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3. The application of American School into novels
By looking at theme, at least there are two similar themes that we can found in both
novels. They are suffering and hate. Hate is a theme that runs, sometimes bubbling quietly
under the surface, and other times bursting forth with full force. In
Disgrace, it is not unusual
for characters to either feel or outright demonstrate hatred towards others. In some instances,
it is restrained – think of the scene in which Mr. Isaacs accosts David at the University, when
David secretly wants to throttle Petrus, or when David regards the women of the committee
hearing with secret dislike. In other moments, it is overt, like when David tries to beat the
stuffing out of Pollux. Hate, however, isn't just something that characters feel toward others;
sometimes characters who don't obviously demonstrate feelings of hate feel hated. Lucy is a
prime example; she reports feeling hate radiating toward her from the men who rape her, but
she doesn't talk about feeling the same way towards them.
“I a a s ck an… I a a sp teful an. I a an unattract ve an." These are the
opening words of
Notes from the Underground, and indeed the Underground Man lives in a
constant state of misdirected and paralyzing spite. His plight, he explains, is worsened by the
fact that an intelligent man of consciousness cannot alleviate his spite through revenge; he is
so conscious and so intelligent that he raises doubt after doubt until he is paralyzed in
inaction. So instead, the Underground Man harbors his spite underground – even for the most
trivial offenses – for decades.
Everyone suffers in some way in
Disgrace, and suffering takes place in a number of
forms. Multiple examples of physical suffering pop up through the book: the goat with the
infected scrotum at the animal clinic bleats in pain (we know, ew); David withstands being
knocked out and set on fire; the dogs in the kennel are viciously executed, except for one that
just lies there bleeding to death and waiting to die. These are all disturbing examples of
physical suffering, but it's also important to think about the role that emotional and mental
suffering plays in the novel; it seems that nobody escapes without some serious psychological
wounds. While we don't witness Lucy's rape firsthand, we see how it changes her into a mere
shadow of her former self who patters around the house and refuses to see people. David's
own worries about Lucy constitute a major source of suffering for him. These, of course, are
just a couple of examples of how suffering afflicts the mind as much as it does the body.
In
Notes from the Underground, the Underground man argues that suffering is
enjoyable – even a toothache. The pleasure, he says, comes when you are intensely conscious
of your pain, adding that it's enjoyable to make others suffer with you. Suffering is necessary,
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he continues, because it leads to consciousness. The two notions – suffering and consciousness
– have a complicated relationship in the text, each necessitating the other and making the
other possible. For this reason, man will never give up suffering, since man needs to be
conscious and have his free will. He will even purposely cause himself pain to prove that he's
free to do so.
Like many of J.M. Coetzee's novels,
Disgrace takes place in his native South Africa, a
country that for many years was ruled under a system of racial segregation called Apartheid.
Apartheid, which in Afrikaans means "separateness," was a system held in place from 1948
until 1994. It was official policy under which the rights of blacks were severely limited and
under which whites, though the minority in terms of numbers, were in charge. Under
Apartheid, blacks were not even considered to be legal citizens of South Africa, and they were
forced to attend separate schools, go to separate hospitals, and receive separate public services.
When blacks were deprived of their citizenship, they were divided into self-governing tribes
called Bantustans.
Disgrace takes place only several years after the end of Apartheid, and as a result,
knowing a little bit about the geography and systems of Apartheid are really helpful in
understanding the undertones of this book. The novel begins in the far Western reaches of
South Africa in Cape Town, where David is a professor at the University. Cape Town was
generally considered to be part of "white" South Africa during Apartheid. In Disgrace, we see it
as being more developed and cosmopolitan. When David leaves to go to live with Lucy in
Salem, he's headed to a completely different part of the country: the Eastern Cape, which was
long considered to be part of "black" South Africa and where the Bantustans were established.
It is similar with the social setting of
Notes from the Underground where that times
that Russia in the transition in being civilized by adopting the European culture. That was
Dostoevsky's time/place context for writing this work, but it's also the time and place in which
the Underground Man is set
. Notes from Underground is set in the city of St. Petersburg (now
Leningrad) in nineteenth-century Russia. Unlike other cities of Europe, it has no long history
since it was only established at the beginning of the eighteenth century by Peter the Great.
Built to be the seat of government, St. Petersburg was designed as an impressive city. It was
laid out with symmetrical streets, and Italian and French architects produced magnificent
palaces to be built there. By the nineteenth century, the time of the novel, St. Petersburg had
become a bustling city on the Gulf of Finland. Turgenev, Chernyshevsky, the Crystal Palace,
rational egoism, socialism, the fall of the feudal system – these all compose the setting for
Notes and the intellectual environment to which the Underground Man is responding.
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