The Development of the Character David Lurie in John Maxwell Coetzees Novel Disgrace.

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The Development of the Character David Lurie in John Maxwell Coetzee’s Novel Disgrace.

“All of Coetzee's writings are similar in that they often center on a solitary character. No direct moral is ever given, but rather situations are set up for the reader to think about. Coetzee’s aim is not to provide solutions, but to highlight problems and have the reader form their own conclusions.” (Price, Jonathan, the Postcolonial Studies Website, English Department, Emory University, 2000)

I could not agree more. J. M. Coetzee's main character David Lurie, in the novel “Disgrace”, is a complex character in a way that one does not know whether he is a bad person or a good person. One does not know whether one should sympathize with him or not. He is difficult to understand and one can interpret him in many ways.

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At the beginning of the novel one learns that he is a man who has been divorced twice, and who has found pleasure in women his whole life. On chapter two, in the book, he states:

“Because a woman’s beauty does not belong to her alone. It is part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it”

When he begins an affair with his student Melanie, half his age, the pleasure he finds sharing her beauty, soon comes to lead to his personal downfall, his disgrace.

Lurie acknowledges his guilt ...

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