Hover And Scream-Coetzee’s Writing On Spiritual Predicaments In Disgrace

Coetzee once said that if there was ever a story that he writes, it would be a storyof a man fighting with his predicaments.We are born to be free, and we are destined to be in predicaments. It is like aprison: it limits our freedom, and tortures our soul. All through Coetzee’s novels, wesee prisons, various kinds of them: prisons of solitude, of moral and of identity,especially in his novel Disgrace. Standing before the prison, we choose either toworry, to be mad, to resist, or to give up hope and gradually falls into the abyss ofunconsciousness.Predicament is a common status of living, and a mere realization of its existence,can resolves lots of affliction in life. This thesis, with the help of many brilliant mindsin philosophical history, analyses Coetzee’s writing on spiritual predicaments, theircause, their specific writing under Coetzee’s pen, and how the hero deals with them,successfully or not, and what we can draw from them.The first chapter of the thesis lays the foundation for the whole discussion. It firstdefines the term Predicament in a theological sense. It mainly refers to a situation thatfrom time to time could be shared by all individuals. In the situation, we keepthinking upon an issue, balancing all elements of two sides that is indeed quiteequivalent with one another. The situation of how the two sides weigh upon oneanother is influential. It determines our strategy and final solution to the puzzle, insummary; they could all be described as the battle between the limitations of thesurrounding environment and feelings of the inner self. The former could behistorically caused and the latter innately born with.The following parts expands the topic of predicaments, pointing to three mainpredicaments in Disgrace, namely the prison of inter-personal relationship, or rather,the prison of solitude, which is caused by human nature; the prison of moral, which iscaused by the standard of moral, the criteria for right and wrong of the majority; theprison of identity, which is mostly due to historical reason that none of us couldescape.In Chapter Two, which focuses on predicament of solitude, the thesis argues, asCoetzee argues, every person is like an isolated island on the vast sea of no-man’s land. Our solitude is destined, partly due to the impossibility that two individualscould reach a thorough communication, partly due to the obscure concept of solitude.Since if none of us ever has the experience of being no-solitude (because as justmentioned, thorough communication being not possible, thus thorough no-solitude isneither possible), how could we tell there really exist such a state of solitude. A moresound understanding could be drawn from an evolutional point of view, which is thesense of solitude is just a signal that signs you should build connections with thecommunity now, thus human are united, or at least has an opportunity to be united,thus we won’t be eaten by bigger animals individually; as hungry tells us you needsome food, thus we won’t be starved to death.In Chapter Three, which focuses on predicament of moral, the thesis argues thatmoral obligation is like a social contract, which is not a new idea, but this moralobligation only considers the benefits of the majority, or due to certain historicalreasons, of the powered, and neglected those of minority and power-deprived, likedisabled, mentally, physically, or historically. Once the moral was elevated, becomingthe social standard, it starts to rule over all the people, all the places, within all thecircumstances. Part of the situations inevitably cripple the moral as a mere play by thebook, for example, when the hand that play the book is the hand of the powered, itwas called hypocrisy.In Chapter Four, which focuses on predicament of identity, the thesis argues thatfrom a social evolutionary point of view, the inclination that people like to form aparty greatly enhanced people’s living and production, as least at the very beginning.This aspect is deeply connected with the predicament of solitude, that is, we humanseither stays in the prison of solitude or could choose to jump to the prison of identity.The greatest tangle that prison of identity has done to us is that it bounded ourimagination and narrowed our mind. Many conflicts, between the west and the east,blacks and whites are due to identity, identity of the region connotation, identity ofcolor connotation. Moreover, the thesis believes that only through the abandoning ofidentity, or rather the flatting of identity, can the human beings should united as avillage of earth.