Disgrace

by

J. M. Coetzee

Disgrace: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
David and Melanie have sex one last time. It takes place in his daughter’s old bedroom, and as they get dressed afterwards, she asks him if he frequently sleeps with his students. In response, he uncomfortably insists that he doesn’t “collect women,” but she says, “Aren’t you collecting me?” Later that day, when he’s in his office, he receives a strange visitor. “So you are the professor,” the man says, sitting down with his leather jacket, leather pants, and “thin goatee.” When he tells David that Melanie has been talking about him, David asks what she has said, and the boy says, “That you fuck her.” As David tries to change the topic, the boy starts berating him, telling him that he can’t “just walk into people’s lives and walk out again.” He pushes the papers off David’s desk before storming out of the office.
When Melanie asks if David is “collecting” her, she touches upon his tendency to see women as nothing more than objects of desire. Similarly, the young man who visits him in his office takes issue with his self-centered decision to intrude upon Melanie’s life without stopping to truly think about the effect he will have on her. This young man’s presence is yet another sign—along with Melanie’s absences and her presence at his apartment—that there will be consequences for what David has done.
Themes
Desire and Power Theme Icon
Shame, Remorse, and Vanity Theme Icon
That night, David waits up late for Melanie, but she doesn’t appear. The next morning, he discovers that his car has been vandalized, the paint scratched, the tires slashed, and the locks jammed with glue. In the coming days, he sees nothing of Melanie, and when he enters class, the students fall silent, a sure sign that they’ve heard something is going on. Worse, the boy who visited his office is sitting next to Melanie. Not knowing what to do, David goes forward as planned, lecturing about Lord Byron. Whenever he asks a question, though, nobody offers an answer—nobody, that is, except the young man, who eventually responds to David’s question about “what kind of creature” Lucifer is. “He does what he feels like. He doesn’t care if it’s good or bad. He just does it,” the boy says.
It's significant that the boy answers David’s question about Lucifer, since his response can clearly be applied to David himself. Just like Lucifer, David “does what he feels like” without caring if “it’s good or bad.” It is because of this mentality that he has pursued Melanie, failing to think much about whether or not she desires him in return. In this moment, then, David has to face his own shortcomings while standing before his students and listening to this young man rebuke him.
Themes
Desire and Power Theme Icon
Shame, Remorse, and Vanity Theme Icon
Time and Change Theme Icon
Quotes
David ends class early and asks Melanie to accompany him to his office, where he closes the door before the young man can enter. “My dear,” he says, “you are going through a difficult time, I know that, and I don’t want to make it more difficult. But I must speak to you as a teacher. I have obligations to my students, all of them. What your friend does off campus is his own business. But I can’t have him disrupting my classes. Tell him that from me.” Going on, he tells her that she needs to focus more on her classwork and that she has to take the midterm exam she missed. In response, she tells him she can’t take the test because she hasn’t done the reading, so he says she can take it in his office the following Monday, which will give her time to study.
Once more, readers see how complicated David and Melanie’s relationship has become as a result of their sexual liaisons. The fact that David chooses this moment to inform Melanie that she has to take the midterm exam suggests that he wants to regain some sense of power. Having been humiliated in class by the young man—who is presumably Melanie’s boyfriend or ex-boyfriend—he now tries to reassert his authority. Given the circumstances, it would be fair to argue that he has no right to do this, since he’s the one who has transgressed and, thus, should be the one to pay the price. He tries to recapture his dominance anyway, proving that it’s important to him to feel powerful.
Themes
Desire and Power Theme Icon
Shame, Remorse, and Vanity Theme Icon