Shame, Anger, and Disgrace Theme Analysis

Disgraced explores how shame about core aspects of one’s identity can create lasting traumas. Amir Kapoor is a wealthy lawyer of Pakistani descent, and he lives in an upscale New York apartment with his beautiful wife Emily (who’s white). On the surface, it looks like Amir’s affluent lifestyle give him all he needs to be happy. The reader soon learns, however, that Amir feels pressured to suppress his cultural heritage, leading to frequent angry outbursts. He ultimately loses control and lashes out violently at Emily, ruining their marriage and leaving Amir alone and disgraced, as the play’s title suggests. Through this chain of events, the play highlights the harmful effects that shame can have on a person’s psyche—and the lasting damage that these feelings can cause.

Amir and his wife, Emily, lead a luxurious and materially wealthy lifestyle, which suggests that—at least on the surface—ethnic minorities like Amir are just as capable of success and happiness as white Americans. Amir is clearly well-off: he has a high-powered job as a lawyer, and he and Emily live in a lavish apartment in New York’s upscale Upper East Side neighborhood. The apartment has “High ceilings, parquet floors, crown molding. The works,” emphasizing how luxurious the Kapoors’ home life is. Amir also wears $600 shirts to work, and Amir and Emily enjoy expensive weekend trips to the Hamptons, further indicating that that they lead a luxurious, enjoyable lifestyle. On the surface, then, Amir’s lifestyle suggests that racial and/or religious minorities like Amir are able to be just as successful and happy as white Americans.

Despite the glossy veneer of Amir’s life, however, he feels traumatized by his Muslim background—and his efforts to suppress this part of himself make him unhappy. Amir tries to distance himself from his Muslim upbringing, even going so far as to renounce his faith—yet he struggles to fully rid himself of his ingrained cultural values. Notably, Amir dislikes how his family taught him to be hostile toward non-Muslim people. For example, Amir feels disturbed after admitting that despite his horror at the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he also felt proud that “we were winning.” He was taught to think of Islamist terrorists as fighting a war against Western cultures, and he’s ashamed to admit that some part of him intuitively roots for Muslims to win this so-called war, even though he condemns terrorist activities. Similarly, Amir hates that his mother raised him to be prejudiced against Jewish people, yet he often lapses into passive-aggressive comments about them himself. For example, Amir frequently stereotypes Jewish people (like his bosses at his law firm) as greedy, which is a common antisemitic trope. Amir also dislikes the way his mother encouraged derogatory attitudes toward white women, based on the Islamic idea that women shouldn’t expose their bodies in public. His mother believed that “White women have no self-respect” because “they think they have to take off their clothes to make people like them.” Amir tries to distance himself from that belief—but he worries that deep down, a part of him still thinks that way, which makes him feel ashamed. Amir also thinks that Islamic doctrine endorses wife-beating, though his wife Emily questions Amir’s interpretation. Despite their difference of opinion, Amir worries about having absorbed damaging ideas from his Muslim upbringing. He wants to suppress the hostile values toward non-Muslims and women that he learned growing up, but he struggles to do so because they run so deep. This makes him feel conflicted and shameful about his inability to fully progress past them, feelings that disrupt his otherwise comfortable, enjoyable life. 

Amir’s inner conflict about his Muslim heritage causes him to struggle emotionally: he has frequent outbursts that ultimately leave him alone and disgraced. Amir becomes irate whenever his wife Emily brings up Muslim culture, because he dislikes talking about Islam at all. He wants to suppress that part of his identity but struggles to get past it, and he’s unable to control his emotions when triggered by the subject. For example, Emily keeps pressuring Amir into helping a Muslim cleric, Imam Fareed, who’s been wrongfully accused of funding terrorist activity because he collected charity money for his community. But when Amir previously visited the cleric in prison, Imam Fareed only scolded Amir for not praying, which irritated Amir because it reminded him of the pressure he felt to comply with Islamic rituals growing up. Now, every time Emily brings up Imam Fareed, Amir grows terse and shuts down the conversation with comments like, “Can we stop talking about this?” He also starts to behave angrily, with actions like noisily “slamming around in the bedroom.” Then, at a tense dinner party, Emily and their friend Isaac berate Amir for his negative attitude about Islam. At the end of the dinner party, Amir also learns that Emily cheated on him with Isaac. In a moment of blind rage, Amir spits on Isaac, yells at Isaac’s wife Jory, and hits Emily. The stage directions read that Amir’s violence should convey “the discharge of a lifetime of discreetly building resentment.” This suggests that Amir is more prone to lashing out because he’s tried to repress a part of his identity for so long: every time Islam comes up, he grows more agitated, eventually snapping and lashing out at everybody. The play thus suggests that repressing part of one’s identity fuels shame and anger, which—if left unchecked—can result in disgraceful behavior.