Vage Sympathy toward Animals in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (Published)
This report tends to focus on human-animal relationship by discussing how subversively the protagonist, David Lurie’s attitude toward animals changes, and how his attitude reflects life and ecological philosophy in Disgrace, which presents the chaos and complicated phenomena in South Africa society involving male-female, father-daughter, white-black, city-country, and human-animal relationship. Referring to life philosophy, there is no option but submission in living beings’ route to death. In other words, there is no apparent difference between the existence of animals and human beings especially when facing formidable or unavoidable external forces. Through writing materials concerning animals as creatures abjectly suffering from pain, captivity and death at the hands of humans, Coetzee provides readers space to imagine how animal beings might feel at the moment of torture instead of delectation. However, transition of David’s attitude toward animals from indifference to solicitude, and from solicitude to euthanasia elucidates how animal living and dying could be looked upon in human society and logic of ethic.
Keywords: Disgrace, Eco-criticism, Ethic, J.M. Coetzee, Philosophy, Sympathy
Sympathy, Hospitality and Love in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pick Up (Review Completed - Accepted)
This paper sets out to discuss the extent to which the trinity of sympathy, hospitality and love are interwoven in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pick Up. To be sure, this postliberation novel is a stunning tribute to what Arthur Schopenhauer calls “loving-kindness” which encompasses respect for ‘otherness’ and rejection of intolerance in any shape or form. As a one-time antiapartheid activist driven by her unflinching belief in deep-dyed liberal values, Nadine Gordimer reminds us through the casting of her lead characters, to wit Julie and Abdu, that human action must always be tinged with a measure of compassion and acceptance of diversity, or else the ravages of egoism and absence of empathy will doom us. This powerful work of fiction, indeed, teaches us that it is only through the steady exercise of compassion that one can carry out one’s responsibility for the ‘other’
Keywords: Hospitality, Liberalism, Love, Otherness, Sympathy