#15 End of Disgrace
Finishing Disgrace I found it to be unapologetic and viscerally real in its language and descriptions. It is a journey about a severely flawed character caught in the middle of the imperfect world of post-aparteid South Africa. Told from David’s point of view made the novel just that much more interesting to the reader in that you had to interpret what was happening through Davids own skewed reality. The ending of Disgrace is a very open ended and symbolic conclusion. The reader is given any details about what happens to David, Lucy, or any other character. This creates an ambiguous, but in my opinion, astute ending to a very emotionally charged and moralistically complex book.
Lucy is resistant to David’s assertion for her to escape the harsh landscape that is South Africa to Holland. David was trying to save his daughter from the harsh realities in an attempt for her to get over the grave atrocities committed against her. This is another aspect of David and his journey of redemption with its sucess ending in question.
My favorite passage from the book is on p.219 a few paragraphs from the end.
“What the dog will not be able to work out, what his nose will not tell him, is how one can enter what seems to be an ordinary room, something unmentionable: here the soul is yanked out of the body; briefly it hangs about in the air, twisting and contorting, then it is sucked away and is gone. It will be beyond him, this room that is not a room but a hole where one leaks out of existence.”
This is a fantastic description of death and how it is inevitable and uncertain. Beautifully written and depressingly real.
