Disgrace Chapter 19 Summary & Analysis

David goes to Melanie’s home in search of Mr. Isaacs, but Melanie’s little sister tells him he isn’t home yet, so David drives to the middle school were Isaacs is a principal. When he enters his office, he reintroduces himself and says, “If you don’t want to see me I’ll leave at once.” Isaacs tells him to have a seat. David explains that he resigned from the university, saying, “Since then I have been at a loose end. I was passing through George today, and I thought I might stop and speak to you.” This, he says, is because he wants to say “what is on [his] heart.” He says that his relationship with Melanie was not planned out, but rather an “adventure” that “men of a certain kind have,” adding that Melanie made him feel a sense of “fire.”

It isn’t clear what David hopes to achieve by visiting Mr. Isaacs. The fact that he talks about seeing Melanie as an “adventure” and about having a taste for “fire” suggests that he still doesn’t fully understand the fact that his actions negatively impacted her. Instead of thinking about what it would be like for Isaacs to hear his daughter’s abuser wax poetic about passion, David says whatever he wants. What’s most important to note about this scene, though, is the fact that he has sought Isaacs out at all. This suggests that he craves forgiveness. The only problem is that he focuses on justifying his actions rather than actually apologizing for what he’s done, making it hard for Isaacs to forgive him.

Active Themes

David goes on a brief tangent about the nature of “fire,” talking about how people used to “worship” it. Before long, Mr. Isaacs asks why David has come just to tell these “stories,” and David apologizes. He then asks after Melanie, and Isaacs tells him she has returned to school and is doing well “under the circumstances.” When Isaacs asks how David is doing and how he has been passing the time, David tells him he’s been staying with his daughter and that he’s working on a “sort of book.” “So,” Isaacs says after a moment, “how are the mighty fallen!” Then, when he asks David if there’s some other reason he came, David gets up to leave, claiming that he only wanted to ask after Melanie. Just before he departs, though, Isaacs invites him to dinner.

David tends to use abstraction to obscure certain matters. For instance, he speaks at length about “fire” and passion in order to minimize the fact that he sexually harassed Melanie, ultimately trying to frame it as a natural lapse of willpower instead of a moral failure. Isaacs is a compassionate man who apparently sees through David’s longwinded explanations, however, intuiting that there’s something bothering David that he can’t express. This, it seems, is why he invites him to dinner, demonstrating not only his capacity for forgiveness but also his willingness to give David an opportunity to properly atone for his actions.

Active Themes

At dinner that night, Melanie’s mother and sister are awkward and uncomfortable around David, but Mr. Isaacs is kind and welcoming. Throughout the meal, conversation is stiff, and at the end of the night—when he and Mr. Isaacs are alone—David insists that things could have “turned out differently” between Melanie and himself if he hadn’t “failed to supply” something “lyrical.” “I am sorry for what I took your daughter through. You have a wonderful family. I apologize for the grief I have caused you and Mrs Isaacs. I ask for your pardon,” he says, and Isaacs responds by saying, “So, at last you have apologized. I wondered when it was coming.” Isaacs then speaks about God, suggesting that David should find a way to get right with God in the aftermath of the pain he has caused.

The beginning of David’s apology seems no different than the vain and self-obsessed explanations he has already offered in his own defense. This is because he approaches the topic of sexual harassment in extremely abstract terms, saying that he could have built a successful relationship with Melanie if only he had been able to “supply” something “lyrical.” This kind of intellectual abstraction does nothing to make Mr. Isaacs feel better about what happened to his daughter, nor does it help him understand why David did what he did in the first place. However, David does manage to issue a genuine apology—the first time throughout the entire novel he expresses remorse for what he’s done.

Active Themes

Quotes

Having listened to Isaacs’s statement about God, David asks if he thinks it’s “enough for God” if he (David) lives “in disgrace without term,” and Isaacs says he doesn’t know. Isaacs also urges David to consider why he really came. With this, David decides that he doesn’t like Isaacs, and he advances further into the house, where he finds Melanie’s mother and sister behind a half-closed door. Seeing them both sitting on the edge of a bed, David gets on his knees and puts his forehead to the floor before them. “Is that enough?” he wonders. As he stands, he makes eye contact with both Melanie’s mother and sister, and feels a “current of desire” jump through him before he finally leaves.

In this moment, the remorse David has expressed no longer seems legitimate or authentic. He simply wants to do whatever is good “enough” to purge him of his wrongdoings. Isaacs recognizes that David has only come to apologize so that Melanie’s family will let him off the hook, not because he genuinely wants to change or show regret. In keeping with this, David kneels before Melanie’s mother and sister, a grand show of repentance that is ultimately rather vapid, since all he can think about is whether or not this simple act is “enough” to let him go on with his life. Furthermore, when he gets to his feet again, he feels the same “current of desire” that he felt in relation to Melanie, and though it’s not clear whether this is directed at Melanie’s young sister or her mother, it’s easy to see that he hasn’t actually changed much since sexually harassing Melanie in the first place.

Active Themes

Disgrace

J. M. Coetzee

Disgrace: Chapter 19 Summary & Analysis