Disgrace

by

J. M. Coetzee

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.

Desire and Power

In Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee scrutinizes the nature of human desire, specifically looking at the relationships between power and sexual yearnings. Because Disgrace is partly about a fifty-two-year-old professor who loses his job after sleeping with a student, it’s impossible to ignore the power dynamics at play in the novel, as Professor David Lurie uses his elevated position to manipulate twenty-year-old Melanie into having sex with him. David is drawn to the idea of being…

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Shame, Remorse, and Vanity

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…

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Violence and Empathy

Disgrace concerns itself with failures of empathy. When David forces himself on Melanie, he recognizes that his advances are “undesired,” but he continues anyway, exhibiting a troubling lack of compassion. In a similar but much more severe manner, the three men who rape Lucy do what they want to her without considering her humanity. These cases are quite different, since one is a blurrier instance of relational coercion and the other of sexual violence…

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Love and Support

In Disgrace, Coetzee spotlights the benefits and subtleties of interpersonal support. After David is publicly shamed in Cape Town for sleeping with Melanie, he travels to his daughter’s farm to temporarily escape his troubles. Unlike his ex-wife Rosalind, who upon hearing about the scandal calls him and admonishes him for what he’s done, Lucy doesn’t force David to talk about what happened with Melanie. Instead of prying him with questions, she casually…

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Time and Change

In many ways, Disgrace is a novel about a man who resists change. First of all, David has a strange relationship with the process of aging, which is evident in his fascination with sex. He uses sex as a way of maintaining his sense of youthfulness, ultimately trying to recapture his days as a handsome young ladies’ man. This tendency to live in the past also rears its head when he denounces the idea of…

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