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Chapter 13
Themes
Key
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
Shame, Remorse, and Vanity
Violence and Empathy
Love and Support
Time and Change
Summary
Analysis
The next day, Ettinger calls and tells David they can borrow one of his guns until they get their own, and David says they’ll think about the offer. Though he recognizes that Lucy should take certain measures to protect herself and her property, he knows she disapproves of such things, since she is in love with the “old” rural lifestyle—a lifestyle that is apparently “doomed.” That day, Petrus comes back from wherever he was at the time of the attack. When David sees him working outside, he strides over to him and talks about the attack, trying to see what he knows, though Petrus says very little about the matter. Instead of discussing the incident, Petrus turns his attention to whether or not Lucy will go to the market that Saturday, pointing out that she might lose her stall if she doesn’t attend.
Since apartheid ended in South Africa, there has been a significant amount of conflict between white and black people. In rural areas like the Eastern Cape, there are more black people than white people, and some whites fear for their lives, afraid that their neighbors will attack them because of the country’s fraught history. David, it seems, is one of these people, clearly unsettled by the shifting racial dynamics of post-apartheid South Africa, though Lucy appears not to share this sentiment. David’s guarded attitude comes through when he decides to question Petrus, clearly suspicious of him because he is black and because he was absent on the day of the attack. David’s struggle to accept change—particularly the shuffling of power dynamics—again comes to the forefront of the novel.
Themes
Because Lucy doesn’t want to go to the market, David goes with Petrus. Throughout the day, Petrus says nothing about where he was during the attack, and David begins to suspect that he knew it was going to happen. “In the old days one could have had it out with Petrus,” Coetzee writes. “In the old days one could have had it out to the extent of losing one’s temper and sending him packing and hiring someone in his place.” Now, though, this isn’t an option, since Petrus isn’t only “hired help,” but more of a neighbor. Indeed, Petrus just happens to “sell his labor,” but that’s not the reason he lives on Lucy’s land, which is soon to be his land, too. And though David is inclined to like him, he senses that Petrus “has a vision of the future in which people like Lucy have no place.”
David’s discomfort with the idea of change in South Africa is quite apparent, as he bristles against the fact that things are no longer like they were “in the old days.” Of course, it’s somewhat reasonable to be suspicious of Petrus, since he seems so tight-lipped when it comes to the attack, but David’s frustration in this scene has subtle overtones of racism, since he’s upset that he can’t exercise the unchecked power over black people that would have been available to him as a white man during apartheid.
Themes
