and her flesh was more comforting to satiate their anger rather than
giving sexual pleasures in haste. These poor creatures paid their price for
trying to protect their masters. They reduced the life-filled environment to
nothing and ransacked the total household. Moreover, they set Lurie to fire and
also steal his car. ‘Everything is tender; everything is burned. Burned, burnt’
(97). The carnage inflicted upon Lucy and her father’s lives, along with the
poor watchdogs, was irrecoverable.
Placing
Disgrace as a Postcolonial Dilemma
The novel, which has been placed in the post-apartheid South Africa
deals with the present-day situations rather than the earlier novels of
Coetzee. Lurie, the pathetic figure after the rape of her daughter, is
portrayed as a sorry figure of circumstances. The poor father explains to her
daughter that the hooligans, wreaking vengeance, may come back again to find
satisfaction and to inflict more pain. The condition of the victim, especially
the woman, highlights and underlines the atrocities women face in the world of
violence. Sexual exploitation of women by either black or white is simply
another development hierarchy concerning the aftermaths of hegemony. David had
lost anything and everything, and slowly he is trying to analyse the
transformation that is happening within:
He has a sense that, inside him,
a vital organ has been bruised, abused - even his heart. For the first time, he
has a taste of what it will be like to be an old man, tired to the bone,
without hopes, without desires, indifferent to the future. Slumped on a plastic
chair amid the stench of chicken feathers and rotting apples, he feels his
interest in the world draining away from him drop by drop. It may take weeks,
it may take months before he is bled dry, but he is bleeding. When that is
finished, he will be like a fly-casing in a spiderweb, brittle to the touch,
lighter than rice-chaff, ready to float away. (Coetzee 107)
Lucy was not at all interested in raising her voice against the
hooligans who created troubles in her life. Therefore, to the policemen, she
delineated only the details of the stolen things from home and not about her
chastity. It was an unusual ingredient stolen, on the day of the attack by the
criminals. The loss happened to her father, herself, and the poor animals in the
kennel have been written down by the officers, and they left the place. The
interest of his daughter was very much made clear by these incidents. Thus, the
real misfortune of a man from an exalted position to the state of nothingness,
the story of David Lurie starts to face the days of reversal. At a snail's pace
through significantly, there starts the sad binding of ‘Lucy’s secret; his
disgrace’ (109).
The collapse and the catastrophic situations that the protagonist David
Lurie starts with when Lucy was uninterested in reporting the case to the
police, and it creates a dilemma in Lurie,
what to perceive and what not to proceed. His daughter, on the other hand,
delineates that it is a revolt to save her skin. Sitting up in the
borrowed nightdress, she confronts him, neck stiff, eyes glittering. Not her
father’s little girl, not any longer. (Coetzee, Disgrace 105). Lucy, the ravaged white daughter of contemporary
Africa, was adamant not to violate her stance. She replies to her father’s
words of caution, ‘No. You keep misreading me. Guilt and salvation are
abstractions. I don’t act in terms of abstractions” (112). She was resolved and
resolute in her decision which, according to her, is the only gateway to
escape.
The writer in the negative viewpoint has shown the rapists who are none
but the products of colonial stigma, but that cannot always be taken for
granted since it may not be a disinterested endeavour from the part of Coetzee.
The sexual exploitation of the native women by the whites in the past, colonial
Africa is deep-rooted in the history of the blacks. Shreds of evidence in
history show that there were coloured concubines in Colonial Africa who were
invariably exploited by the white settlers. These white-perils or the secret
liaisons and sometimes plain sexual degradation of the whites are also having
an undertone in this novel. Therefore, the writer’s interest can be taken aback
because of his genuineness in this creation of racial experiences:
‘… Wait
until you have heard Petrus’s side of the story.’
‘But in
the meantime, the boy will disappear!’
‘He
won’t disappear. Petrus knows him. In any event, no one disappears in the
Eastern Cape. It’s not that kind of place.’ (Coetzee 133)
Though Petrus is a hard-working labourer, his interests and schemes are
not made open until the tragedy happened to his owner Lucy. That is why David
used to doubt him as ‘a plotter, a schemer, and no doubt a liar too … Honest
toil and honest cunning’ (117). He repeatedly says that Lucy will be safe here.
Nothing more will happen to her. Even though Lurie didn’t get the point at
first, but slowly Petrus reveals his intention to marry her. The native African
dog watcher Petrus is on a wait to gather power not to control the masters.
Here more than a desire in Lucy, his unquenching desire to rule a farm is more
evident. Petrus becomes the real-life figure in Post-colonial Africa, an
individual who faced an onslaught of crimes in the past, a real depiction of
colonial hangover. To be the ruler in one’s land is a dream that was about to
happen after the rape of Lucy by his ‘men’. Though the rapists could be
identified as hooligans during the act of violence, what prompted them to do
such a heinous crime should also be taken into consideration. Lurie understands
that crime is not just the aftermath of a mere lustful desire but something
more:
Halfway
home, Lucy, to his surprise, speaks. ‘It was so personal,’ she says. ‘It was done with such personal hatred. That
was what stunned me more than anything. The rest was expected. But why did they
hate me so? I had never set eyes on them.’
He
waits for more, but there is no more, for the moment. ‘It was history speaking
through them,’ he offers at last. ‘A history of wrong. Think of it that way, if
it helps. It may have seemed personal, but it wasn’t. It came down from the
ancestors.’ (Coetzee 156)
Centuries of labour at the hands of a foreign dictator can be the
resultant of this crime in the land of blacks. The violence over Lucy must be
made only based on her skin colour. Such a notion in a developed condition made
after the fall of dictatorial regimes should be studied in detail because this
is the problem of this century. No one is ready to be at the hands of others.
Vengeance is a fierce weapon to use after much suffering. The masters will come
to the state of servants, and the sage continues. Lucy’s words to her father
underline the need for personal hatred of the blacks over whites:
‘Hatred
… When it comes to men and sex, David, nothing surprises me anymore. Maybe, for
men, hating the woman has sex more exciting. You are a man, and you ought to
know. When you have sex with someone strange –when you trap her, hold her down,
get her under you, put all your weight on her – isn't it a bit like killing?
Pushing the knife in; exiting afterwards, leaving the body behind covered in
blood – doesn't it feel like murder, like getting away with murder?’(Coetzee
158)
The violence exerted by the rapists over Lucy is having drastic
similarities with that of the volunteering acceptance of David Lurie by his
student Melanie Issacs. When his daughter asks about the pleasure of seeking
adventures of men over women, especially women in a denigrated state, Lurie is
devoid of answers. This is a real drift in the character of a father to a
rapist of consequences. For some individuals, exhorting sadism and offensive
sex over women is a passion for which they yearn for years till the precise
occurrence of crime. The younger one Pollux was there to understand the duality
of humanity and to strive to achieve his pleasures vehemently. Their haste was
not of need, but to avenge somebody or something that they keep on their
mindset for years. This becomes a case like that of many ‘Nirbhayas’ in Indian
land where the contemporary generation of the young and the matured, day after
day, is trying to find out menial ways to overcome the tender skin of the
female.
Conclusion
David’s inability to help the young daughter is nothing but the
offspring of his negligence in the past. A dutiful Lurie might have been a
better answer whether in the university or the family. The tragedy of odds is
slowly diminishing the life of a professor into a shapeless man of bad
experiences. This afterthought directs Lurie to have a comeback once again at
the university premises. David Lurie meets Mr. Issacs, Melanie’s father in his
school and expresses his wish to meet Melanie. Her father’s words at the school
create real admiration in Lurie, and he says that Melanie is going on well with
her studies and theatre work. Furthermore, after that, he decides to meet
Melanie Issacs’ family. The gentle attitude of the family members over there and their invitation for dinner surprised
Lurie, and he was amazed at the rendition made by the soft and gentle
expressions on their face except for the little Desiree, Melanie’s younger
sister. ‘Wonderful is not right. Better would be exemplary’.
(171)
Coetzee is trying to negate the ideals of post-colonial advancements in
his overtly depicted decline of mutual appreciation among the societal members
in Africa. Moreover, this is not just the case of Africa alone when the
servants become masters, and the change can be healthy enough for the best and
for the worse in the contemporary world of transition seekers. The lack of
justification in which the whites uprooted the culture and identity of the
natives through the unruly acts of apartheid and colour bar is jotted down
here. David was gradually coming in terms with his new placement and was
astonished by Bev Shaw’s magical destination of cure and release. The affectionate
pacifier Bev Shaw was always engaged in helping living beings in a very
compassionate manner. This guidance and counselling centre, at times
voluntarily worked both as a chapel and cemetery for animals. Bev Shaw’s clinic
does not have a notice board barring an entrance to any living being:
This
bleak building is a place not of healing – her doctoring is too amateurish for
that – but of last resort . . . Bev Shaw, not a veterinarian but a priestess,
full of New Age mumbo jumbo, trying, absurdly, to lighten the load of Africa’s
suffering beasts. Lucy thought he would find her interesting. But Lucy is
wrong. Interesting is not the word. (Coetzee 84)
. The necessity of the contemporary world is to provide every single
being, the freedom to walk into the world of commoners. Every individual,
whether he or she, black or white should enjoy the mesmerizing journey called
life. We are not the centre, not even a trace of dust in this universe.
Prejudices of any kind should be done away with, to create a new world of
mutual respect and compassion. This awakening in David Lurie, enumerates the
spiritual transformation that he voluntarily accepts in the world of change.
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