Dogs Throughout Disgrace

Throughout the novel, the dogs on Lucy's farm play just as important role in the novel as the main human characters do.  The dogs gain their own presence throughout the novel and have their own reasons for being there.  Each dog helps to shape the characters and the story itself.  Lurie begins to see himself and understand himself, and the disgrace he is suffering through the eyes of the dogs.  "Perhaps that is what I must learn to accept. To start at ground level. With nothing. Not with nothing but. With nothing. No cards, no weapons, no property, no rights, no dignity...like a dog."(205)  Throughout the book, Lurie was always reaching for something.  Most of the time it came in the form of women and sex, but constantly he was reaching for something that essentially he couldn’t have, or was risking too much for.  He never simply lived, as the dogs and his daughter do and just experience life as it is.  The dogs, although are talked of as living disgraceful lives as well, “I don't want to come back in another existence as a dog or a pig and have to live as dogs or pigs live under us.”  It seems as though the dogs are placed in the novel to explain exactly what Coetzee wants to explain.  They play human attributes because they are their to show that we are constantly reaching and pulling ourselves into this, disgraceful life, where we dig holes trying to achieve everything we need that we cannot get out of.  They also show though, the different parts of society that we all pertain to.  A dying dog on its last leg “Its period of grace is almost over, soon it will have to submit to the needle.” (219) Disgrace is naturally apart of life, it comes over everyone, as it did Lurie.  Its learning when is the best time to bow out gracefully and admit defeat or wrong doing, that the dogs present throughout the novel.  Lurie finally putting the dog down, that is cripple and barely able to take care on its own, shows that he has come to understand this important part of life.