Disgrace

by

J. M. Coetzee

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Shame, Remorse, and Vanity Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Desire and Power Theme Icon
Shame, Remorse, and Vanity Theme Icon
Violence and Empathy Theme Icon
Love and Support Theme Icon
Time and Change Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Disgrace, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Shame, Remorse, and Vanity Theme Icon

As the title suggests, Disgrace is a novel that investigates shame and dishonor. Having had an illicit affair with Melanie, David is summoned to a disciplinary hearing, where he refuses to examine her allegations. Instead, he simply states that he’s guilty. In doing so, he avoids having to pore through her statement, effectively sidestepping the matter and making it easier for himself to dismiss his own immoral actions. When his colleagues press him to express a sense of genuine remorse, he only doubles down on his refusal, assuming an arrogant rhetorical stance and acting as if the entire matter is beneath him. With this, he keeps himself from having to face his own wrongdoings, acting like he’s too proud to humble himself with an apology. In turn, Coetzee illustrates the ways in which people sometimes use their own vanity and arrogance to avoid moral culpability and penitence.

From the very beginning of his disciplinary hearing, David assumes the posture of a vain man who doesn’t care what happens to him. “Vanity, he thinks, the dangerous vanity of the gambler; vanity and self-righteousness. He is going into this in the wrong spirit. But he does not care,” Coetzee writes. At first, it might seem rather ethical and selfless to approach a disciplinary hearing with this attitude, since David appears ready to accept punishment for his immoral behavior. However, it soon becomes clear that his “vanity” is a front he puts on in order to stay strong and resist the disciplinary committee. This becomes apparent when he subtly but callously disparages the entire hearing, pleading guilty without even glancing at Melanie’s written allegations. “Pass sentence, and let us get on with our lives,” he says, telling his colleagues that he’s sure they have “better things to do with their time than rehash” the details of this case. By saying this, he frames his transgression as insignificant and petty, something that isn’t even important enough to attract attention. As such, he undermines the disciplinary hearing, a move that enables him to see and present himself as a moral person who made a small mistake and is willing to face the consequences. In reality, though, his sexual manipulation of a young student is much more harmful and complicated than he’d like to admit.

The real reason David refuses to examine Melanie’s allegations is that he doesn’t want to confront the damage he has done. Farodia Rassool, for one, recognizes this, which is why she takes issue with his vague brand of repentance, saying, “I want to register an objection to these responses of Professor Lurie’s, which I regard as fundamentally evasive. Professor Lurie says he accepts the charges. Yet when we try to pin him down on what it is that he actually accepts, all we get is subtle mockery.” When Dr. Rassool says this, she draws attention to David’s unwillingness to closely examine the implications of what he has done, eventually pointing out that he makes “no mention of the pain he has caused” and “no mention of the long history of exploitation of which this is part.” Reluctantly, then, David agrees to apologize, saying, “I took advantage of my position vis-à-vis Ms. Isaacs. It was wrong, and I regret it. Is that good enough for you?” In response, Dr. Rassool says, “The question is not whether it is good enough for me, Professor Lurie, the question is whether it is good enough for you.” In this moment, she touches upon the true reason David is so reluctant to legitimately participate in this hearing. Indeed, it isn’t simply because of his vanity that he refuses to humble himself by issuing an apology, nor is it because of his conceited nature that he’s unwilling to review Melanie’s accusations—the real reason he won’t do these things is that both actions would force him to reckon with “the pain he has caused.”

The “question” of whether or not David’s remorse is “good enough” resurfaces later in the novel, when he visits Melanie’s family. Although he doesn’t say why he has come, Mr. Isaacs eventually understands that David is there for forgiveness, but this forgiveness has seemingly nothing to do with Isaacs himself and everything to do with David, who wants to be let off the hook. When Isaacs doesn’t give him the satisfaction he’s looking for, David runs into the house and bows down before Melanie’s mother and sister, humbling himself in front of them and asking himself, “Is that enough?” The mere fact that he asks himself this question suggests that what David’s after is a superficial kind of forgiveness, one that will save him from having to feel bad about his own actions. His display of humility is actually a self-centered attempt to escape guilt and shame.

In the disciplinary hearing, David belittles the punitive process in order to invalidate it, enabling himself to write off his punishment as petty and narrowminded. Shielding himself both from his own shame and from the committee’s power over him, he uses his vanity as an excuse for why he won’t humble himself before his peers. Similarly, he makes a grand display of shallow repentance when he’s at Mr. Isaacs’s home, thereby framing himself as some sort of martyr in order to stop feeling guilty about what he’s done. In this manner, Coetzee implies that excessive displays of pride and vanity are often used as masks to hide deeper insecurities, effectively enabling people to evade moral responsibility and ignore their own shortcomings.

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Shame, Remorse, and Vanity ThemeTracker

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Shame, Remorse, and Vanity Quotes in Disgrace

Below you will find the important quotes in Disgrace related to the theme of Shame, Remorse, and Vanity.
Chapter 3 Quotes

He takes her back to his house. On the living-room floor, to the sound of rain pattering against the windows, he makes love to her. Her body is clear, simple, in its way perfect; though she is passive throughout, he finds the act pleasurable, so pleasurable that from its climax he tumbles into blank oblivion.

Related Characters: David Lurie, Melanie Isaacs
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:

Not rape, not quite that, but undesired nevertheless, undesired to the core. As though she had decided to go slack, die within herself for the duration, like a rabbit when the jaws of the fox close on its neck. So that everything done to her might be done, as it were, far away.

Related Characters: David Lurie, Melanie Isaacs
Page Number: 23
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

Note that we are not asked to condemn this being with the mad heart, this being with whom there is some­ thing constitutionally wrong. On the contrary, we are invited to understand and sympathize. But there is a limit to sympa­thy. For though he lives among us, he is not one of us. He is ex­actly what he calls himself: a thing, that is, a monster. Finally, Byron will suggest, it will not be possible to love him, not in the deeper, more human sense of the word. He will be con­demned to solitude.

Related Characters: David Lurie (speaker), Melanie Isaacs, Ryan
Page Number: 31
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

Don’t expect sympathy from me, David, and don’t expect sympathy from anyone else either. No sympathy, no mercy, not in this day and age. Everyone’s hand will be against you, and why not? Really, how could you?

Related Characters: Rosalind (speaker), David Lurie, Melanie Isaacs
Page Number: 42
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

We are again going round in circles, Mr Chair. Yes, he says, he is guilty; but when we try to get specificity, all of a sudden it is not abuse of a young woman he is confessing to, just an impulse he could not resist, with no mention of the pain he has caused, no mention of the long history of exploitation of which this is part. That is why I say it is futile to go on debating with Professor Lurie. We must take his plea at face value and recommend accordingly.

Related Characters: Farodia Rassool (speaker), David Lurie, Melanie Isaacs
Page Number: 51
Explanation and Analysis:

‘Very well. I took advantage of my position vis-à-vis Ms Isaacs. It was wrong, and I regret it. Is that good enough for you?’

‘The question is not whether it is good enough for me, Professor Lurie, the question is whether it is good enough for you. Does it reflect your sincere feelings?’

He shakes his head. ‘I have said the words for you, now you want more, you want me to demonstrate their sincerity. That is preposterous. That is beyond the scope of the law. I have had enough. Let us go back to playing it by the book. I plead guilty. That is as far as I am prepared to go.’

Related Characters: David Lurie (speaker), Farodia Rassool (speaker), Melanie Isaacs
Page Number: 51
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

‘I’m dubious, Lucy. It sounds suspiciously like community service. It sounds like someone trying to make reparation for past misdeeds.’

‘As to your motives, David, I can assure you, the animals at the clinic won’t query them. They won’t ask and they won’t care.’

‘All right, I’ll do it. But only as long as I don’t have to become a better person. I am not prepared to be reformed. I want to go on being myself. I’ll do it on that basis.’

Related Characters: David Lurie (speaker), Lucy (speaker), Bev Shaw
Page Number: 75
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

‘My case rests on the rights of desire,’ he says. ‘On the god who makes even the small birds quiver.’

He sees himself in the girl’s flat, in her bedroom, with the rain pouring down outside and the heater in the corner giving off a smell of paraffin, kneeling over her, peeling off her clothes, while her arms flop like the arms of a dead person. I was a servant of Eros: that is what he wants to say, but does he have the effron­tery? It was a god who acted through me. What vanity! Yet not a lie, not entirely. In the whole wretched business there was some­thing generous that was doing its best to flower. If only he had known the time would be so short!

Related Characters: David Lurie (speaker), Lucy, Melanie Isaacs
Page Number: 87
Explanation and Analysis:

‘There was something so ignoble in the spectacle that I despaired. One can punish a dog, it seems to me, for an offence like chewing a slipper. A dog will accept the justice of that: a beating for a chewing. But desire is another story. No animal will accept the justice of being punished for following its instincts.’

‘So males must be allowed to follow their instincts unchecked? Is that the moral?’

‘No, that is not the moral. What was ignoble about the Kenilworth spectacle was that the poor dog had begun to hate its own nature. It no longer needed to be beaten. It was ready to punish itself. At that point it would have been better to shoot it.’

Related Characters: David Lurie (speaker), Lucy (speaker), Melanie Isaacs
Page Number: 88
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

The events of yesterday have shocked him to the depths. The trembling, the weakness are only the first and most superficial signs of that shock. He has a sense that, inside him, a vital organ has been bruised, abused—perhaps 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.

Related Characters: David Lurie
Page Number: 105
Explanation and Analysis:

She does not reply, and he does not press her, for the moment. But his thoughts go to the three intruders, the three invaders, men he will probably never lay eyes on again, yet forever part of his life now, and of his daughter’s. The men will watch the newspapers, listen to the gossip. They will read that they are being sought for robbery and assault and nothing else. It will dawn on them that over the body of the woman silence is being drawn like a blanket. Too ashamed, they will say to each other, too ashamed to tell, and they will chuckle luxuriously, recollecting their exploit. Is Lucy prepared to concede them that victory?

Related Characters: David Lurie, Lucy
Page Number: 108
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

Curious that a man as selfish as he should be offering himself to the service of dead dogs. There must be other, more productive ways of giving oneself to the world, or to an idea of the world. One could for instance work longer hours at the clinic. […] Even sitting down more purposefully with the Byron libretto might, at a pinch, be construed as a ser­vice to mankind.

But there are other people to do these things—the animal welfare thing, the social rehabilitation thing, even the Byron thing. He saves the honour of corpses because there is no one else stupid enough to do it. That is what he is becoming: stupid, daft, wrongheaded.

Related Characters: David Lurie, Bev Shaw
Related Symbols: The Opera
Page Number: 143
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

Let me not forget this day, he tells himself, lying beside her when they are spent. After the sweet young flesh of Melanie Isaacs, this is what I have come to. This is what I will have to get used to, this and even less than this.

‘It’s late,’ says Bev Shaw. ‘I must be going.’

He pushes the blanket aside and gets up, making no effort to hide himself. Let her gaze her fill on her Romeo, he thinks, on his bowed shoulders and skinny shanks. It is indeed late. […] At the door Bev presses herself against him a last time, rests her head on his chest. He lets her do it, as he has let her do everything she has felt a need to do. His thoughts go to Emma Bovary strutting before the mirror after her first big afternoon. I have a lover! I have a lover! sings Emma to herself. Well, let poor Bev Shaw go home and do some singing too. And let him stop calling her poor Bev Shaw. If she is poor, he is bankrupt.

Related Characters: Bev Shaw (speaker), David Lurie, Melanie Isaacs
Page Number: 147
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

One word more, then I am finished. It could have turned out differently, I believe, between the two of us, despite our ages. But there was something I failed to supply, something’—he hunts for the word—‘lyrical. I lack the lyrical. I manage love too well. Even when I burn I don’t sing, if you understand me. For which I am sorry. I am sorry for what I took your daughter through. You have a wonderful family. I apologize for the grief I have caused you and Mrs Isaacs. I ask for your pardon.

Related Characters: David Lurie (speaker), Melanie Isaacs, Mr. Isaacs
Page Number: 168
Explanation and Analysis:

‘So,’ says Isaacs, ‘at last you have apologized. I wondered when it was coming.’ He ponders. He has not taken his seat; now he begins to pace up and down. ‘You are sorry. You lacked the lyrical, you say. If you had had the lyrical, we would not be where we are today. But I say to myself, we are all sorry when we are found out. Then we are very sorry. The question is not, are we sorry? The question is, what lesson have we learned? The question is, what are we going to do now that we are sorry?’

Related Characters: Mr. Isaacs (speaker), David Lurie, Melanie Isaacs
Page Number: 168
Explanation and Analysis: