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Chance Wolfe

Dr. David Colon

Global Research

04/26/15

Animal Salvation and Human Improvement

Abstract: In his novel Disgrace (1999), J.M Coetzee’s

characters’ have uncanny ties with the animals that

they interact with. There is a certain humanity of

animals and animality of humans that takes place within

this novel. In this research paper, I will use

anthropological, philosophical, sociocultural, and

historical data to investigate the constructed notions

of “human-animal relationships” as they are reflected

and implicated in Disgrace. The goal of this research

paper is to grasp a better understanding as to what

purpose does the presence of animals serve in respect

to the characters’

In the scientific field, the study of human-animal

relationships is referred to as anthrozoology, which is in

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short, aimed to grasp a better understanding of the

paradoxical relationships between humans and nonhuman

animals. Similarly, in literature, human-animal

relationships are created to note various aspects of social

behavior, cognitive and social capacities of defining

characters’ in novels. For example, the classic novel Animal

Farm written by George Orwell is a satire based off of

tyrannical governments and the dreary perils of Russian

Communism. Orwell replaces real life people with animals

and, changes the communists’ idealistic dreams to an

animals’ idealistic dreams, all with the intention to help

the audience notice how corrupt and cynical the history and

rhetoric of the Russian Revolution was. Understanding the

relationships between humans and animals leads way to

understanding a characters’ development and the writers’

intentions throughout a novel. The relationship between

humans and animals’ in Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee represents

the characters’ social, ethical and moral transformations

throughout the novel by the usage of literary techniques

such as symbolism, allegory and parallelism. The alterations

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of characters’, internally and externally, can be seen

through the their interactions and dialogue with each other

and, also with their animal counterparts.

J.M. Coetzee is no stranger to the presence of human-

animal relationships; in fact, “for the last decade and a

half, Coetzee has increasingly turned his attention to how

moral inequities play out in the realm of anthrozoological

relations” (Malamud 212). His novel, The Lives of Animals,

speaks adamantly about the need for a change in

consciousness in human attitudes and practices regarding

animals as it brought to light “our systematic abuse and

killing of animals on a massive scale” (Wolfe 124). So, it

comes to no surprise that the protagonist in Disgrace finds

himself working in an animal refuge, otherwise referred to

as The Animal Welfare League. David Lurie’s initial beliefs

and emotional capacity regarding animals at the beginning of

the novel can be summed up by his response to Bev Shaw, “a

fanatic lover of friendless animals” (Moore 464), regarding

his stance on animals: “Do I like animals? I eat them, so I

suppose I must like them, some parts of them” (Coetzee 81).

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In the most obvious and superficial way, the commencing

dialogue between Lurie and Shaw is one of Lurie’s distaste

in Shaw and, Shaw’s intrigue in Lurie.

It is often through the use of dialogue, that a reader

comes to understand the conflict, theme, resolution and

character personalities’ in a novel. As noted above, at

first the dialogue between Lurie and Shaw in the animal

welfare building is consumed by tension and misunderstanding

however, this hostile behavior begins to lose its sting when

these two characters begin to interact with a dog. The

presence of this dog, placed right in the middle of Lurie

and Shaw, is actually causing Lurie speak to and develop an

acquaintance with Shaw; something he would have despised

doing during his time as a professor. In Ernest Hemingway’s

story Hills Like Elephants, that is completely written almost

entirely in dialogue, the two protagonists’ relationship

issues begin to unfold only after the couple remarks on the

hills in the distance looking like white elephants.

Similarly, the relationship between Lurie and Shaw only

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begins to develop beyond superficiality once there is a dog

present in the room with them. As readers, we would not have

understood the initial relationship between Lurie and Shaw

if Coetzee would not have gravitated the two characters

dialogue towards their admiration, or lack there of, of

animals.

When they first meet, Lurie uses nothing but cruel words

when describing Shaw’s physical appearance however; in

almost an instant, Lurie begins “to his own surprise..

trying to comfort” (Coetzee 83) Shaw when she must give a

suffering dog back to his owner, sealing his cruel fate.

After Lurie’s initial feeling of superiority toward Shaw

fads, Lurie “gradually finds himself humbled by pathos and

tender feelings toward the dogs” (Fromm 343) in the animal

welfare center and, he extends this compassion towards Shaw.

Lurie has to actively try not to sentimentalize Shaw but he

is consistently asking himself how someone like her could

have it in them to kill all those animals. A part of Lurie

wants to revert back to the man of his past, where there

were no animal concerns, when he wants to hold on to and,

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“not dismiss the possibility that at the deepest level Bev

Shaw may not be a liberating angel but a devil, the beneath

her show of compassion may hide a heart as leathery as a

butcher’s” (Coetzee 144). However, the Lurie of the present

finds that more time he spends with Shaw in that animal

welfare shelter, the more “he has to stop at the roadside to

recover himself. Tears flow down his face that he cannot

stop” (Coetzee 143).

It is easy to look at Bev Shaw in a similar light to

Lurie’s perception. Coetzee usually sneaks in an animal

rights activist, or close there to, in his novels. In fact,

in each chapter of his novel Elizabeth Costello, a lesson is given

by Costello, the protagonist and animal rights activist,

regarding cruelty to animals in one way or another;

Converging Convictions: Coetzee and His Characters on Animals, written by

Peter Singer, is actually an essay that “considers the

question of whether the character of Elizabeth Costello

speaks for J.M. Coetzee himself” (Malamud 214). A lesson on

the importance of animal rights can also be seen throughout

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Disgrace through Bev Shaw, another one of Coetzee’s animal

rights activists. Shaw essentially creates a relationship

with every single animal before she has to kill it, thinking

“the good thoughts that [Bev Shaw] thinks” (Coetzee 143).

She believes that if the animal senses you’re calm and

caring, “[Bev Shaw] strokes them and kisses them if they

will let her” (Coetzee 143), they won’t be scared resulting

in a more peaceful end. There has been research done that

has tried to specify the process by which human beings,

especially ones who create special bonds with animals like

Bev Shaw, understand the animal’s perspective, otherwise

known as “kinesthetic empathy.” K. Shapiro explains

understanding the animal’s perspective in a three step

model: “He suggests that a “mixed” methodology, using

knowledge about the individual animal’s history and the

animal’s social construction of particular social types to

“critically temper and inform” empathetic understanding of

the animal’s postures, movements, and use of space. He

contends, since humans share with animals an awareness and

intelligence based on respective bodily movement, giving

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humans and nonhuman animals an “embodied consciousness”

regarding our shared ways of knowing the world through

movement” (Arluke and Sanders 383). For the people that have

a greater understanding for and relationship with animals,

accomplishing all the understandings in this three-step

process is quick. Shaw exhibits that she indeed understands

an animal’s perspective and, furthermore, establishes

“kinesthetic empathy” every time she puts an animal down.

How could Lurie not be quizzical about Shaw- the sweet,

animal loving, caring- neighbor of Lucy’s?

The answer, in short, was that Lurie was quizzical

about her but, at the same time he was also intrigued and

fascinated by the way Shaw treated every single animal that

walked into her shelter’s doors. Reluctantly, volunteering

the local animal shelter, "playing right-hand man to a woman

who specializes in sterilization and euthanasia” (Coetzee

72), led to Shaw’s influence on Lurie: “Do you know why my

daughter sent me to you?... She told me you were in trouble”

(Coetzee 85). Shaw had an active role in helping Lurie grow

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as a person throughout Disgrace and even though Lurie may not

realize it, his morals and ethics are changing from

criticism to compassion. Shaw certainly did not do this

alone; she had the help of animals to help motivate Lurie’s

transformation. Here, Lurie and Shaw’s relationship is what

Agustin Fuentes in her article, The Humanity of Animals and the

Animality of Humans: A View from Biological Anthropology, refers to as

personhood. Fuentes suggests, through anthropological

research, that personhood is derived from “the commonality

between humans and some other animals arising from..

recognition of shared interpretation” because of a similar

“environmental and social stimuli” (126). To grasp a better

understanding of the notion personhood, I tried to look at

the human-animal relationships between Shaw, Lurie and the

animals’ that they interact with, in a kind of absurd

parallel: it is almost as if Lurie, Shaw and the animals are

in love triangle and, not the lust love but the kind of love

Shaw gives to animals before she has to kill them. Lurie’s

personality and his relationship with Shaw seem to evolve

virtually alongside their continuous and expansive

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interactions with animals; the deeper Lurie gets into the

relationships with both Shaw and animals, the more we see

his moral and ethics altering. In this instance, Coetzee

uses his animals in Disgrace, as a symbol for Shaw and

Lurie’s relationship, Shaw’s influence on Lurie and, Lurie’s

changes.

However, Bev Shaw was not the only person that

influenced David Lurie to change his perspective on this, in

fact, Shaw was not even the most significant influencer; it

was his daughter Lucy. We will observe that, Lucy and

Lurie’s relationship and dialogue vary dramatically compared

to the previous relationship just mentioned between Shaw and

Lurie and, their conversations together and, this is large

in part due to the importance dogs play in Lucy’s life. Just

as “our relationships with other animals are complex”

(Fuentes 128) so can our relationships between our fathers.

Upon Lurie’s arrival Lucy gives him a tour of her farm

grounds and, one of the first comments Lurie makes to his

daughter is about Lucy’s boarding kennel. Now, considering

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that this scene unfolds in the earlier pages of the novel,

the reader can assume that his comment to Lucy probably

harbored mounds of satire: “And cats? Don’t you take cats”

(Coetzee 61)? In this comment, Lurie is poking fun of Lucy’s

love for animals, comparing her to a naïve young child and,

he is also referring to his own disapproval of his

daughter’s simple natured lifestyle. At this very point in

Disgrace, we can very obviously see that nothing has changed

yet morally, ethically or socially for Lurie. It is also

important to note that at this time in the book Lurie has

not yet really interacted with an animal. Thus far, he has

only seen them from a distance or complete ignored them.

Similarly, as far as the reader can gather from this point,

Lucy seems to have proper morals and ethics. Lucy’s response

to her father’s comment does not share the same cynical

rhetoric: “Don’t laugh. I’m thinking of branching into cats.

I’m just not set up for them yet” (Coetzee 61); Lucy seems

to portray a personality with qualities that her father

could not hold a mirror up to. When the reader is introduced

to Lucy we can immediately get the sense that her father and

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her are nothing a like. Their beginning conversations are

short and directive. Lurie doesn’t seem to hide his

displeasure and unease with Lucy’s living situations, both

to which Lucy answers: “There are the dogs. Dogs still mean

something. The more dogs the more deterrence,” and “Dogs and

a Gun” (Coetzee 60).

Clearly, Lucy’s interactions with animals is filled

with tender love and care while her father still can’t get

over the fact that his daughter watches dogs as an

occupation, he almost finds it humorous, and it is extremely

evident that Lucy holds her relationship with the dogs on

her farm in high-regard; she might even depend more from

them than they do to her. The dogs on Lucy’s farm are

simultaneously double as her protection and her income and,

all though Lurie seems to ridicule Lucy’s dependence on her

dogs at first- outwardly showing his annoyance and

frustration about the dogs towards Lucy when one wakes him

up at night- Lucy shows noting put respect and safekeeping

to her canines. Disgrace, a hint at the fact the Lucy may have

been living alone in that house far longer that she led

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Lurie to believe. Assuming that’s the case then, Lucy

probably has a far closer relationship with her dogs, they

are not just her protectors and business expenditures but

they are also her friends:

As with other close relationships, the linkage between

the person and the animal companion has a significant

impact on the self-identity of the human partner. To

the extent that human-animal interactions proceed more

or less smoothly and rewardingly, the person

incorporates certain positive elements (responsible,

knowledgeable, etc.) into his or her self-definition.

Since, as discussed next, a person commonly defines his

or her relationship with a companion animal as a form

of friendship, routine interactional experiences within

this close relationship have special salience for the

person’s self-identity and general level of relational

satisfaction (Sanders 114).

Coetzee even gives some of Lucy’s kennel dogs’ specific

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names, recognizable personalities and human mannerisms,

like Katy the bulldog. Further emphasizing the symbolic

importance of animals in Disgrace. And, we soon come to

find that Lucy’s dogs’ weren’t just symbolic in

respects to their humanistic qualities regarding their

relationship with Lucy. Coetzee also employs the dogs

to represent the statuses of different people in the

Post-Apartheid society and their personal disgrace.

I hate to say this but there is some irony behind the

words Lucy and Lurie exchange on their walk together on that

very particular Wednesday with two Dobermans. Lurie begins

the dialogue with referring to the Kenilworth, Lucy’s

childhood neighbor, and their dog “Dimly,” however; he goes

off on a bit of a tangent, saying that every time the bitch

would get near Dimly and he got excited his owners would

beat him and, in time this caused Dimly to run around crazy

every time a bitch was near him. “I don’t see the point,

says Lucy. And indeed, what is the point?”

There was something so ignoble in the spectacle

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that I despaired. One can punish a dog, it seems

to me, for an offence like chewing a slipper. A

dog will accept the justice of that: a beating for

a chewing. But desire is another story. No animal

will accept the justice of being punished for the

following instincts.

“So males must be allowed to follow their

instincts unchecked? Is that the moral?”

No, that is not the moral. What was ignoble about

the Kenilworth spectacle was that the poor dog had

begun to hate its own nature. It no longer needed

to be beaten. It was ready to punish itself. At

the point it would have been better to shoot it

(Coetzee 90)

In fact, this conversation between Lurie and

Lucy is ironic on two fronts. For one, as I have just

previously mentioned, Lucy treats the dogs that live on

her farm with the upmost and highest regard and;

although Lurie doesn’t understand what relationships’

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with animals’ really means yet (at this point he hasn’t

learned from Bev Shaw), he should have had more

consideration for his daughter and her love for dogs

before he began.

Here we see dogs in both demeanors, they are best

buddies to Lucy but filthy creatures to Lurie. Humans

are often referred to as dogs in works of literature

when they are being disgraced or looked down upon

which, is a direct juxtaposition to how Coetzee feels

about animal rights’ and their relations to humans.

Coetzee’s novel Waiting for the Barbarians, refers to a man

that loses everything and finds himself on the other

side of animality: “He becomes a filthy creature who

for a week licked his food odd the flagstones like a

dog because he had lost the use of his hands” (Mullin

203). In this example, dogs are comparable to the

lowest point of the man’s life as he begins to take on

the behavioral traits of a canine. The man believes the

position of these dogs are scum of the earth and, when

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he loses everything that is where he thinks he belongs,

as one with the dogs. Similarly, in Disgrace, Petrus

refers to himself as the “dog-man” when he first

introduces himself to Lurie; at this point in the novel

Petrus is on the lower end of the social ladder. Petrus

gives himself animalistic characterizations to emphasis

his lack of power and overall status in life, he also

views dogs’ with negative undertones. In Lurie’s

comment to Lucy, every man is given behavioral

qualities of a dog. He lowers all men down to the

status of a dog, not just himself and, he does so in

such a way that is offense to men of all kind and to

the nature of the dogs. In the negative light that both

Lurie and the man in Waiting for the Barbarians are shedding

on dogs, we can see that they are emphasizing the

notion that man is “both radically different from and

superior to all other creatures” (Mullin 204). However,

the ways in which we have noted that both Bev Shaw and

Lucy treat and care for animals is far superior in

terms human-animal relationships and, Coetzee shows

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this by paralleling the admirable characters’ in his

novels whom are animal lovers, to the criticized

characters’ in his novels whom so to think they are all

superior to not only just other creatures but other

humans as well. This type of allegory is effective when

we begin to see David’s transition from superior Alfa-

male to concerned and understanding dog shelter

employee.

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The conversation above, between Lurie and Lucy, is the

is the last instance where we see Lurie’s social, moral and

ethical codes, as well as his relationships with animals,

remain seemingly unchanged. The second ironic thing about

their conversation is the fact that what Lurie is trying to

touch upon, how male instinct is to act on his physical

desires and that’s just the way it is, almost goes hand in

hand with the attitudes of Lucy’s rapists: “Like these men,

Lurie is also a rapist” (Graham443). In just a mere matter

of minutes, Lucy and Lurie lives are completely altered and

we see their dialogue drastically altered from that point

on. Not only do these three men rap Lucy and physically

assault Lurie but also they mass murder Lucy’s protection,

income and companions, her dogs: “The remaining there dogs,

with nowhere to hid, retreat to the back of the pen, milling

about, whining softly. Taking his time between shots, the

man picks them off” (Coetzee 96). This leads the reader to

not only have sympathy for Lucy but also for the death of

her dogs and it is symbolic; with the loss of dogs we also

see a loss in Lucy. Something was taken from Lucy that day;

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no longer is she the free spirited farmer girl after the

incident, often reaming in her room, distancing herself from

having to speak with Lurie. Unfortunately, Lucy goes from

being a happy go lucky farm owner to a quiet, sulking and

distant victim. Her morals and ethics are crushed and taken

away from her by force to which she shies away from

confronting. Every time Lurie tries to comfort her and

converse with her about the attack Lucy “does not tell, she

remains resolutely about her experience” (Graham 435),

feeling that is her problem and hers alone to deal with and

not for Lurie to engage in on. Yet again, we see Lucy’s

actions and rhetoric towards he father paralleling with her

interactions with animals before and after she was raped.

Before she was raped, Lucy cherished and protected the dogs

she watched over, and one could infer that her dialogue

towards her farm animals was implemented with love. After

she is raped, “Lucy’s refusal to speak out about her

experiences” (Graham 442) to her father, mirrors her refusal

to care for her farm animals in the ways that she would have

in the past. It is here Lucy’s profound moral compass and

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ethical capacity disappears in her dialogue with Lurie and,

seemingly it is also the very place where her heart felt

treatment of animals disappears along with it.

As Lucy abandons her duties as caretaker for the dogs

on her farm, Lurie begins to do it for her; again, another

parallel is developed. Before Lucy is raped, Lurie is

judgmental and self-indulges in the humor he gains from Lucy

crating dogs as a part of her job and now, Lurie takes

comfort in caring for the surviving animals, especially the

pit bull Katy; after the attack Katy is given the human

persona of a limping and wounded victim, just as Lucy is.

This is where we begin to see Lurie’s perspectives

transform. For one, as a result of this crime Lurie develops

a greater “concern for Lucy’s body after she is raped”

(Graham 438) which parallels to Lurie’s increasing concern

for the bodies and over all well-beings of Lucy’s farm

animals and, contrasts with how he treated at home in

Eastern Cape. This is also around the same time his

relationship with Bev beings to evolve, as I have mentioned

earlier; because Lucy seems to be disinterested in seeking

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helping from her father, Lurie turns to Shaw to ask for her

advice. The concern Lurie has for his daughter mirrors the

concern Lurie begins to have for the animals on her farm and

in the welfare shelter. When Lurie witnesses Petrus, whom he

accuses was a component in the crime, treating his sheep

violently, Lurie can’t help but feel empathic for the

animals. This is something Lurie would never have developed

it were not for Shaw, Lucy, the animals and, his life

changing event; “he remembers Bev Shaw nuzzling the old

billy-goat with the ravaged testicles, stroking him,

comforting him, entering into his life” (Coetzee 126). As

Petrus climbs the social ladder after Lucy’s attack, “not

any more the dog-man” (Coetzee 69), the opposite seems to

happen for Lurie. From this point on in the novel the dogs

are used to help characterize his status, reflect his

personality and even his internal trials and tribulations.

As the novel goes on, Coetzee refers Lurie’s qualities, more

or less so, to that of a dogs while at the same time Lurie’s

morals and ethic are transforming, and he is becoming

someone that is a dog lover.

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J.M. Coetzee uses literary techniques such as

parallelism, symbolism and allegory, to identify to the

reader the importance that human-animal relationships plays’

in not only his novel Disgrace but in the bigger picture of

our lives. Unfortunately, for Lucy her parallelism is

resulted from her rape; after the incident Lucy not longer

cares and loves for the animals on her farm as she had in

the past. The animals’ were symbolic to Lucy’s carefree

sprit and, once she is raped and the dogs’ die so does her

compassion for animals. We see watch David Lurie go from a

conceded prick to a carrying individual, and one reason this

transformation happens id because of his newfound

relationship with animals. At the beginning, Lurie does not

really care one way or the other about animals however, by

then end of Disgrace, he appreciates his job at Shaw’s animal

welfare shelter: “He may not be their savior, the one for

whom they are not too many, but he is prepared to take care

of them once they are unable, utterly unable, to take care

of themselves” (Coetzee 146). Lurie’s job at the animal

shelter, the influence of Bev Shaw and Lucy’s rape, all are

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factors the contribute to Lurie’s growing love and

compassion towards the animals’ he comes in contact with; by

the end of Disgrace, David even kills a suffering dog himself,

seeing it as the humane thing to do. The characters’

transformations in Disgrace are made clear by their many

dialogue and interaction shifts, and by Coetzee’s use of

symbolism, allegory and parallelism; by the end Coetzee’s

writing style gravitates the reader towards Coetzee’s goal

regarding the importance of a caring relationships between

humans and animals.

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Investigating the Animal-Human Relationship and the

Perspective of Nonhuman Others.” The Sociological Quarterly

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Diala, Isidore. "Nadine Gordimer, J.M. Coetzee, and Andre

Brink: Guilt, Expiation, and the Reconciliation Process

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in Post-Apartheid South Africa." Journal of Modern Literature:

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People and Animals.” The Sewanee Review 109: 462-474.

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