【103-2 第一名】應外四 侯〇君：Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee

Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee 

參賽者：侯〇君（應外四）
名次：第一名
書名：Disgrace
得獎作品：

     Disgrace is a story about changes, from the social structure to the human relationship. In the beginning of the story, we could find the narrator, David, a college teacher in South Africa, who was incapable of caring about people, or loving people. After he resigned because of one affair with his own student, he moved to live with his daughter, Lucy. However, David had never known this would cause an unexpected change in their father-daughter relationship.

     Lucy was strong and independent, living alone in her smallholding in a remote town. She was surprised when her father moving in with her, and she did not believe he came to compensate her for the lack of fatherly love. David could not accept the fact that South Africa is undergoing a transformation; however, Lucy could and she adapted pretty well. This discrepancy broadened their difference and distance, and it got even more difficult for them to be together after the violent robbery and rape happened on them one day. David blamed himself because he could not protect his daughter well; he was only a weak scholar without defensive power. What’s more, David blamed those black robbers even harder. He kept asking Lucy to leave this town so that those black robbers would never haunt her again. Strangely, Lucy said no to her father’s proposition. She insisted on living here, and refusing to point out the suspect found in their black neighbor Petrus’ house.

     If we associated the time background of the story, we may easily have the clues of the reason why Lucy made up her decision like that. Since the story was about post-apartheid South Africa, the social order changed, and the white people were never the one who dominated power. Therefore, if Lucy wanted to find her subjectivity in this changing era, the only thing she could do was to seek the shelter from a black man, like Petrus, and that explained why she then married Petrus after her pregnancy. This action truly destroyed David’s thoughts, and made him change too. He started to reflect on the world he had known, trying to accept Lucy’s idea. Sadly, the efforts were useless, but only made them far away from each other.

     At the end of the story, David got inspiration from the play he was working on, and perhaps, after his self-reflection backing Cape Town, he realized he could always give it a try, giving Lucy and him a second chance. Maybe this is the power of the post-apartheid South Africa, where there is no fixed ideas, but all the possibilities of changing everything. For David, the affair is a disgrace, a shame and guilt, but a chance for him to go on the journey of change, while for Lucy, her disgrace is the rape, a pain, but the reason why she could blend into the society, for the baby had the black father.

     Reading Disgrace is not easy, but it is definitely worth reading. It discussed many issues, and people have various aspects to examine this novel. However, that’s the reason why it is an everlasting masterpiece.