An Interpretation of J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace: Centered on David Lurie and the Novel’s Ending

Abstract

This paper mostly analyzes Coetzee’s characterization of his protagonist David Lurie and how it is related to the open ending of Disgrace. The main target of this paper is Coetzee’s gradual loss of narrative control about a third-person narration and critics tendency to idealize Lurie’s moral metamorphosis through his disgraceful contingencies. So far, Lurie’s deserving downfall and subsequent regeneration have been regarded too generously by critics, without further questions about whether Lurie really has changed and about the depth of his emotional involvement with animal project. In this paper, Lurie’s obsession with Romanticism, especially the Byronic, is also criticized to emphasize how narcissistic and solipsistic he turns out to be, especially in his defense of the right of desire. Such a tendency of Lurie’s is well dramatized in his unending affairs with women even after her daughter’s rape and also in his self-centered apology to the family of Melanie, with whom he made a near-rapist love. Disgrace is in many ways a great novel, but nevertheless, a novel requiring the reader’s cautious moral sensitivity.