Treatment of animals in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace

Abstract

J.M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace exposes the moral issues of animal rights and their ethical treatment. This article questions the portrayal of animals as significant characters in the novel, as real as their human counterparts, whose intelligence and faculties of having morals or having a soul, reveals similar emotions shared by humans and animals, such as suffering, sacrifice and grief and looks into the possibilities of human redemption through service to animals. It is in this way that the novel allows David Lurie, the protagonist, who had fallen to disgrace, to regain his moral legitimacy without being ‘reformed’ as he finds his place among the dogs, whose dignity in death he protects. Thus the animal is used here as a medium which by its innocence, displaces guilt in the protagonist and helps him achieve a state of equilibrium.