None to Accompany Me: Tracing the Role of Isolation in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace

Abstract

J.M. Coetzee has once described himself as a writer, working in the medium of a novel. Coetzee’s reputation as a serious and responsible writer is now largely uncontested, and there is enough room to evaluate his significance as a writer of extraordinary fiction in different ways. His Booker Prize creation Disgrace (1999) is a brilliant example of his literary supremacy. The present paper discusses isolation as a theme, with a focus on the characters of David Lurie and Lucy Lurie as well as explores the novel taking into consideration the position of its writer in the literary world. The discussion’s theoretical framework is based on the theory of existential isolation by Irwin D. Yalom and the theory of self-alienation propounded by Karen Horney. This paper is a tight scrutiny of the economic, political, social, and cultural conditions prevalent in South Africa, that contribute to individual and social isolation, making brokenness and helplessness the everyday state of being in the post-apartheid period.