Disgrace

All of the characters in the story Disgrace, are disgraced. Sometimes through extraordinary circumstances, sometimes as the result of an everyday action, sometimes just because they are human.

This story kept me thinking for a while. What did the author mean? What are the allegories? Symbolisms? Messages? What did he want to say? At first I thought it was the age-old mantra: No fate is worse than death, disgrace is a part of life, live through because life still beautiful. Nice and calming and idyllic, although the story itself is not.

But now I think again about it, I see something more in it. Every character in the story is disgraced - no, every human character is disgraced. Without their disgrace, the characters would be nothing. Ah, then, this is it: Disgrace is a unique and necessary human condition.

Because disgrace can be anything. It can be an old man trying to seduce a young girl. It can be the same old man forcing his way on the girl, it can be the girl who did not resist. It can be a rape, it can be the father of the raped girl who could not protect her. It can be having an affair, it could be physical disfigurement. It can be a mother of two who has a side-job as a high class prostitute.

Disgrace, it seems, is everywhere. All parties of an act have their shame, their disgrace, and there is no escaping from this as long as one is still human.


To be human is to live with disgrace, much like the fate of so many dogs in the story was to be hugged by a person who gives them a full and warm attention, calmed, then injected. Their fate was to be among so many of them. There is nothing that they can do, or the person who loves them the most. This is the inescapable fate.

Alternatives are also suggested in the book, however. Be an animal, or live like an animal. The racist point of view is bitter, not because it is racist and I'm a racistist (which in my humble opinion, almost but slightly less as bad), but because my heart goes to my South African friends.

Information on the book:
Author: J. M. Coetzee, a Nobel Prize laureate in Literature, a Man-Booker prize winner for Life & Times of Michael K.

Title: Disgrace
First published in 1999, written originally in English.