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Chapter 21
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
David stays in touch with Lucy over the phone, but something about their conversations bothers him, so he calls Bev and asks if Lucy’s doing all right. Not wanting to reveal too much, Bev says there have been “developments,” so David returns to the farm. After discovering that Petrus has put up a fence between his and Lucy’s property, David sits down with his daughter and asks if she’s okay, and she reveals that she’s pregnant. “You mean you didn’t take care of it?” he asks, and she says, “I have taken care. I have taken every reasonable care short of what you are hinting at. But I am not having an abortion. That is something I am not prepared to go through with again.” When she says this, David learns that his daughter has been pregnant before—something he was previously unaware of.
It's worth keeping in mind that for the past three chapters Coetzee has showcased David’s lack of remorse regarding what he did to Melanie. Now, though, he once again puts David in a situation that requires him to be empathetic, kind, and supportive. In this way, the author tests David, ultimately inviting readers to watch how, exactly, he will handle the idea of Lucy having one of her rapists’ babies.
Themes
Lucy says that she didn’t tell David about her pregnancy sooner because she didn’t want him to “erupt” like he often does, making everything about himself. Taken aback, David tries to be reasonable, merely saying that he’s “shock[ed]” but that he will support her however he can. Later, after he has moved back into her old room, Lucy comes in and tells him that the boy who was at Petrus’s party has returned. His name is Pollux, she explains, and he is living with Petrus. Apparently, Pollux is Petrus’s brother-in-law and has dropped out of school. Lucy says that the boy seems to have “something wrong with him,” but she can’t force him off the land because it’s no longer her property.
To his credit, David takes the news of Lucy’s pregnancy rather well. This might be because Lucy points out that he often “erupts,” thereby encouraging him to take a moment to gather himself before saying something he can’t take back. However, it will clearly be harder for him to keep his cool than he’d like, since she also tells him that Pollux is living right next door. Lucy suggests that Pollux has some kind of mental disability, and she even seems to sympathize with him despite what he did to her.
Themes
The next day, David once again speaks with Petrus, this time lamenting the fact that Petrus lied to him about not knowing Pollux. Now, though, Petrus doesn’t pretend to be friendly, instead saying that he’s simply protecting his “people” in the same way that David is trying to protect Lucy. He also says that the matter is behind them, though David forces him to admit this isn’t the case. In response, Petrus says he will marry Lucy, instructing David to relay the offer to his daughter. When David says that Lucy is uninterested in marriage, Petrus says, “But here, it is dangerous, too dangerous. A woman must be marry.”
Again, Petrus is a difficult character to understand. He’s protecting one of Lucy’s attackers and helping him get away with a terrible crime, but this is also simply an attempt to help his own family—the same thing David is trying to do. What’s more, if Pollux truly does have a cognitive disability, it makes all the more sense why Petrus would want to protect him from the law, though of course there is no good excuse for sexual violence. Petrus’s offer to marry Lucy might seem strange at first, but it actually makes sense under the circumstances, since Petrus is right that this is one of the only things he can do to truly protect her from future attacks if she insists on staying at the farm.
Themes
To David’s great surprise, Lucy is unfazed when she hears about this conversation, saying that Petrus has been “hint[ing]” about marriage for a while. To calm her father down, Lucy tries to show him the benefits of this possibility, saying that what Petrus is offering is nothing more than a “deal,” under which she would provide land and he would provide “protection.” Unwilling to accept this, David insists that this is blackmail, but Lucy ignores him and tells him to return to Petrus and tell him that she has agreed to his proposal as long as she can retain ownership of the farmhouse. “No one enters this house without my permission,” she says. “Including him.” Scarcely believing his ears, David says that this is “humiliating,” and Lucy agrees, but she adds that this point of humiliation might be a good place from which “to start again.”
Unlike David, Lucy looks at Petrus’s marriage proposal in an objective manner, weighing the pros and cons and determining that it is one of the only ways she can stay on the land. For David, though, this is an absurd idea, since he’s still having trouble adjusting to the idea that a white person has to fear land ownership in South Africa in the first place. As such, readers once again see that Lucy and David have different relationships to how their country is changing. Whereas David’s vision of South African life remains rooted in the past, when white people held the majority of the power, Lucy accepts and lives within the contemporary post-apartheid framework.
Themes
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