【摘要】 库切的代表作《耻》一直得到了来自学术界的广泛关注。与以往的论文研究该作中《耻》的表现不同，本论文尝试揭示主人公通过救赎而表现出荣耀的一面。本文分为两方面：主人公对女儿的爱和自己对性的虚荣心的瓦解。
【关键词】《耻》库切 救赎
【Abstract】Disgrace, as the representative work of J.M. Coetzee, has received a lot of attention from the academic field. Different from analyzing the various forms of disgrace, this paper endeavors to discover the manifestation of grace reflected by the main character David"s salvation which involves his love towards Lucy, his daughter and the disappearance of his sexual vanity.
【Key words】Disgrace J.M. Coetzee Salvation
作者简介：杜海霞（1983―），女，河北保定人， 硕士研究生学历，新乡医学院外语系教师，助教，研究方向是英美文学。
郑艳丽（1982―），女，河南濮阳人，硕士研究生学历，新乡医学院外语系教师，助教，研究方向是英美文学。
In his sober, searing and even cynical little book “Disgrace,” J.M. Coetzee tells us something we all suspect and fear ―― that political change can do almost nothing to eliminate human misery. “Disgrace” is Coetzee"s first book to deal explicitly with post-apartheid South Africa, and the picture it paints is a cheerless one that will comfort no one, no matter what race, nationality or viewpoint. The various symbolic meanings of J.M. Coetzee’s representative novel Disgrace can be explored from different perspectives. Basing its analysis on the intensified racial problem in the post-apartheid South Africa, the present paper exposes the grace revealed by the main character David Lurie and his daughter Lucy and reveals the author’s sympathy for the human misery and his humanitarian concern for humankind. As the title suggests, the novel pervades with various kinds of disgrace, such as the fall of Lurie from professor to a dogman, the disgrace of rape of Lucy by three blacks, the disgrace of the challenged privileges of whites, the disgrace of the defeated colonial rule, the disgrace of euthanasia of animals, the disgrace of reversed role between the whites and blacks, disgrace of civilization. However, the present paper tries not to expose the manifestation of this disgrace, but try to analyze the evidence of grace which is achieved by the characters’ salvation. From the analysis of the grace, we can grasp the author’s humanitarian wish that hatred can not heal the scars left by the colonialism, only love can turn the world into a better one. The grace is manifested in two aspects, the salvation of David Lurie and Lucy. Of the two, the former is the main part in this paper.
To begin with, David’s love for Lucy makes himself get saved. At first, as we all know, David is a professor who divorced twice, has no warm family and only kills his time by sleeping with the whores. It seems that in this world there is no one he really cares about. Only when his affairs with his student is found out and he is expelled from the university he realizes that he has no place to go in this cruel and cold world where all people stand against him and despise the so-called professor. At last, David finds a refuge in his daughter’s farm. The reason why he chooses this place is not only out of its far distance from the scandal, but also out of his love toward his daughter, Lucy who refuses to live in the city according to her parents’ wish but chooses to live an independent life on a farm. Maybe they cannot get along with each other very well before, so this time David endeavors to keep a good relationship with his daughter just as the novel says,” He has stayed with his daughter only for brief periods before. Now he is sharing her house, her life. He has to be careful not allow old habits to creep back, the habit of a parent: putting a toilet roll on the spool, switching off lights, chasing the cat off the sofa. Practice fitting in. Practice for the old folks’ home. ”(p86) His love and concern for his daughter reach its climax when their house is robbed by three blacks who also rape Lucy. After this misfortune, he really shoulders the responsibilities as a father. First, he urges his daughter to call the police to tell the whole story including the disgrace of being raped. To get justice is his strong demand although Lucy does not do it as his wish. Before the robbery, David is ignorant of any farming and is reluctant to sweat in labor. He thinks that on this poor land exhausted, good only for goats, Lucy will not spend her whole life. He hopes it is only a phase. On the contrary, he feels responsible to help Lucy in every aspect of life when Lucy loses her former passion in life but looks indifferent, despondent after the attack. “this is how his days are spent on the farm. He helps Petrus clean up the irrigation system. He keeps the garden from going to ruin. He helps Bev Shaw at the clinic. He sweeps the floors, cooks the meals, does all the things that Lucy no longer does. He is busy from dawn to dusk. ”(p120)He fears that Lucy will be attacked once again, so he asks his daughter to leave for Holland. Lucy’s obstinacy prevents his effort to save his daughter. His longing for salvation is also shown by his sincere apology to Melanie’s parents when he is determined to be a good person. After a short stay in Cape Town, he returns for he is not prepared to abandon her. He is shocked to hear that her daughter gets pregnant and will marry Petrus, her once employer and maybe the complicity of the robbery, in order to seek protection and alliance. After his persuasion gets nowhere, he tries to accept the reality and stays there to protect her daughter. He decides to make a new start when he sees the beautiful scenery and her daughter work in the garden, “the wind drops. There is a moment of utter stillness which he would wish prolonged forever: the gentle sun, the stillness of midafternoon, bees busy in a field of flowers, and at the center of the picture a young woman, das ewig Weibliche, lightly pregnant, in a straw sunhat. ”(p218)Therefore, David Lurie saves himself through his love to his daughter.
Second, the salvation comes from David’s change of attitudes towards the animals. Lucy loves animals with whom human beings should share some privileges and live together in her point of view. Dogs are Lucy’s best friends and companions. After Lucy gets attacked, the first thing she wants to do is to know how are her dogs. But David holds the contrary views. The following lines can perfectly show his views towards animals, “as for animals, by all means let us be kind to them. But let us not lose perspectives. We are of a different order of creation from the animals. Not higher, necessarily, just different. ” (p74) here the readers can detect David’s attitude. It can also show the white’s superiority to the inferior blacks. He even does not like to do charity work to animals. He thinks it is admirable what Bev does, but to him, animal-welfare people are a bit like Christians of a certain kind. Everyone is so cheerful and well-intentioned that after a while their enthusiasm will die out. But later his attitude changes gradually. Because of the land transfer, Petrus will have a party. To entertain the guests, he tethers two goats waiting to be killed and cooked in that big day. David nurtures a kind of sympathy to the goats so that he even does not want to eat the mutton in the party. This is one of his most important steps to become more humane. At last, he helps Bev cure the animals, makes friends with the dogs, and later he transports the dogs’ corpses to the incinerator. He goes off to the Animal Welfare clinic as often as he can, offering himself for whatever jobs call for no skill: feeding, cleaning, mopping off. He gets more nervous and feels sad after witnessing so much death everyday. “the more killing he assists in, the more jittery he gets. One Sunday evening, driving home in Lucy’s kombi, he actually has to stop at the roadside to recover himself. Tears flow down his face that he cannot stop; his hands shake.”(p142)through the help in the clinic, he recovers his ability to love, not only human beings, but animals. When the workmen begin to beat the bags with the backs of their shovels before loading them, to break the dead dogs’ limbs, he intervenes and takes over the job himself. Because he is reluctant to see the dogs’ corpses be tortured like that. He thinks that there are other people to do the things, the animal welfare thing, the social rehabilitation thing, the Byron thing. He saves the honor of corpses because there is no one willing to do it. Moreover, he plays the banjo to his dogs who sits up, cocks its head, listens. He thinks the dog will die for him. So there is a harmonious picture between human beings and the animals. Through all this transformation, we can see the author is advocating love and equality to make this world more beautiful.
Furthermore, David achieves his salvation through breaking his vanity in sexuality. At first, the readers can see David lives a double life, a konwlegeable professor in appearance admired by all; a despicable old lovelace who even covets on his young student to satisfy his sexual desire. Although being divorced twice and a man of fifty-two, he is confident in his appearance and his charm, just as the novel says,”the company of women made of him a lover of women and to an extent, a womanizer. With his height, his good bones, his divine skin, his flowing hair, he could always count on a degree of magnetism. If he looked at a woman in a certain way, with a certain intent, she would return his look, he could rely on that. That was the backbone of his life. ” (p7)From his relation with Soraya to his student Melanie Issacs, the readers can see the domination of whites over blacks. David gets satisfied with conquering women in sexuality. His superiority is fully manifested in his affairs with Melanie. Melanie is so young that she can be her daughter and is inexperienced in sex. At first, she strong resists David’s temptation, but David forces her to sleep with him. When Melanie asks why he wants her to spend night with him, he says,” because a woman’s beauty does not belong to her alone. It is a part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it.”(p16) In his eyes, the beauty of a woman can not exist alone. Woman should be subordinated by man. These lines can also show his strong sexual desire. When the journalist asks him whether he regrets what he did, he says no, because he is enriched by the experience. How strong his vanity in sexuality is! After he is expelled from the college and moves to the village, where there is no attractive woman in his eye, and he is far from temptation, Bev tends to be the only woman with who he can have sexual intercourse, but he discovers no appealing aspect in her. The following is the description about her, “her hair is a mass of little curls. The veins on her ears are visible as a filigree of red and purple. The veins of her nose too. And then a chin that comes straight out of her chest, like a pouter pigeon’s. As an ensemble, remarkably unattractive.” (p81) As the misfortune and shock follow one by one, David experiences a kind of awakening that his sexual vanity is suppressed and his attention shifts to care about her daughter and the animals. This vanity is finally crashed when he chooses to have sex with Bev. He does not expect that Bev will take the initiative to invite him to the clinic, and prepare all the things needed. She bathes herself, makes up a little bit and prepares for two carpets, a contraceptive. He does not like Bev at all, but he makes it. What is in his mind about this process goes like this, ”of this congress he can at least say that he does his duty. Without passion but without distaste either. So that in the end Bev can feel pleased with herself.”(p150) in a word, David does not really enjoy this process. He also reminds him not to forget this day. After the sweet flesh of Melanie Issacs, this is what he has come to. This is what he will have to get used to. This thought is the compromise with reality and a way to get salvation which can be regarded as a kind of grace.
On the one hand, grace is reflected by the transformation of David from these aspects; on the other hand, grace is also shown by Lucy’s attitude toward the robbery and her pregnancy. She refuses his father’s suggestion of departing but thinks that leaving means accepting failure. She says this is the price for staying on. The robbers can be seen as the debt-collectors, tax collectors. She has to face the reality and accepts what has happened. Then thinking the baby in Lucy’s womb, David considers that it is the seed of hatred and disgrace, so Lucy will not let it come into the world. However, Lucy is determined to give birth to this baby, no matter who is this baby’s father. She believes that love will grow and she can be a good mother. Here also expresses the author’s wish that hatred will not go anywhere, and only love and tolerance can create a beautiful and harmonious Africa.
To sum up, in this novel full of the themes of disgrace, grace occupies a more important position. J.M. Coetzee, as a humanitarian writer, reveals the intensified racial conflicts during this transitional period through his work which expresses his meditation on the problems in the process of social change and his great concern about the human living condition. In this novel, he transcends the common conflicts between blacks and whites, but focuses on the matter about how all human beings, no matter the color, race, nationality, religion, can live happily and harmoniously without any hatred and disgrace.
Works Cited
［1］ 蔡云, 《析J.M库切小说耻中超越种族的生存困惑》. 兰州大学学报，2006
［2］ 董学文，《西方文学理论史》. 北京：北京大学出版社，2005
［3］ Coetzee, J.M. Disgrace, London: Vintage Books, 2000