The Protagonist’s Conflict in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace

Disgrace is a novel written by John M. Coetzee, a novelist born in South Africa, which greatly influenced both his worldview and his creative activities. The fame brought by that particular literary work, Disgrace, is rather contradictory, though. On the one hand, it is the one which brought Coetzee one more Booker Prize and, on the other hand, the portrayal of the novel’s protagonist and his behavior raised a lot of disputes as well as criticism relating to the issues of racism, sexism, and post-apartheid South Africa. In Disgrace J. M. Coetzee depicts a white, male professor who, abusing his power and status, takes advantage of women and believes he has a right for that. The protagonist comes into conflict with his own views only after the brutal rape of his daughter. Had he not borne witness to the effects of the rape produced on his daughter, he would have continued down a path of misogyny and self destruction.

Disgrace’s protagonist is David Lurie, a 52-year-old white university professor living in post-apartheid South Africa, but refusing to admit that the times of the white dominance have passed. He was married twice, but divorced in both cases. One of the marriages gave him a daughter who lives alone farming and breeding dogs. Having been quite successful at satisfying his sexual needs by buying prostitutes, all of a sudden Lurie gets involved into a sexual scandal concerning his seduction of his young student. Being accused of raping her, Lurie refuses to offer apologies and has to leave his university position. After that his only choice is to go and live with his lesbian daughter. In a while he and his daughter get attacked by black males and his daughter is raped. Despite Lurie’s protests, his daughter decides to ignore the abuse and accept it as a payment for staying in the land where now the black reign. From the very start of the novel the emphasis is made on Lurie’s sexual life implying that the protagonist’s sexuality will be central in depicting both external and internal conflicts of the main character. In Lurie’s view he is supposed to live in comfort with himself whereas the world around should provide him with this comfort. He wants sex and he gets it – he either pays for that, like in case with Soraya, or takes it without permission, like with Melanie. He believes he has a right for that and calls himself a “servant of Eros” while others, for example, his university colleagues, call it “abuse. ” When explaining to his daughter why he could not agree with the accusations, he gives an example of their former neighbors’ dog beaten for following bitches and says that men cannot be blamed for following their instincts which are natural: “No animal will accept the justice of being punished for following its instincts” (Coetzee 97). Lurie insists that death would be an easier lot under such circumstances.

Lurie’s certainty that he is right and has nothing to apologize for is supported by his understanding of himself as superior. For instance, when with Soraya, he feels superior because he pays to her; when with Melanie, he believes that his status as a Professor provides certain privileges to him; and when in the farm, he thinks that his race is a privilege. However, he forgets that the white are no longer in control. As Pamela Cooper pertinently underlines, the protagonist has to deal with the pain of both “accommodating the past and surviving the present” (Cooper 23). His daughter seems to help him wake up and see that the times have changed. With her behavior she shows him that they, the white, have to adapt to the new conditions. She also claims that the hardships and discomfort that they may experience are the payment for the past and investment into the future: ”What if…what if that is the price one has to pay for staying on? Perhaps that is how they look at it; perhaps that is how I should look at it too” (Coetzee 168). Thus, his own daughter helps Lurie see his own deeds from another perspective – a perspective of a woman who has been taken by force and left behind like a thing used. It seems that Lucy’s words about men in general and her rape in particular echo in David’s mind with what he did to Melanie. Lucy says to him: “Maybe, for men, hating the woman makes sex more exciting. You are a man, you ought to know” (Coetzee 169). After these words he starts to reconsider the word “rape” and what it implies. Lurie’s re-evaluation of what he has done to Melanie and what his own daughter has come through shows him that both girls have become victims of similar circumstances: “Lucy is as accepting of her fate as his student Melanie was of the sexual act to which she was subjected” (Mardorossian 80).

After realizing that he, in a way, uses double standards, Lurie goes to see Melanie’s father and even finds strength to apologize. He admits that he is paying for what he has done: “I am sunk into a state of disgrace from which it will not be easy to lift myself” (Coetzee 202). He no longer views himself as superior, but rather accepts himself as a man of his age with no social assets to boast about. At the same time David becomes more composed and in peace with himself. He accepts life as it is and reconciles with himself and the world around. So, Coetzee’s Disgrace is a good example of how illustrative life can be. The novel’s protagonist thinks of himself as of someone belonging to the class of the chosen and behaves accordingly. He satisfies his own desires without thinking how it may affect other people. He is selfish and unable to be close even to his own daughter. The fact that the action of the novel takes place in post-apartheid South Africa helps the author to explain why Lurie feels so superior over others. But the problems which the main character actually has to live through teach him to be less self-indulgent and start thinking about other people’s feelings and desires. His daughter’s fate and hardships she experienced turned Lurie’s world upside down and made him become more humble as well as more patient.