J. M. Coetzee’s novel Disgrace abounds in similes and metaphors.

Let’s explore some similes first. We see them crop up constantly in this text, creating the impression that Coetzee is devoted to showing us exactly what something is, what it looks like, and what feelings it evokes for the protagonist.

Here's an example:

Intercourse between Soraya and himself must be, he imagines, rather like the copulation of snakes: lengthy, absorbed, but rather abstract, rather dry, even at its hottest (Chapter 1).

Above, the narrator draws a simile between the copulation of snakes and the sexual activities between the protagonist and Soraya. The simile gives us shudders, inviting us to understand that the connection between the narrator and the prostitute is a false, shallow, earthy connection, not a deeply emotional or romantic one.

Let’s see another simile:

The two little boys . . . playing quiet as shadows in a corner of the room . . . (Chapter 1).

Above, the narrator is speaking abstractly, showing how “Soraya” has two sons of her own, sons who enter the protagonist’s mind while playing “quiet as shadows.” What an eerie comparison!

Here’s another simile:

[The prostitutes] tell stories, they laugh, but they shudder too, as one shudders at a cockroach in a washbasin in the middle of the night (Chapter 1).

Notice above how the simile is signaled by the word “as.” We’re invited to think of story-swapping among the prostitutes as something amusing yet disgusting, offensive to the senses and to our humanity.

Let’s look at one more simile:

Words heavy as clubs thud into the delicate whorl of her ear (Chapter 3).

The author could have written, “Words thudded into the delicate whorl of her ear.” Instead, that extra touch, the simile, “heavy as clubs,” solidifies the message that these words she is hearing are harsh, practically an assault.

Next, let’s explore some metaphors. (A metaphor compares unlike things without using “like” or “as:” instead, a metaphor simply states, figuratively, that one thing is something else. Look for other forms of the verb “to be” that can signal metaphors, like was, were, been, being, become, etc.)

Here’s a metaphor:

In Soraya's arms he becomes, fleetingly, their father: foster-father, step-father, shadow-father (Chapter 1).

Above, the narrator is not really the children’s father, of course, but he’s metaphorically their father, feeling like he should assume that role because he is physically involved with the boys’ mother.

Let’s see another metaphor:

Glances that would once have responded to his slid over, past, through him. Overnight he became a ghost (Chapter 1).

How evocative! The protagonist didn’t literally become a ghost: he became one metaphorically, because now that he’s losing his physical attractiveness, women are treating him as if he doesn’t exist. Ouch.

A good place to look for metaphors within a sentence is in appositive phrases, which are phrases that rename a nearby noun. Below, notice how the phrase “ghosts of their movements” renames the word “images:”

Recorded by a stroboscopic camera, their images, ghosts of their movements, fan out behind them . . . (Chapter 2).

Here, the narrator calls the images “ghosts of their movements,” a metaphor that invites us to think of the images as ghosts rather than realistic representations.

Keep reading past Chapter 2 to discover even more similes and metaphors. Be sure to keep an eye out for the key terms that signal a simile (“like” and “as”) as well as any linking verbs that might signal a metaphor (such as “become” or “became”). I hope you'll enjoy the work that Coetzee has done, the way he brings the story to life and touches our emotions with these powerful tools: similes and metaphors.

Coetzee employs metaphor and simile both in the text of Disgrace. We can look to the discrete, small scale metaphors and similes created in the langauge of the novel as well as structural metaphors created by resonances from section to section in the narrative.

Here, describing Lurie's emotional needs, Coetzee uses this simile: 

His needs turn out to be quite light, after all, light and fleeting, like those of a butterfly. (p5)

Later in the same paragraph, another simile is used to describe Lurie's contentment as "a ground base of contentedness, like the hum of the traffic that lulls the city-dweller to sleep, or like the silence of the night to countryfolk."

An example of metaphor from Disgrace comes when Lurie has slept with Bev Shaw and thinks, "Let her gaze her fill on her Romeo..." 

When analyzing the novel as a whole, we can view the rape of Lucy as a metaphor for the legally and morally taboo relationship Lurie has with Melanie in the novel's first half. One episode reflects, comments on and deepens the meaning of the other, so we can indentify them as having a metaphorical relationship to one another. The rape, in one way to reading the novel, is a representation of the taboo relationship. 

Many more similes and metaphors are present in the novel, as are many other forms of figurative language.