In the new South Africa, violence is unleashed in new ways, and Lurie and his daughter become victims, yet the main character is no hero; on the contrary, he commits violence in his own way as is clearly seen in Lurie's disregard for the feelings of his student as he manipulates her into having sexual relations with him. This characterization of violence by both the 'white' and the 'black' man parallels feelings in post-apartheid South Africa where evil does not belong to the 'other' alone. By resisting the relegation of each group into positive and negative poles Coetzee portrays the whole range of human capabilities and emotions.
The novel takes its inspiration from South Africa's contemporary social and political conflict, and offers a bleak look at a country in transition. This theme of transition is represented in various forms throughout the novel, in David's loss of authority, loss of sexuality and in the change in power dynamics of groups that were once solely dominant or subordinate.[11]
Sarah Ruden suggests that:
As in all of his mature novels, Coetzee here deals with the theme of exploitation. His favorite approach has been to explore the innocuous-seeming use of another person to fill one's gentler emotional needs.[12]
This is a story of both regional and universal significance. The central character is a confusing person, at once an intellectual snob who is contemptuous of others and also a person who commits outrageous mistakes. His story is also local; he is a white South African male in a world where such men no longer hold the power they once did. He is forced to rethink his entire world at an age when he believes he is too old to change and, in fact, should have a right not to.[13] This theme, about the challenges of aging both on an individual and societal level, leads to a line, "No country, this, for old men", an ironic reference to the opening line of the W. B. Yeats poem, "Sailing to Byzantium". Furthermore, Lurie calls his preference for younger women a "right of desire", a quote taken up by South African writer André Brink for his novel "The Rights of Desire".
By the end of the novel, though, Lurie seems to mature beyond his exploitative view of women. In recognizing the right of Lucy to choose her course in life, he finally puts "their strained relationship on a more equal footing" — the first time in his relationships with women.[14] His pursuit of a sexual relationship with Bev Shaw also marks something of a path toward personal salvation, "by annihilating his sexual vanity and his sense of superiority."[15]
This is Coetzee's second book (after Life and Times of Michael K) where man is broken down almost to nothing before he finds some tiny measure of redemption in his forced acceptance of the realities of life and death.[16] Coetzee has always situated his characters in extreme situations that compel them to explore what it means to be human.[17] Though the novel is sparse in style, it covers a number of topics: personal shame, the subjugation of women, a changing country, and romantic poetry and its allegory and symbolism.[18]
Another important theme in the novel is the difficulty or impossibility of communication and the limits of language. Although Lurie teaches communications at Cape Town Technical University and is a scholar of poetry, language often fails him. Coetzee writes:
Although he devotes hours of each day to his new discipline, he finds its first premise, as enunciated in the Communications 101 handbook, preposterous: 'Human society has created language in order that we may communicate our thoughts, feelings, and intentions to each other.' His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origins of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul.[19]
A film adaptation of Disgrace starring John Malkovich had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2008, where it won the International Critics' Award.
