Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Disgrace, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Desire and Power
Shame, Remorse, and Vanity
Violence and Empathy
Love and Support
Time and Change
Summary
Analysis
Lucy returns with Ettinger in his truck, which they use to take David to the hospital for his burns. When they arrive, David is surprised that Lucy isn’t going to wait. Instead, she’s headed to the police station to report the stolen items, and it becomes clear that she has no intention of letting law enforcement know what the three men did to her. When David emerges hours later with a skullcap-bandage and a patch over one of his eyes, Bill Shaw is there to pick him up. David apologizes for inconveniencing him, but Bill says, “What else are friends for? You would have done the same.” This statement astounds David, prompting him to consider the nature of friendship, since he knows that he wouldn’t have waited for hours to pick up Bill from the hospital if the circumstances were reversed.
A selfish man himself, David doesn’t know how to respond when Bill Shaw shows him kindness based on a relationship David wouldn’t even categorize as a friendship. After all, David has already decided that Bev and Bill Shaw are people he’s completely uninterested in associating with. As such, he’s thoroughly surprised to see Bill’s willingness to support him in this difficult time—something he is quite unaccustomed to.
Themes
David and Lucy spend the night at Bill and Bev’s. To David’s dismay, Lucy remains unwilling to speak about what happened to her. In the middle of the night, he has a dream that she’s calling for him, but when he enters her room, she only tells him to go back to bed. The next morning, David tries to get information out of Bev about Lucy’s condition, but it’s clear Bev doesn’t think David could possibly understand. Finally, in a conversation with David, Lucy tells him that she has seen a doctor. “And is he taking care of all eventualities?” David asks, and Lucy says, “How can a doctor take care of all eventualities? Have some sense!” She then informs them that they need to return to the farm, and though he insists that it’s unsafe, she points out that it has always been dangerous.
When David first came to Lucy’s farm, she was the one supporting him through a difficult period. Now, though, their roles have reversed, except Lucy doesn’t want him to do anything to help her. However, David has a hard time keeping his distance, as he’s too worried about his daughter to leave her alone. It’s also possible that his concern has to do with the fact that he now feels even more guilty about what he did to Melanie, though neither he nor Coetzee states this explicitly. His attempts to check in on Lucy fall flat, since there isn’t much he can say to change what happened to her. This is also why she points out that a doctor couldn’t possibly “take care of all eventualities,” essentially saying that, although a doctor can attend to her medically, the main problems she faces now have to do with emotional trauma.
Themes
