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Why This

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Submitted By Britaneebdw
Words 984
Pages 4
Britanee Windom
Scott Inguito
English 1B
5/18/2013
Essay #5
The novel Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee is story about having good morals and karma. The main character David Lurie is a middle aged man that is in a sense going through a mid life crisis. Lurie thinks of himself has am accomplished man and typically feels he has control in his life when it comes to finances, professional, and his personal life. However, after having an affair with a student, Lurie begins have a hard time controlling aspects in his life that he was once took for granite. Some concepts that Lurie comes to realize throughout the novel Disgrace are the amount of violence he faces, two sides to justice, and accepting old age. As David Lurie comes upon different trials and tribulations his character changes over the course of the novel and by the end Lurie finds closure in the unknown.
David Lurie’s has a real problem with the idea of aging gracefully; he has a wont to feel like he’s still got it, as a result this notion of youth controls him. Lurie is pretty obsessive about aging to the point that it sometimes clouds his judgment and deep down it depresses him. “Overnight he became a ghost. Then one day it all ended. Without warning his power….. If he wanted a woman he had to learn to pursue her; often in one way or another, to buy her. (p.36)” Lurie pursues all the wrong women or resorts to buying women all so that he can feel young again. The wrong choice in women is extremely apparent when goes after one of his students named Melanie Isaacs. With Melanie Isaac, Lurie was very inappropriate; he overstepped his bounds by sleeping with her and then fallowing her around. David’s vanity controlled him in the scenario of Isaacs; all of his will power was overshadowed by his need to feel young.
The idea of justice has two faces in this novel, David is being judged for his promiscuous ways but later Lucy falls victim to a similar crime. David’s judgment by the committee is a result of him sleeping with a student, the student filed a complaint after, parents got involved, and David lost his job. On the other hand, David’s daughter Lucy as well as he was attacked, now he is seeking justice for himself and his daughter. "We never thought we were sending our daughter into a nest of vipers. No, Professor Lurie, you may be high and mighty and have all kinds of degrees, but if I was you I'd be very ashamed of myself, so help me God. (p.23)" David now feels like the parents of the young student that he had an affair with, helpless and powerless. "Then we should recommend the severest penalty. That Professor Lurie be dismissed with immediate effect and forfeit all benefits and privileges. (p.51)" The justice that David’s victim received really no justice actually the school was willing to look the other way if he would only apologize and like Melanie, Lucy ended up seeing no justice for her rapist either.

Throughout the course of the novel David has been hit over the head, Lucy has been raped, Melanie has filed charges of abuse, and dogs have been slaughtered. All of these terrible events took David to realize that he is not in control of everything, that something’s are out of his control, these violent acts are sometimes planned and sometimes unplanned. David sleeping with his student may have been unintentional and innocent at the time but obviously it had massive ramifications. Lucy getting rapped was clearly a planned act of violence, David was left helpless in the bathroom, and even after the rape David could not fix the problems the rapist left behind. The slaughtering of the dogs was unplanned but necessarily in the end for the health of the animal, but still an act of violence that was committed. Petrus took the position of protecting his wife’s brother Pollux even though he knew he was guilty of raping Lucy. “Yes, he says, he is guilty; but when we try to get specificity, all of a sudden it is not abuse of a young woman he is confessing to, just an impulse he could not resist, with no mention of the pain he has caused, no mention of the long history of exploitation of which this is part. (p.69). It showed were Petru’s loyalties lied just like David’s loyalties were to himself when in front of the committee.
In the end David Lurie changed for the better, as subtle as his change may have been, ultimately he embraced himself; old age and all. At the end of the book David is back in Cape Town, not necessarily running from his problems but being content with his new chapter. He faces his consequences by not returning to the University and by going to the home of Melanie Isaacs to speak with her parents. David truly expresses his place in life when he has a conversation with Bev, "I thought you would save him for another week…….Yes, I am giving him up. (p. 63)" He is referring to the last dog that he must give up, his friend, because he is too old and sick, even Bev was confused as to why he didn’t wait longer. The fact that David did not prolong putting down the dog which was the inevitable shows that he has changed somewhat and accepted that like the dog he too must give up his old ways. A hard lesson David learned, it took him messing up his comfortable life to see that what he needed was to slow down, and that be closer to his family and stop pretending to be something he’s wasn’t.

Work Cited 1. Disgrace by J.M Coetzee

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