The Alienation Of Afrikaners In Disgrace

John Maxwell Coetzee ranks among the most prominent and influential writers in contemporary South Africa.Disgrace depicts the postcolonial story between the white and the native in post-apartheid Africa.This novel renders him great reputation around the global.This thesis articulates the alienation of Afrikaners' life through social alienation and interpersonal alienation as well as self-alienation from the perspective of Erich Fromm's alienation theory,with the aim of rethinking of the postcolonial history and focusing on the living predicaments of Afrikaners in post-apartheid time.The thesis primarily explores the social alienation in Disgrace,which reflects the relationship between man and society is alienated.It illustrates the social alienation from two aspects: the sickness of south Africa,and the aftermath of social transformation,hence it reveals that the lives of characters are largely affected by the social environment.Subsequently,the thesis proceeds to the interpersonal alienation while the Afrikaners are confronted with four different relations: lack of conversation between father and daughter,distorted love between man and woman and alienation between white and black,as well as Afrikaners are outsiders in community,with the purport of revealing that Afrikaners are estranged and they are not accepted both by the English white people and the native black.Eventually,the thesis focuses on the self-alienation,which is exemplified through the process of two main characters' self-alienation: David's disgrace driven by desire and Lucy's conformity and helplessness.Thus,Afrikaners are falling prey to the alienation and they are reduced to “homeless” people in the South Africa.