What’s interesting to me, and which can be seen in my previous blog post analyzing this novel, is the obvious shift in his character and the role he plays in the novel. Every action and all information comes through his point of view. This results in a major shift in the plot, and much development in the characters David and Lucy.ĭavid Lurie is our main character, our protagonist. Later, it is revealed that Lucy had been raped by these men. The two men take take a bag of anything they could find of value and kill the majority of Lucy’s dogs. One of them men beats him and sets him on fire. David realizes something is wrong and he enters to help. They ask to use their phone and as Lucy leads one of the men in, the other enters and they attack her. As David and Lucy are approaching their farm after a walk with their dogs, they see two men and a boy waiting outside. In this section, a violent and disturbing attack occurs to David and Lucy Lurie on her farm. The plot faced the characters with dilemma’s that result in a huge shift in the plot and much character development for the main character, David Lurie. The first section of the novel left me anticipating slow progression, however it did not take long for the plot to pick up again-pick up is definitely an understatement for this section. Then I talk about relevant passages from Disgrace regarding the various stages of the hero’s journey as described by Campbell.With my continued reading of JM Coetzee’s Disgrace, this book continues to surprise me with it’s plot. Because this dissertation relates to both narratology and structuralism I provide short explanations of these 2 branches of literature criticism as presented in Peter Barry’s Beginning Theory. Besides Campbell’s theory, the theories of Propp and Stanford are presented and put to good use as theoretical background. This means that that David Lurie experiences a process personally which changes him in a positive direction. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading, Derek Attridge implies that David Lurie grows on the reader through the entire novel and is a better person at the end (Attridge 183). The Ultimate Boon is usually something else but different times call for different heroes. In addition, the purpose of David Lurie’s journey lies in self-realization and self-reinvention, which isn’t common for the hero’s journey. I debate that, in spite of his less than heroic attributes, David Lurie is the protagonist of an adventure and follows Joseph Campbell’s pattern of the hero’s ditto.

In this article I look at J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace from a somewhat different perspective.

Disgrace david lurie