Lucy-Not at all disgraced

How do you know that you have finished reading a good book?Because the book has won a Man Booker Prize award or a Pulitzer prize or something as vague as the word 'connecting'.Readers connect with characters and to incidents in the book and ultimately come to the climax-'This book is so me!'I will tell you my experience.I finished reading some eleven books this last one month and right after I finished reading Coetzee's Disgrace,I immediately knew,that I have read a great book.Yes,Yes it did win a Booker Prize,but then so,so many books receive one every year,but this book is beyond my imagination.To appreciate the book,one can interpret it from the protagonist's perspective-David Lurie,or from his daughter's-Lucy Lurie(as I did),or from both the perspectives.I don't want to say what this book is about,one can always Google it,but I will convey my readers of what made me feel that I am lucky enough to have read this book.To me,I shall say the story is feministic.Most people go by the trend and so now a days most people claim that they are staunch feminists.I never knew what feminism was for a long time but when I knew what it stood for,I knew that I have always been one and thus my favour goes to Lucy in this novel.Her role has been dynamic in it's way of subjugation and accepting no change,both outwardly.I call it dynamic for all the implicit games Coetzee has played with this character.If we think over it,Lucy is and has always been a round character.A lesbian,as her father interprets,and a string woman who finds no need of a man in her world to keep her going.Infact she does all the works of a peasant(generally associated with a male human),and prides herself on that,and later she does not stop from playing the peasant,carrying a child,due in a week.Yes one unfortunate incident does cause her enough harm-she is raped.But the twist comes when she lodges all complains with the cops like for instance about the stolen car and her shot and dead dogs but does not tell the police that she has been sexually assaulted.Just like her father,we the readers are duped because we think her act as something outrageously stupid,and in the first glance it really appears so.But this is exactly where this character shocks/surprises us and this is where we should start judging her motives and again,this is exactly where she becomes so interesting.Later in the story she gathers up the courage to tell her father that she refuses to tell him everything because that in a way will lead to her playing the minor role in the life of a man who would play the major role,something she thinks is against her own rules of being a strong woman,even if the major character comes as only a means to help her daughter.In this particular paragraph,we almost sense that Lucy is talking with Coetzee and complaining him about what Coetzee as man,like her father,might mistake and understand her to be.Yes,she has been raped but she does not refuse the child of the rapists,she does not think of an abortion for a second time in her life,but she decides to live with it.Why?Because that is perhaps the only way of how she can defeat the purpose of the rapists-by not submitting to the shame,but living that shame with a rare strength infront of one of those very criminals(Pollux),as her neighbour.Not only that,she wins our admiration further by coming to rescue Pollux from the hands of her father and her dog and sympathize with Pollux because she thinks him to be mentally ill,who needs care and help.Somewhere the readers feel betrayed because somewhere we think that Lucy has denied us the story of her horrible night,because she never for once talks about it and thus her judging Pollux might be a culmination of her own experience of that horrible night and also as a resident of her locality.She plays the role of a gentleman,in her ability to stop the two other men from fighting(I will rather refer it as women having a cat fight).She cannot deny the way she has been born as a woman with all the womanly shortcomings and defects but neither does she fail to acknowledge,her inner and greater capacities of being born as a woman and do not droop her pride infront of any of the male members as depicted by Coetzee in the novel.She wants to live her own life but does not want to discuss it with her father as to how she can or might live it.She feels shattered and dead,right after she is raped and that is only because she is a human but then she shows that amazing recovery and that indomitable spirit where she does not submit to her moral breakdown and where anything that does not kill you,makes you stronger',works for her.She accepts herself as a victim,who did not commit any crime.She was not wrong but was wronged by circumstances.She wants to forever live in her locality with her head up,instead of forsaking it as a nightmare.She,in the end is ready to make all sacrifices to survive in her chosen place and believes these sacrifices as just a mode of payment,one must be acquainted with,if one decides to live in a small farmer locality of South Africa.She,Lucy,comes out with no marks of DISGRACE,she comes out as a strong HERO-I will always admire.