The novel “Disgrace” paints the image of a deeply confused person who has ceased to distinguish real life from the inert pursuit of pleasure. The protagonist of the novel becomes a witness to the tragedy that happened to his daughter and learns to perceive in a new way the concepts and attitudes that seemed obvious to him. The protagonist of the novel is ambiguous and the changes in him do not displace his previous bad traits, which emphasizes the depth and paradoxical nature of human nature itself.
The protagonist, David Lurie, does not seek real full satisfaction from life, because he turns out to be resigned to the realities surrounding him. Lurie’s work does not match his real ambitions – Lurie does not want to be either a critic or a teacher. Both of these areas of activity, it seems to him, only discourage him from the will to independent creation. It is no coincidence that the author describes him as a “clerk in a post-religious era” (Coetzee 6): it means that a person in the oversaturation of modern culture is absorbed by his ambitions and at the same time crushed by their mismatch with reality.
Lurie has written three critical books, and his interest in Romantic literature and Byron seems worthy of separate comment. The romantic tradition implies liberation from the traditional attitudes of society and the surrounding world, the search for the most unusual and even extreme experiences in search of inspiration. Romantics like Wordsworth and Byron, who are academically analyzed by the protagonist, blurred the line between life and art, proving the transcendence of poetic talent. Lurie, at fifty-two, does not feel capable of romantic exploits. Despite this, his dream is to write a chamber opera about Byron – and this emphasizes the way he really looks at his favorite literature. David “is tired of criticism, tired of prose measured by the yard” (Coetzee 5). He would like not just to parse art into formal elements, but to take it as a basis for his own inspiration, to follow the great authors, and not analyze their work.
However, boredom and routine make his mental powers too concentrated at work, since a person’s consciousness often automatically obeys repeated patterns. The same boredom extends to his sex life, in which apathy and detachment triumph. Lurie is not living the life he would have dreamed of, but the modern world satisfies his minimal needs, which plunges him into a state of a certain trance. The protagonist of the novel is certainly talented, but not sensitive to his real desires, which he replaces with automatic routine and quick pleasures.
The sexual aspect of the protagonist’s personality problems also turns out to be connected with his age crisis. The discrepancy between ambitions and real results is superimposed in Lurie’s psyche on his failures with the opposite sex. The hero is not alien to vices and hedonistic sexual promiscuity, moreover, it is indicated that he relies on his appearance as a guarantee of his existence. Sex plays such an integral role for Lurie in life that, feeling that he is losing his former attractiveness, he plunges into even more debauchery (Coetzee 7). Moreover, it is interesting to note how the author, describing his thoughts, emphasizes that Lurie does not see the point in life if there is no place for carnal pleasures in it. Old age for him is tantamount to castration and preparation for death, the final completion, and not the continuation of life.
The connection of Lurie with his student and the methods that the hero uses to seduce her demonstrate Lurie not only impartially, but also as a taboo violator. Describing the hero’s thoughts, the author points out that Melanie’s hips were like those of a 12-year-old (Coetzee 16), which emphasizes the hero’s pedophilic associative array. Lurie is also compared by the author to an old snake that seduces innocent girls. At a certain point, even deeper deviant tendencies appear in Lurie, as in one scene he closes off by almost calling himself “Daddy” in front of Melanie (Coetzee 25). Lurie is not only an ambiguous, but also a deeply flawed character, for whom literature, despite his passion, turns out to be a way to realize base desires – which is why he quotes Shakespearean poetry, trying to get favor from Melanie. This comparison with the snake resonates with the insult thrown towards David by his father Melanie who called him a viper (Coetzee 35). Literary and religious allusions are also noticeable in this juxtaposition, as David is thus likened to Lucifer, the demon whose image also takes the form of a snake, from Byron’s Lara.
David changes over the course of the novel, learning to experience real empathy that comes from feelings other than desire and passion. This is through communication with his daughter and a traumatic event that awakens in him compassion for Melanie through an association that causes confusion and shame. David’s relationships with other people, although improving, leave much to be desired. The fact that David the womanizer, as noted by the author at the beginning of the book (Coetzee 4), is manifested in his perception of them as objects not only of admiration but also of possession. Women, in his view, are dependent and require a man in their life – which does not allow him to fully accept the personality traits of his daughter. Thoughts about the need to help his daughter push him into a philosophical clash with her. Lucy, a rape survivor, refuses police help, insisting on personal treatment of the trauma and claiming that guilt and shame are nothing more than “abstractions” (Coatzee 96). This echoes the notion that David lives on abstractions, not real feelings, using concepts to mask animal desires.
However, along with this change, David’s motivations remain ambivalent, on the one hand demonstrating care but on the other being selfish. An encounter with a rapist at a party demonstrates the racial tensions in South Africa, leading to David revealing himself as a conservative and even a racist colonialist. The phrase “Who are you?” is repeated in the novel several times (Coetzee 112; Coetzee 151), and can be addressed not only to people whom he despises or fears, but also to himself. David struggles to find a balance between his entrenched vulgar patterns of behavior and his newfound sensitivity. He is aware of the damage done to Melanie, understands the horror of the neglect of women, but still retains selfish and impartial traits.
All this, however, demonstrates him as a highly realistic literary character who does not need to seem like a hero. The novel “Disgrace” shows a complex and ambiguous character whose personality cannot change completely because it is contrary to the current order of things. Literature is capable of capturing the most subtle nuances in changes in the human psyche, and it would be disrespectful to show David as an initially sharply negative character, and the whole novel as a story of his complete re-education.
Work Cited
Coetzee, J. M. Disgrace. London, Penguin, 2005.