Significance of the Dog in J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace - Book Report/Review Example

Significance of the Dog in J.M. Coetzees ‘Disgrace’ Order No. 533779 One of the most controversial and challenging novels is Coetzee’s ‘Disgrace’ that oozes with various implications making it rather difficult to understand. “Disgrace” by J.M. Coetzee was the 1999 Booker prize winner that revolved around the world of human and animal misery during the post-apartheid period. The author’s message is something that we tend to fear - that is any political change is not in a position to eliminate human misery. This is Coetzee’s first book that deals explicitly with South Africa’s post apartheid scenario, that paints a cheerless picture and comforts no one, no matter to which race or nationality they belong. Coetzee’s primary theme in ‘Disgrace’ revolves around a man who is broken down and reduced to almost nothing, but finally searches and finds a small speck of redemption by way of his acceptance of the realities of life and death. The protagonist in the story is Professor David Lurie and Coetzee’s notion of life with its harsh realities and brutal tyranny being replaced by brutal anarchy are reflected through his protagonist David in South Africa, a place filled with social and political conflicts. Coetzee’s scintillating novel makes use of a metaphorical device such as the use of different animals and in particular dogs to bring out the developments of his characters. Dogs play a stylistic role in this novel as it is portrayed as being a means of protection for the Whites. During his childhood, Coetzee’s mother created a great impact on him where dogs were concerned. It is her influence which was a major contributing factor for Coetzee to use dogs as the defining factor in his novel ‘Disgrace’. His mother often reflected on her past life which included the “walks with the dogs”. (48) She often told the young Coetzee about one of the most faithful dogs she once had, whose name was Kim, an Alsatian, and narrates how the dog had died in her arms. She tells him that she wanted a new Alsatian but since she was unable to get one she got a dog of another breed. This was the first dog in Coetzees life and he named it ‘Cossack’. But the poor dog died after eating something and suffering for a few days. Coetzee decides never to have another dog, if “this is how they must die” (50). David is a divorced, middle-aged scholar of Romantic poetry, who during the Mandela Era, became a victim of "the great rationalization". His university was replaced by a Technical University at Cape Town where he teaches lessons in “Communicative skills” that he finds rather useless and nonsensical. The dignity he has there, is short lived as he is caught having a relationship with one of his poetry students and is dismissed from the university. Coetzee describes him as “a mad old man sitting among the dogs singing to himself”; a man who invests his last savings into a pickup truck to pursue his work as a dog-undertaker. David further sinks in disgrace when he patronizes a prostitute and buys her gifts, but in the course of this relationship he becomes such a nonentity that she refuses to see him. He imagines her and her friends shuddering when they see him just as "as one shudders at a cockroach in a washbasin in the middle of the night". David contemplates asking his doctor to castrate him in the way one neuters a domestic animal. In Coetzee’s story this is the first reference made between human and animal existence. One of Coetzee’s striking techniques is to explore what it is to be human, which is deftly brought out through his characters by placing them in extreme and compelling situations. The protagonist David has to experience and endure physical torment and psychological abasement. He falls deep into disgrace and flees Cape Town to his daughter Lucy’s remote farm. Lucy hears his story and very matter- of- factly tells him, "This is the only life there is. Which we share with animals." This is another one of the comparisons made in this story between humans and animals. ‘Disgrace is all about David’s metaphysical journey from the Romantic type of love to the harsh realities of love and this is what makes it unsummarizable. These lessons are learned by David from life in and around his daughter Lucy’s farm. Coetzee’s fictional work is further highlighted by the beautiful South African countryside that plays an allegorical role as it portrays a destructive as well as a regenerative environment. David is a pitiable figure who gets reduced time and again to an animal existence and this finally leads to his becoming a caretaker for dying animals. His unrealized dream and ambition of writing the chamber opera based on Byron’s life in Italy remains unquenched. This problem gets manifested in his dealings with others. For example, when he is dealing with the judges about his liaison with the pretty Melanie, his language is filled with arrogance and doesn’t seem to be very trustworthy. For example, he tells the judges about his relationship with Melanie - "I was no longer a fifty-year-old divorcee at a loose end. I became a servant of Eros."  Even at the tail end of the story, David states that the language that is used by him and the others has become "tired, friable, eaten from the inside as if by termites" and though he is an expert practitioner, he feels hollow "like a fly-casing in a spider-web."  When David has to face an academic tribunal due to his affair with one of the students, he does not try to resist in any way nor defend himself against the sexual harassment charges. However, after much discussion about it, he blurts out a casual apology which does not convince the tribunal who asks if his feelings are sincere and from the heart. Lucy his daughter is a lesbian herself and has had her share of trauma and tyranny. Both she and David have been discarded and abandoned by the world. Both of them become victims of criminal assaults and suffer a great deal because of it. Referring to her existence Lucy states that she would not want “to come back in another existence and be a dog or a pig” but by the end of the novel, she resolves to “live like a dog”. Lucy has a close neighbor called Petrus, an African farmer whom he refers to as “dog man” whose association with them was both troublesome and ambiguous. But when he is able to buy himself land in South Africa he declares that he is a “dog man no more”. David who goes to live with his daughter Lucy, volunteers to take up a job with Lucy’s friend Bev who is in charge of a local veterinary. However, David soon realizes that the primary role played by Bev in this impoverished place, was not to heal animals for the sickness but to kill them with a lot of mercy and love. The tyranny and outrages that are meted out to him and his daughter cannot be measured. No one cares about them and he gets no response whatsoever from the police for his angry demands of justice. He is well aware that Petrus is apparently harboring and protecting one of the assailants, but when he attempts to confront them, he is met with a stony silence and a pack of bare-faced lies. Lucy, understands the situation in a more mature way than David. She realizes that they are living in such a place where they have to tolerate humiliation and callousness and continue their way through life. She tells her father, "Perhaps that is what I must learn to accept, to start at ground level. With nothing ... No cards, no weapons, no property, no rights, no dignity ... Like a dog." According to her a dog’s life is the lowest life one can be brought down to. By the end of the story “Disgrace”, David tries to reclaim some of the lost dignity by accepting things as they are and giving up much more than a dog could ever give up. He gives up his wonderful dream of the opera for Byron, his language, his thoughts and ideas on justice and the also gives up the animals that he so selflessly loved and cared for without any reservations or thoughts about himself. References “Disgrace” by J.M. Coetzee www.salon.com/books/review/1999/11/05/coetzee The Stylistic Purpose of animals….. www.hockeyarenas.com/disgrace.htm Read More