I was really glad I read Dr. Shattuck's article because it gave me a new understanding of the book. She explained how Coetzee uses different charcaters to reflect both sides of the story. For example, the link between Lucy and Petrus is represented by an understanding of the way life is supposed to be post-apartheid. They share an openmind on many topics but also submit to the way things still are by trying to either accept or ignore what is going on around them like Lucy getting raped and not wanting to report it or confront the boy who did it and Petrus having to work so hard to get rights to his own land. On the other hand, David and Pollux relate in their old way of thinking. David feels as if he is superior and has done no wrong while Pollux was taught to rape and felt as if he had the right to do it. Pollux does not change and becomes more strange but David begins to see through Lucy that change is necessary. There is also a link between David raping other women and not seeing the harm done and yet when Lucy is raped he thinks it is a horrible thing and wants to bring justice to the situation. I probably would not have connected all these links between characters if I had not read Dr. Shattuck's article. --Mary Ashley Hall
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a) What do you do to help you deal with end-of-the-semester stress?
b) What is your favorite season and why?
6) 11/2 - What did you do on Halloween?
-
a) Discuss your greatest
b) Do you believe in ghosts? Have you ever seen one?
4) 10/19 - Choose the prompt from last week that you didn't write on.
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a) Discuss your reactions to Obama
b) Discuss the craziest thing you've ever
2) 10/5 (due by 10/12) -
a) Describe the funniest thing you've ever
b) Describe the best or worst breakup you've ever had (or someone else's...).
1) 9/28 -
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10/26
5) 10/26 - 1) Your greatest fear, or 2) Do you believe in ghosts? Have you ever seen one?
10/19
4) 10/19 - Choose the prompt from last week that you didn't write on.
10/12
3) 10/12 - 1) Obama receives the Nobel Peace Prize, or 2) the craziest thing you've ever done
10/5
2) 10/5 (due by 10/12) - 1) the funniest thing you've ever done, or 2) the best or worst breakup
9/28
1) 9/28 - parking
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10/5 (due by 10/12)
10/26 - 1)
10/19 - Choose the
10/12 - 1) Obama receives the Nobel Peace Prize, or 2) the craziest thing you've ever done
10/5 (due by 10/12) - 1) the funniest thing you've ever done, or 2) the best or worst breakup
9/28 - parking
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A look at Lurie's history with women, starting at childhood.
Overview Of Lurie's History With Women.docx
A perspective of Lurie's actions with women, Soraya and Melanie.
Luries's actions with women.docx
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Has he done other novels? How do they compare to Disgrace?
What's the deal with "The Life of Animals" essay? What's the purpose behind his essays?
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Coetzee Bio Discussion Questions
CoetzeeBio
DisgraceProject
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Biography
John Maxwell Coetzee was born in Cape Town, South Africa, on 9 February 1940, the elder of two children. His mother was a primary school teacher. His father was trained as an attorney, but practiced as such only intermittently; during the years 1941–45 he served with the South African forces in North Africa and Italy. Though Coetzee's parents were not of British descent, the language spoken at home was English. Coetzee received his primary schooling in Cape Town and in the nearby town of Worcester. For his secondary education he attended a school in Cape Town run by a Catholic order, the Marist Brothers. He matriculated in 1956. Coetzee entered the University of Cape Town in 1957, and in 1960 and 1961 graduated successively with honours degrees in English and mathematics. He spent the years 1962–1965 in England, working as a computer programmer while doing research for a thesis on the English novelist Ford Madox Ford. In 1963 he married Philippa Jubber (1939–1991). They had two children, Nicolas (1966–1989) and Gisela (b. 1968). In 1965 Coetzee entered the graduate school of the University of Texas at Austin, and in 1968 graduated with a PhD in English, linguistics, and Germanic languages. His doctoral dissertation was on the early fiction of Samuel Beckett. For three years (1968–71) Coetzee was assistant professor of English at the State University of New York in Buffalo. After an application for permanent residence in the United States was denied, he returned to South Africa. From 1972 until 2000 he held a series of positions at the University of Cape Town, the last of them as Distinguished Professor of Literature. Between 1984 and 2003 he also taught frequently in the United States: at the State University of New York, Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, Stanford University, and the University of Chicago, where for six years he was a member of the Committee on Social Thought. Coetzee began writing fiction in 1969. His first book, Dusklands, was published in South Africa in 1974. In the Heart of the Country (1977) won South Africa's then principal literary award, the CNA Prize, and was published in Britain and the USA. Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) received international notice. His reputation was confirmed by Life & Times of Michael K (1983), which won Britain's Booker Prize. It was followed by Foe (1986), Age of Iron (1990), The Master of Petersburg (1994), and Disgrace (1999), which again won the Booker Prize. Coetzee also wrote two fictionalized memoirs, Boyhood (1997) and Youth (2002). The Lives of Animals (1999) is a fictionalized lecture, later absorbed into Elizabeth Costello (2003). White Writing (1988) is a set of essays on South African literature and culture. Doubling the Point (1992) consists of essays and interviews with David Attwell. Giving Offense (1996) is a study of literary censorship. Stranger Shores (2001) collects his later literary essays. Coetzee has also been active as a translator of Dutch and Afrikaans literature. In 2002 Coetzee emigrated to Australia. He lives with his partner Dorothy Driver in Adelaide, South Australia, where he holds an honorary position at the University of Adelaide.
Coetzee & Disgrace
As the winner of the Booker prize, Disgrace finds a honored place within the genre of post-apartheid literature. While both black and white authors, such as Nadine Gordimer, Alan Paton, and J.M Coetzee himself, played a major role in bringing apartheid to global attention decades earlier, many of these same authors were responsible for bringing global attention to the condition of South Africa after apartheid as well. What distinguishes post-apartheid literature from apartheid literature is primarily its thematic focus. Although race is a current throughout these works, post-apartheid literature foregrounds the themes of poverty, crime, bloodshed, homosexuality, and the AIDS epidemic. Although abroad Disgrace was applauded for its brutal honesty, South Africa's political realm was not as receptive. The book sparked debate in Parliament. Many members of the ruling party, the African National Congress, felt the book portrayed South Africa in too pessimistic a light. Disgrace was written after 1995, when the new constitution for South Africa was passed. This constitution gave men and women equal rights. The constitution also gave equal rights regardless of sexual orientation (a fact very relevant to Lucy in the book). The African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party, was one of the most prominent anti-apartheid movements led by Nelson Mandela. In 1994, Mandela won by a landslide to become the first President of South Africa. Post-apartheid South Africa was by no means idyllic, however. Violence increased significantly in the country. Incidents of car jackings escalated, and many commercial farmers either emigrated or gave up farming because of violence committed against them. From 1989 to 1994 the murder rate doubled, and a young South African woman could be expected to be raped twice in her lifetime on average. The changing landscape encouraged many of the wealthier South Africans, particularly in Johannesburg, to move into gated communities. Much of Coetzee's writing reflects either directly or indirectly on recent events unfolding within South African society, although critics have warned against straightforward allegorical readings of his work. More productively we might think of Coetzee's writing as questioning any easy correspondence between fictional representation and the rapid, traumatic changes that have transformed and continue to transform South Africa. As the narrative of his recent Man Booker Prize-winning novel Disgrace (1999) demonstrates (with its metafictional elements, its suspension in the present tense and its generation of critical uncertainty) veracity is something Coetzee seeks to problematise rather than produce. At the centre of Disgrace is 52-year-old David Lurie:Once a professor of modern languages, he has been, since Classics and Modern Languages were closed down as part of the great rationalization, adjunct professor of communications. Like all rationalized personnel, he is allowed to offer one special-field course a year, irrespective of enrolment, because that is good for morale. This year he is offering a course on the Romantic poets. For the rest he teaches Communications 101, “Communication Skills,” and Communications 201, “Advanced Communication Skills.” In Lurie’s fall from Romantics Professor to Professor of Communications we witness the wider reduction of art and language to the realm of the literal, the functional, the practical. Within this new world academics have become, as Lurie goes on to put it 'clerks in a post-religious age'. The curtailment of creativity implied here is ironically captured in the transparent literalism of the new courses Lurie teaches (e.g. communication skills), and in the numbers used to label them (which imply rationalization and mechanical progress). The literary critic Derek Attridge argues that moments such as these warn the reader against reducing Disgrace to an instrumental political function. That to do so is to ignore crucial sections of the text that are hard to ‘read off’ as conventional messages or communication acts, such as the puzzling role of dogs and animals in the novel, or David’s unfinished opera, or the significance of the central (but absent) rape scene in the novel. When Lurie is disgraced by his university following an affair with a student, the professor retreats to his daughter's isolated smallholding. The personal differences between David and his daughter unfold against this backdrop as tensions rise within the recently emancipated local community. Coetzee's unforgiving vision of South Africa exposes the insecurities of a floundering, but still dominant white culture. Disgrace illuminates two of the key concerns of Coetzee's work: the historical motivations behind colonialism and its legacies in the post-colonial era. For Coetzee the post-colonial does not signal the formal disintegration of empire, but rather a new, and in many respects more insidious phase of colonisation. For example, his debut novel, Dusklands (1974) comprises two novellas that evoke apparently discrete historical events, one colonial and the other post-colonial, in a manner that clearly asks us to reflect upon their relationship to one another and to contemporary South Africa more generally. The first handles America's part in Vietnam. The second is set 200 years earlier and focuses on a Boer settler in the 1700s. The very different protagonists of these narratives: Eugene Dawn (an expert in psychological warfare) and Coetzee (an adventurer and pioneer), turn out to be involved in strikingly similar forms of oppression.
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J.M Coetzee and Disgrace Continued by James White
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What awards/achievements has Coetzeewon so far in his lifetime?
Coetzee has gained many awards throughout his career, although he has
Short Description of other Novels by Coetzee
1. Dusklands (1974) the novel which is actually 2 different stories the first one, The Vietnam Project, relates the gradual descent into insanity of its protagonist Eugene Dawn. Eugene works for a U.S. government agency responsible for the psychologicial in the Vietnam War. However, his work on mythography and psychological operations is taking a heavy toll on him; his fall culminates in him stabbing his own son, Martin. The Second is called The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee, which takes place in the 18th century, is an account of a hunting expedition into the then "unexplored" interior of South Africa. After crossing the Orange Riveer, Jacobus meets with aNamaqua tribe to trade, but suddenly falls ill. He is attended to by the tribe and gradually recovers, only to get into a fight for which he is expelled from the village. His last slave dying on the way home, he returns alone and later organizes a punitive expedition against the Namaqua. The narrative concludes with his execution of the slaves that deserted him on the previous journey and the massacre of the tribe.
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3. Did Coetzee have any children and if so did Coetzee relate them to David's daughter Lucy?
They had 2 children Gisela born in 1968 and Nicholas in 1966 ( who later died in a car accident in 1989 at age 23.) Gisela had little or no influence over Lucy's character.
The biographical similarities between David Lurie and JM Coetzee may be superficial, but one cannot help being curious about the extent to which Lurie’s personal views are similar to Coetzee’s. JM Coetzee’s work certainly fits him into the same mould as Lurie, a man who ‘has never been afraid to follow a thought down its winding track’. Coetzee also cheated on his wife several times and then got divorced. The possibility or suspicion that the character of Lurie is fashioned on Coetzee himself has obviously created problems in the way that Coetzee is received by the small reading public in the country of his birth. Once, there was a call by a group of English teachers to remove Disgrace from high school reading lists.
Has
5. Has he done other novels? How do they compare to Disgrace?
Coetzee wrote 11 other novels.
What's
6. What's the deal with "The Life of Animals" essay? What's the purpose behind his essays?
In The Animal life Essays J. M. Coetzee uses fiction to present a powerfully moving discussiing animal rights. Coetzee, a vegetarian, wrote that most people have an equivocal attitude to the industrial use of animals. "They make use of the products of that industry, but are nevertheless a little sickened, a little queasy, when they think of what happens on factory farms and abattoirs. J. M. Coetzee once stated that "The task of the movement is to offer such people imaginative but practical options for what to do next after they have been revolted by a glimpse of the lives factory animals live and the deaths they die." Children offered the brightest hope, he wrote: "It takes but one glance into a slaughterhouse to turn a child into a lifelong vegetarian."
7. What awards has Coetzee won in his lifetime?
Short Description of other Novels by Coetzee
1. Dusklands (1974) the novel which is actually 2 different stories the first one, The Vietnam Project, relates the gradual descent into insanity of its protagonist Eugene Dawn. Eugene works for a U.S. government agency responsible for the psychologicial in the Vietnam War. However, his work on mythography and psychological operations is taking a heavy toll on him; his fall culminates in him stabbing his own son, Martin. The Second is called The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee, which takes place in the 18th century, is an account of a hunting expedition into the then "unexplored" interior of South Africa. After crossing the Orange Riveer, Jacobus meets with aNamaqua tribe to trade, but suddenly falls ill. He is attended to by the tribe and gradually recovers, only to get into a fight for which he is expelled from the village. His last slave dying on the way home, he returns alone and later organizes a punitive expedition against the Namaqua. The narrative concludes with his execution of the slaves that deserted him on the previous journey and the massacre of the tribe.
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womenizer
3. Did Coetzee have any children and if so did Coetzee relate them to David's daughter Lucy?
They had 2 children Gisela born in 1968 and Nicholas in 1966 ( who later died in a car accident in 1989 at age 23.) Gisela had little or no influence over Lucy's character.
Has he done other novels? How do they compare to Disgrace?
Coetzee wrote 11 other novels.
1.Dusklands (1974) which is actually 2 different stories the first one, The Vietnam Project, relates the gradual descent into insanity of its protagonist Eugene Dawn. Eugene works for a U.S. government agency responsible for the psychologicial in the Vietnam War. However, his work on mythography and psychological operations is taking a heavy toll on him; his fall culminates in him stabbing his own son, Martin. The Second is called The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee, which takes place in the 18th century, is an account of a hunting expedition into the then "unexplored" interior of South Africa. After crossing the Orange Riveer, Jacobus meets with aNamaqua tribe to trade, but suddenly falls ill. He is attended to by the tribe and gradually recovers, only to get into a fight for which he is expelled from the village. His last slave dying on the way home, he returns alone and later organizes a punitive expedition against the Namaqua. The narrative concludes with his execution of the slaves that deserted him on the previous journey and the massacre of the tribe.
2.In the Heart of the Country(1977)
, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), Life & Times of Michael K (1983) , Foe (1986), Age of Iron (1990), The Master of Petersburg (1994), The Lives of Animals (1999), Elizabeth Costello (2003), Slow Man (2005) Diary of a Bad Year (2007).
What's the deal with "The Life of Animals" essay? What's the purpose behind his essays?
In The Animal life Essays J. M. Coetzee uses fiction to present a powerfully moving discussiing animal rights. Coetzee, a vegetarian, wrote that most people have an equivocal attitude to the industrial use of animals. "They make use of the products of that industry, but are nevertheless a little sickened, a little queasy, when they think of what happens on factory farms and abattoirs. J. M. Coetzee once stated that "The task of the movement is to offer such people imaginative but practical options for what to do next after they have been revolted by a glimpse of the lives factory animals live and the deaths they die." Children offered the brightest hope, he wrote: "It takes but one glance into a slaughterhouse to turn a child into a lifelong vegetarian."
Short Description of other Novels by Coetzee
1. Dusklands (1974) the novel which is actually 2 different stories the first one, The Vietnam Project, relates the gradual descent into insanity of its protagonist Eugene Dawn. Eugene works for a U.S. government agency responsible for the psychologicial in the Vietnam War. However, his work on mythography and psychological operations is taking a heavy toll on him; his fall culminates in him stabbing his own son, Martin. The Second is called The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee, which takes place in the 18th century, is an account of a hunting expedition into the then "unexplored" interior of South Africa. After crossing the Orange Riveer, Jacobus meets with aNamaqua tribe to trade, but suddenly falls ill. He is attended to by the tribe and gradually recovers, only to get into a fight for which he is expelled from the village. His last slave dying on the way home, he returns alone and later organizes a punitive expedition against the Namaqua. The narrative concludes with his execution of the slaves that deserted him on the previous journey and the massacre of the tribe.
2. In the Heart of the Country (1977) the novel is about complex relationships that form between the colonizer and the colonized. It takes place on a desolate farm in South Africa told through the perspective of an intelligent yet meek European woman. She clashes with her father when he takes an African mistress, causing a rift that leads towards vengeance, violence and a muddling of her own relationship with the Africans.
3. Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) The novelis set in small frontier town of a nameless empire. The town's magistrate is the story's main protagonist and narrator. His rather peaceful existence on the frontier comes to an end with the arrival of some special forces of the Empire, led by a sinister Colonel Joll. There are rumours that the barbariansare preparing an attack on the Empire, and so Colonel Joll and his men conduct an expedition into the land beyond the frontier. They capture a number of "barbarians," bring them back to town, torture them, kill some of them, and leave for the capital in order to prepare a larger campaign against the barbarians. In the meantime, the Magistrate becomes involved with a "barbarian girl" who was left behind crippled and blinded by the torturers. Eventually, he decides to take her back to her people. After a life-threatening trip through the barren land he succeeds in his objective and returns to his town. Shortly thereafter, the Empire's forces return and the Magistrate's own plight begins.
4. Life & Times of Michael K (1983) the novel begins with Michael K, an institutionalized simpleton who works as a gardener in Cape Town, South Africa. Michael tends to his mother who works as a maid to a wealthy family. Eventually, the city breaks out in a massive warlike riot, and Michael’s mother becomes very sick. Michael decides to quit his job and escape the city to return his mother to her birthplace of Prince Albert. Michael finds himself unable to obtain the proper permits for travel out of the city so he builds a shoddy rickshaw to carry his mother, and they go on their way. Soon after escaping, Michael’s mother dies in a hospital. He lingers for some time, carrying his mother’s ashes around with him in a box. Finally, Michael decides to continue on his journey to Prince Albert to deliver his mother’s ashes. Along the way, though, he is detained for not having the required travel papers, thus being assigned to work detail on a railway track. After his job on the railway track is finished, Michael makes his way to the farm his mother spoke of on Prince Albert. The farm is abandoned and desolate. Soon, Michael discovers how to live off the land. However, when one of the relatives of the real owners of the farm arrives, he treats Michael like a servant. Michael dislikes this treatment so he escapes up into the mountains.In the mountains, Michael goes through a period of starvation while he becomes aware of his surroundings. In his malnourished state he finds his way down to a town where he is picked up by the police and is sent to work on a work camp. Here, Michael meets a man named Robert. Robert explains that the workers in the camp are exploited for cheap labor by the townspeople. Eventually, there is an attack on Prince Albert and the workers of the camp are blamed. The local police captain takes over and Michael escapes. Michael finds his way back to the farm but soon feels claustrophobic within the house. Therefore, he builds a shelter in the open where he is able to watch his garden. Rebels come out of the mountains and use his garden. Although Michael is angered by this he stays in hiding. Michael becomes malnourished and delirious again because he has not come out of hiding. He is found by some soldiers and is taken to a rehabilitation camp in Cape Town. At the rehabilitation camp, a doctor becomes interested in Michael. He finds Michael’s simple nature extremely fascinating and finds him to be unfairly accused of aiding rebels. Michael becomes very sick and delirious because he refuses to eat. The doctor tries to understand Michael’s stubborn ways while attempting to get Michael released. However, Michael escapes on his own. Upon his escape, Michael meets with a group of nomadic people who feed him and introduce him to a woman who has sex with him; later we see him attracted to women for the first time. He returns to the apartment where he and his mother lived in Cape Town, the same apartment and city he had tried to escape some time ago. Michael reflects on the garden he made in Prince Albert.
5. Foe (1986) the novel is about Susan Barton who is on a quest to find her kidnapped daughter, her namesake, whom she knows has been taken to the New World. She is set adrift during a mutiny on a ship to Libson. When she comes ashore, she finds Friday and a Cruso who has grown complacent, content to forget his past and live his life on the island with Friday—tongueless by what Cruso claims to have been the act of former slave owners—in attendance. Arriving near the end of their residence, Barton is only on the island for a year before the trio is rescued, but the homesick Cruso does not survive the voyage to England. In England with Friday, Barton attempts to set her adventures on the island to paper, but she feels her efforts lack popular appeal. She tries to convince novelist Daniel Foe to help with her manuscript, but he does not agree on which of her adventures is interesting. Foe would prefer to write about her time in Bahia looking for her daughter, and when he does write on the story she wishes, fabulates about Cruso's adventures rather than relating her facts. Frustrating Barton's efforts further, Foe, who becomes her lover, is preoccupied with debt and has little time or energy to write about anything. Barton's story takes a twist with the return of someone claiming to be her missing daughter.
,
6. Age of Iron (1990) the novel depicts the inward journey of Mrs. Curren, an old classics professor. She lives in the Cape Town of the Aparthied era, where she is slowly dying of cancer. She has been philosophically opposed to the Apartheid regime her entire life, but has never taken an active stance against it. Now, at the end of her life, she finally comes face-to-face with the horrors of the system - she witnesses the burning of a black township and the killing of her servant's son, as well as the shooting by security forces of a young black activist whom she shelters in her house. Against a backdrop of violence by whites and blacks alike, Mrs. Curren remembers her past and her daughter, who left South Africa because of the situation in the country: the book is framed as an extended letter from the mother to her daughter in America. As the story progresses, she constructs a relationship of a different kind with Vercueil, an old homeless man who happens to be sleeping in her driveway, as well as finally becoming truly aware of Florence, her black live-in servant.
7. The Master of Petersburg (1994) the novel is a work of fiction but features the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky as its protagonist. It is a deep, complex work that draws on the life of Dostoevsky, the life of the author and the history of Russia to produce profoundly disturbing results. It won the 1995 Irish Times International Fiction Prize. The content of the novel is strongly based on "At Tikhon's", a chapter written by Dostoevsky for his 1872 novel Demons (often translated as The Devils) but suppressed by his editor M.N. Katkov. The chapter was never reinstated in the novel but is found as an appendix in many modern editions. In the chapter, the character Nikolai Stavrogin confesses to a sordid liaison with a 14 year old girl, Matryosha. Matryosha, and the setting of Stavrogin's tale, appear in The Master of Petersburg.Hanging over the novel is a scene from Coetzee's own life: the death of his son at 23 in a mysterious falling accident. Dostoevsky is found at the start of the novel trying to accept the death of his stepson Pavel, which occurs in a similar manner. Though Pavel is based on a real person, his death is fictional - the real Pavel outlived Dostoyevsky.
8. The Lives of Animals (1999) the novel is about the sentiency of non-human animals in a mostly one-sided way. The argument ranges from the philosophical (can animals reason?) to the controversial (comparing animal slaughter to the gas chambers of the Jewish holocaust).
9. Elizabeth Costello (2003) the novel is about Elizabeth Costello,an aging Australianwriter, travels around the world and gives lectures on topics including the lives of animals and literary censorship. In her youth, Costello wrote The House on Eccles Street, a novel that re-tells James Joyce's Ulysses from the perspective of the protagonist's wife, Molly Bloom. Costello, becoming weary from old age, confronts her fame, which seems further and further removed from who she has become, and struggles with issues of belief, vegetarianism, sexuality, language and evil.
10. Slow Man (2005) the novel is about Paul Rayment, a man of late middle-age, loses part of a leg after his bicycle collides with a young man. He becomes reclusive, and must retreat to his flat and submit to a succession of nurses. None suit him until Marijana, with whom he shares a European childhood (hers in Croatia, his in France), comes along. Paul's feelings for Marijana, and her teenage son, become more complex. When Paul offers to finance her son's education, Marijana's husband is not so happy, and the interactions between caregiver and submissive patient become awkward.
11. Diary of a Bad Year (2007) the novel is about aprotagonist, called Señor C. by the other characters, is an aging South African writer living in Sydney. The novel consists of his essays and musings alongside diary entries by both Señor C. and Anya, a neighbor whom he has hired as a typist. The essays, which take up the larger part of each page, are on wide-ranging topics, including the politics of George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Guantanamo Bay, and terroism. The diary entries appear beneath the essays and describe the relationship that develops between the two characters, a relationship that ultimately leads to subtle evolutions in both their worldviews.
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1. How old is Coetzee now? How old was he when he wrote the novel?
Part 1A. Coetzee birthday is 69, his birthday isFebuary 9th 1940.
Part 1B. Coetzee was 59 when he wrote Disgrace in 1999.
2. How is Coetzee's relationship with women? Was he a womanizer?
Not much is known if Coetzee was a womenizer or not it is said that his book "Summertime" is about Coetzee himself but since it is a fictionial book it does not hold solid ground. He has only been married one time that was to Philippa Jubber in 1963. They divorced in 1980.
3. Did Coetzee have any children and if so did Coetzee relate them to David's daughter Lucy?
They had 2 children Gisela born in 1968 and Nicholas in 1966 ( who later died in a car accident in 1989 at age 23.) Gisela had little or no influence over Lucy's character.
How much of himself did Coetzee put into the character Lurie?
The biographical similarities between David Lurie and JM Coetzee may be superficial, but one cannot help being curious about the extent to which Lurie’s personal views are similar to Coetzee’s. JM Coetzee’s work certainly fits him into the same mould as Lurie, a man who ‘has never been afraid to follow a thought down its winding track’. The possibility or suspicion that the character of Lurie is fashioned on Coetzee himself has obviously created problems in the way that Coetzee is received by the small reading public in the country of his birth. Once, there was a call by a group of English teachers to remove Disgrace from high school reading lists.
Has he done other novels? How do they compare to Disgrace?
Coetzee wrote 11 other novels.
Short Description of Novels by Coetzee
1.Dusklands (1974) which is actually 2 different stories the first one, The Vietnam Project, relates the gradual descent into insanity of its protagonist Eugene Dawn. Eugene works for a U.S. government agency responsible for the psychologicial in the Vietnam War. However, his work on mythography and psychological operations is taking a heavy toll on him; his fall culminates in him stabbing his own son, Martin. The Second is called The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee, which takes place in the 18th century, is an account of a hunting expedition into the then "unexplored" interior of South Africa. After crossing the Orange Riveer, Jacobus meets with aNamaqua tribe to trade, but suddenly falls ill. He is attended to by the tribe and gradually recovers, only to get into a fight for which he is expelled from the village. His last slave dying on the way home, he returns alone and later organizes a punitive expedition against the Namaqua. The narrative concludes with his execution of the slaves that deserted him on the previous journey and the massacre of the tribe.
2.In the Heart of the Country(1977)
, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), Life & Times of Michael K (1983) , Foe (1986), Age of Iron (1990), The Master of Petersburg (1994), The Lives of Animals (1999), Elizabeth Costello (2003), Slow Man (2005) Diary of a Bad Year (2007).
What's the deal with "The Life of Animals" essay? What's the purpose behind his essays?
In The Animal life Essays J. M. Coetzee uses fiction to present a powerfully moving discussiing animal rights. Coetzee, a vegetarian, wrote that most people have an equivocal attitude to the industrial use of animals. "They make use of the products of that industry, but are nevertheless a little sickened, a little queasy, when they think of what happens on factory farms and abattoirs. J. M. Coetzee once stated that "The task of the movement is to offer such people imaginative but practical options for what to do next after they have been revolted by a glimpse of the lives factory animals live and the deaths they die." Children offered the brightest hope, he wrote: "It takes but one glance into a slaughterhouse to turn a child into a lifelong vegetarian."
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Drew
Divorce,Lurie's Relationship with Women (Ana L., Elizabeth P.)
Ending
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]]>Quarter of men in south africa admit torape:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/17/south-africa-rape-survey
"Why don't women report rape?"
"In the U.S, only 16% of women and girls who have been raped report the assault to police."
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RAPE IN SOUTH AFRICA
Rape is an occurrence which, according to official statistics occurred approximately 16,000 times annually during the 1980s. By 1992 the official figure for rape was 24,700.4 unofficially, based on the premise put forward by the National Institute of Crime Rehabilitation that only one in twenty rapes are reported, the figure is about 494,000 a year.
This means that on average approximately one thousand three hundred women can be expected to be raped a day in South Africa.
Even a government minister calls South Africa the rape capital of the world........
A study by Interpol, the international police agency, has revealed that South Africa leads the world in rapes.
A woman was raped in South Africa every 17 seconds. This did not include the number of child rape victims. It was estimated that one in every two women would be raped.
Between 28 and 30 percent of adolescents reported that their first sexual encounter was forced.
Of South African men who knew somebody who had been raped, 16 percent believed that the rape survivor had enjoyed the experience and had asked for it. According to a recent study police estimated that only one in 36 rape cases was reported and of those only 15 percent culminated in a conviction.
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David Lurie's Early-Novel Relationships with Melanie and Soraya
The Womanizer Beginnings in Insanity.docx
Lurie's Divorce and Coetzee's Divorce are related?
Let's Think about Divorce in Disgrace.docx
Coetzee and Lurie lives seem much related to one another.doc
The similarities and differences of Coetzee and Lurie by Marcie Grooms.docx
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The similarities and differences of Coetzee and Lurie by Marcie Grooms.docx
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at 9:49 am on Sep 23, 2009
So I'm up to Chapter 7 now....and this book is very interesting and confusing at the same time.....I'm starting to think that Melanie is either a master at manipulating people or she is one of the most spineless people I've ever heard of. I don't think I've ever gotten this mad at a book character before. Sure, what Prof Lurie did was wrong in my mind, but for Melanie to switch sides like that is totally not fair. On the other hand, if I were to ever meet Prof Lurie all I would have to say to him is that your SOL, you banged a student knowing full well what the worst was that could happen, and it happened, so you deserve everything you got. Can you tell I'm sleep-deprived yet? Everything is making me mad this week. So I just thought I'd post something that was related to the novel, so we'd look like more of a group that was actually doing something, lol. Ok I'm going to stop rambling now.
Stephanie
at 10:00 am on Sep 23, 2009
Hey Brittany, I finally went to the link and looked at the article you had posted when we first set this group up. It makes a lot sense. Disgrace is kind of a crappy book, and even though I find it interesting, it really doesn't accomplish anything. Like I still couldn't tell you what the author was trying to accomplish with this story, something about Africa? haha I don't know. But it did make me realize that this book has the weakest characters that I have ever read about out of all of the books that I've had to read. The whole tone of the book is a sad acceptance of one's present situation, and there isn't any resolve or determination to make it better. It definitely doesn't make me feel good about myself, but I'm not sure it that was the objective of the author in the first place.
at 1:24 pm on Sep 23, 2009
Yeah I kinda agree with the whole sad acceptance thing. It kinda brings your mood down a bit when you read it :( The story is one of the most typical stories out there, and the book does not add a good twist to it. I'm almost at chapter 9 and it had my attention at first and now i'm just bored with it. I don't know, Professor Lurie is not a bad guy, he's just boring! Lol
at 9:42 am on Sep 25, 2009
man if i was in that situation i would of had to kick some butt with those guys!!!!
at 9:54 am on Sep 25, 2009
hey guys thought this link would help if any of y'all were having trouble reading the book
http://www.gradesaver.com/disgrace/study-guide/essay-questions/
at 9:48 pm on Sep 30, 2009
ok finished the book. and i gotta say the ending blew!!! it just made a depressing story even more depressing...
at 10:28 pm on Oct 7, 2009
To comment on Stephanie's comment about Ch. 7, yeah Melanie switched sides but at the same time you have to look at what caused it. She went to Lurie's after having a fight with her boyfriend. Why she went there of all places. In a way it was irrational, well in my opinion, but when she realized it she did what she had to. He wouldn't leave her alone and not to mention his abuse of power to get all of her information. I will agree with he had it coming.
at 6:46 pm on Oct 15, 2009
He at fault as much as melanie is, even thought I think she was manipulated at some point it still made me mad that she didn't do anything
Stephanie
at 5:46 pm on Oct 18, 2009
This is to Question Numero Uno: I think in the beginning that Melanie was a willing participant, even though it seemed less that way as the relationship went on. But my opinion is that, even though she might have had all of these other factors that were effecting the relationship she had with Prof Lurie, that it was ultimately her responsibility to take charge of the situation and stand up for herself. That's why a part of me still sees her as a kind of manipulator, that she was still in that relationship in order to get something out of Prof Lurie that she wanted. Somebody should slap her, hard.
at 7:28 pm on Oct 21, 2009
Thank my group for those pics haha...Im afraid my parents might see I was googling pics of "rape" on the internet and get suspicious haha....and on your views of Melanie I totally agree, as I read that part of the book I kept expecting her to get off her sorry tail and handle the situation but it never came....seems "it never came" for a lot of characters in this book which is why I hated it so much...people with a lack of backbone make me sick...but thats one man's rant, whats your take?
Josh Atnip
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Pictures
anitrape.bmp~Comments~
~Pictures~
http://www.hippopress.com/books/disgrace.html
This page is about J. M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace. The page focuses on the topic of rape which is involved in the book. Please post your opinions and other resources about this topic in regards the Disgrace.
Questions from the Class:
Answers:
-The motivation that Lurie has towards "raping" Melanie is that its a uncontrollable temptation. He is a man who really has nothing to live for and just looking for some free lovin basically.. Its said that in the book he grows intensely towards her and tries to find out her everyday life.. Lurie is a man who has a very high sexual appetite and really doesn't see what will happen is its refused and what the consequences are. What I believe is that Coetzee puts the rape of Melanie is the story to foreshadow what will happen to him and later basically ruin his daughters life based on his sins.(Chad)
-According to Coetzee's biography, he was a very shy man. He didn't drink, smoke, curse, or anything. He was very quiet and didn't leave his house often. He may have put the many rape scenes i this story as sort of his way of living another life. Most writers write books in order to step out of reality. This kinda goes into Freud's theories.(Brittany)
Do you think Melanie was raped or a willing participant?
-To answer the first question i believe it was a full rape. She didnt want to do it in the first place and just gave in to his desires at the end. If he didnt go forward with her at all there wouldnt be a sexual relationship with them at all. Everything that has happened was cause by Lurie and Melanie was just caught by the trap. ~ Juan
http://www.healthyplace.com/abuse/escaping-hades/definition-of-rape-what-is-rape/menu-id-806/
Does Melanie think, "What can he do to me if I say no?"
-And to answer the second one she probably didnt directly think of it but more as common sense that this man is a maniac and if i refuse his wants he will do something stupid, so she just let him do what he wanted to not make matter worst than what they are. ~ Juan
Answers:
-There may have been a few reasons the men were motivated to rape Lucy. They could have wanted to hurt her because she was a white woman. This may have been a way for them to get back at the white race for apartheid. They might have also just been bored. Delinquents tend to think of insensitive things to do in their spare time; in this case they filled their extra time with rape. Personally I believe that the three rapists were motivated by Petrus. I think that Petrus arranged the rape to most likely run Lucy away or damage her enough emotionally to where she would give up her land. It is really strange that they would just come to Lucy’s house the one day that Petrus was nowhere to be found. I feel like they were carrying out a plan orchestrated by Petrus. Because if they were self motivated I don’t believe they would have done more than just rape and steal. I feel like killing the dogs and burning David was overboard and odd for a routine rape. ~ Thomas
Why did Coetzee include rape in Disgrace, and how does itrelate to his biography?(Stephanie and Brittany)
-The theme of rape in Disgrace has many different elements, most of which leads back to the time period in which the novel was written. Lurie's failed relationships with the women in his life ultimately leads his disgrace, the question is, why do his relationships with women take center stage in the novel? Some of the elements Coetzee uses surrounding the rapes in the novel and their consequences may come from feelings that he had experienced in his personal life. Growing up anti-apartheid in an aparthied government, he expressed his feelings of alienation from his fellow Afrikaners in his biography Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life. His sense of alienation from those around him is seen in Disgrace with Lurie and his fellow professors after the affair becomes public, between Lurie and his daughter Lucy, and Lucy after her rape. Coetzee also describes in his biography about the laws that divided the different races in his land and how that served to further alienate him from everyone else. This is obviously seen in Disgrace between David and Lucy and their South African neighbors. The theme of dominance in relation to rape is also seen in his biography, growing up with anti-apartheid parents and also voicing his outrage on the Vietnam war, the dominance that one race or group of people imposes on another is seen in Disgrace, in the post-apartheid era Lucy's rape is seen as the act of the rapists asserting their dominance over her. With Professor Lurie also, even though his might be more sub-conscious, it is clear from some of Melanie's reactions to him that she believes that he posseses some kind of dominance over her.
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]]>Pictures
anitrape.bmp
http://www.hippopress.com/books/disgrace.html
]]>
anitrape.bmp
http://www.hippopress.com/books/disgrace.html
This page is about J. M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace. The page focuses on the topic of rape which is involved in the book. Please post your opinions and other resources about this topic in regards the Disgrace.
Stephanie S. said
at 9:49 am on Sep 23, 2009
So I'm up to Chapter 7 now....and this book is very interesting and confusing at the same time.....I'm starting to think that Melanie is either a master at manipulating people or she is one of the most spineless people I've ever heard of. I don't think I've ever gotten this mad at a book character before. Sure, what Prof Lurie did was wrong in my mind, but for Melanie to switch sides like that is totally not fair. On the other hand, if I were to ever meet Prof Lurie all I would have to say to him is that your SOL, you banged a student knowing full well what the worst was that could happen, and it happened, so you deserve everything you got. Can you tell I'm sleep-deprived yet? Everything is making me mad this week. So I just thought I'd post something that was related to the novel, so we'd look like more of a group that was actually doing something, lol. Ok I'm going to stop rambling now.
Stephanie S. said
at 10:00 am on Sep 23, 2009
Hey Brittany, I finally went to the link and looked at the article you had posted when we first set this group up. It makes a lot sense. Disgrace is kind of a crappy book, and even though I find it interesting, it really doesn't accomplish anything. Like I still couldn't tell you what the author was trying to accomplish with this story, something about Africa? haha I don't know. But it did make me realize that this book has the weakest characters that I have ever read about out of all of the books that I've had to read. The whole tone of the book is a sad acceptance of one's present situation, and there isn't any resolve or determination to make it better. It definitely doesn't make me feel good about myself, but I'm not sure it that was the objective of the author in the first place.
Brittany W. said
at 1:24 pm on Sep 23, 2009
Yeah I kinda agree with the whole sad acceptance thing. It kinda brings your mood down a bit when you read it :( The story is one of the most typical stories out there, and the book does not add a good twist to it. I'm almost at chapter 9 and it had my attention at first and now i'm just bored with it. I don't know, Professor Lurie is not a bad guy, he's just boring! Lol
Juan said
at 9:42 am on Sep 25, 2009
man if i was in that situation i would of had to kick some butt with those guys!!!!
Stephanie S. said
at 9:54 am on Sep 25, 2009
hey guys thought this link would help if any of y'all were having trouble reading the book
http://www.gradesaver.com/disgrace/study-guide/essay-questions/
Juan said
at 9:48 pm on Sep 30, 2009
ok finished the book. and i gotta say the ending blew!!! it just made a depressing story even more depressing...
Sam Hizer said
at 10:28 pm on Oct 7, 2009
To comment on Stephanie's comment about Ch. 7, yeah Melanie switched sides but at the same time you have to look at what caused it. She went to Lurie's after having a fight with her boyfriend. Why she went there of all places. In a way it was irrational, well in my opinion, but when she realized it she did what she had to. He wouldn't leave her alone and not to mention his abuse of power to get all of her information. I will agree with he had it coming.
Stephanie S. said
at 6:46 pm on Oct 15, 2009
He at fault as much as melanie is, even thought I think she was manipulated at some point it still made me mad that she didn't do anything
Stephanie S. said
at 5:46 pm on Oct 18, 2009
This is to Question Numero Uno: I think in the beginning that Melanie was a willing participant, even though it seemed less that way as the relationship went on. But my opinion is that, even though she might have had all of these other factors that were effecting the relationship she had with Prof Lurie, that it was ultimately her responsibility to take charge of the situation and stand up for herself. That's why a part of me still sees her as a kind of manipulator, that she was still in that relationship in order to get something out of Prof Lurie that she wanted. Somebody should slap her, hard.
Josh Atnip said
at 7:28 pm on Oct 21, 2009
Thank my group for those pics haha...Im afraid my parents might see I was googling pics of "rape" on the internet and get suspicious haha....and on your views of Melanie I totally agree, as I read that part of the book I kept expecting her to get off her sorry tail and handle the situation but it never came....seems "it never came" for a lot of characters in this book which is why I hated it so much...people with a lack of backbone make me sick...but thats one man's rant, whats your take?
Questions from the Class:
Questions: What was Lurie's motivation for "raping" Melanie? And why did Coetzee put this in the story?
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Stephanie S. said
at 9:49 am on Sep 23, 2009
So I'm up to Chapter 7 now....and this book is very interesting and confusing at the same time.....I'm starting to think that Melanie is either a master at manipulating people or she is one of the most spineless people I've ever heard of. I don't think I've ever gotten this mad at a book character before. Sure, what Prof Lurie did was wrong in my mind, but for Melanie to switch sides like that is totally not fair. On the other hand, if I were to ever meet Prof Lurie all I would have to say to him is that your SOL, you banged a student knowing full well what the worst was that could happen, and it happened, so you deserve everything you got. Can you tell I'm sleep-deprived yet? Everything is making me mad this week. So I just thought I'd post something that was related to the novel, so we'd look like more of a group that was actually doing something, lol. Ok I'm going to stop rambling now.
Stephanie S. said
at 10:00 am on Sep 23, 2009
Hey Brittany, I finally went to the link and looked at the article you had posted when we first set this group up. It makes a lot sense. Disgrace is kind of a crappy book, and even though I find it interesting, it really doesn't accomplish anything. Like I still couldn't tell you what the author was trying to accomplish with this story, something about Africa? haha I don't know. But it did make me realize that this book has the weakest characters that I have ever read about out of all of the books that I've had to read. The whole tone of the book is a sad acceptance of one's present situation, and there isn't any resolve or determination to make it better. It definitely doesn't make me feel good about myself, but I'm not sure it that was the objective of the author in the first place.
Brittany W. said
at 1:24 pm on Sep 23, 2009
Yeah I kinda agree with the whole sad acceptance thing. It kinda brings your mood down a bit when you read it :( The story is one of the most typical stories out there, and the book does not add a good twist to it. I'm almost at chapter 9 and it had my attention at first and now i'm just bored with it. I don't know, Professor Lurie is not a bad guy, he's just boring! Lol
Juan said
at 9:42 am on Sep 25, 2009
man if i was in that situation i would of had to kick some butt with those guys!!!!
Stephanie S. said
at 9:54 am on Sep 25, 2009
hey guys thought this link would help if any of y'all were having trouble reading the book
http://www.gradesaver.com/disgrace/study-guide/essay-questions/
Juan said
at 9:48 pm on Sep 30, 2009
ok finished the book. and i gotta say the ending blew!!! it just made a depressing story even more depressing...
Sam Hizer said
at 10:28 pm on Oct 7, 2009
To comment on Stephanie's comment about Ch. 7, yeah Melanie switched sides but at the same time you have to look at what caused it. She went to Lurie's after having a fight with her boyfriend. Why she went there of all places. In a way it was irrational, well in my opinion, but when she realized it she did what she had to. He wouldn't leave her alone and not to mention his abuse of power to get all of her information. I will agree with he had it coming.
Stephanie S. said
at 6:46 pm on Oct 15, 2009
He at fault as much as melanie is, even thought I think she was manipulated at some point it still made me mad that she didn't do anything
Stephanie S. said
at 5:46 pm on Oct 18, 2009
This is to Question Numero Uno: I think in the beginning that Melanie was a willing participant, even though it seemed less that way as the relationship went on. But my opinion is that, even though she might have had all of these other factors that were effecting the relationship she had with Prof Lurie, that it was ultimately her responsibility to take charge of the situation and stand up for herself. That's why a part of me still sees her as a kind of manipulator, that she was still in that relationship in order to get something out of Prof Lurie that she wanted. Somebody should slap her, hard.
Josh Atnip said
at 7:28 pm on Oct 21, 2009
Thank my group for those pics haha...Im afraid my parents might see I was googling pics of "rape" on the internet and get suspicious haha....and on your views of Melanie I totally agree, as I read that part of the book I kept expecting her to get off her sorry tail and handle the situation but it never came....seems "it never came" for a lot of characters in this book which is why I hated it so much...people with a lack of backbone make me sick...but thats one man's rant, whats your take?
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anitrape.bmp
http://www.hippopress.com/books/disgrace.html
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Ryohsuke
I still don't know the real reason why he kills the dog at the end.
Kota
I think he is helping veterinary hospital, so he has to kill dogs which have something wrong in their body.
At the end, he kills a dog that he has grown fond of without resistance. I guess this means that he gave up to live as an intellectual in the city, and he is going to continue helping in countryside of South Africa. He might think he has to leave himself to the reality to live in future.
Caitlin
I like your point Kota about David leaving intellectualism and the city. I hadn't really thought about that.
Ryoya
There is no ending in a real life. This is what I feel about this book's end. Whatever a life goes, ending never come until dying...
A disgrace life is really suffering
This book finish without ending. I think author tries to say that African community problems(white and black or woman's right) still not be solved like as this book not end. David's life stil be continuing with disgrace. He might repeat kiling dogs and raping after story of this book. No ending makes easy to understand this book doesn't have ending. Author finished book without ending on purpose.
Ryohsuke
I agree with your opinion. I think Lurie finds some purposes of his life through the job of killing dogs, which is based on many disgraces he have experienced or done. The author may be implying that Lurie's disgrace would continue along his life.
Martin
I was listening to a Grateful Dead song on the way to class "Ramble on Rose"... In the end of the song, the lyrics are:
..."Good-bye mama and papa
Good-bye jack and jill
The grass aint greener
The wine aint sweeter
Either side of the hill"...
I thought about the ending of Disgrace. For David, he tried to change his lifestyle / try something different (however extreme and distasteful) in hopes of discovering fulfillment. In the end, he may have discovered what is being said in the above lyrics. The grass aint greener and the wine aint sweeter... on the other side.
Kei
I slightly agree with Martin, but
I think that David tries to live on his way and desires to live for himself.
the dog's song at the end represents the despair of his past actions of all his life.
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A perspective of Lurie's actions with women, Soraya and Melanie.
Luries's actions with women.docx
For information on David Lurie's Relationships with Melanie and Bev Shaw.
Click link below
Disgrace Melanie vs Bev Shaw Final.docx
A perspective of Lurie's relationship with Rosalind and their divorce:
Divorce in Disgrace.odt
(3) Lurie's Relationship with Lucy
Summary and Analysis of Women in Disgrace (3).docx
Lurie's Divorce and Coetzee's Divorce are related?
Let's Think about Divorce in Disgrace.docx
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Relationshipwith
Summary and Analysis of Women in Disgrace (1).docx
(2) Lurie's Relationship with Melanie
Summary and Analysis of Women in Disgrace (2).docx
(3) Lurie's Relationship with Lucy
Summary and Analysis of Women in Disgrace (3).docx
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Summary and Analysis of David Lurie's Relationships with Women in Disgrace:
(1)Lurie's Relationshipwith Soraya(Clicklink below)
Summary and Analysis of Women in Disgrace (1).docx
]]>
http://www.healthyplace.com/abuse/escaping-hades/definition-of-rape-what-is-rape/menu-id-806/
Does Melanie think, "What can he do to me if I say no?"
Answers:
]]>
1.
of,
2.
fanciful;
3.
imbued
3.imbued with or dominated by idealism, a desire for adventure, chivalry, etc.
4.
characterized
4.characterized by a preoccupation with love or by the idealizing of love or one's
5.
displaying
6.
ardent;
7.
(usually
classical
).
8.
of or pertaining to a musical style characteristic chiefly of the 19th century and marked by the free expression of imagination and emotion, virtuosic display, experimentation with form, and the adventurous development of orchestral and piano music and opera.
9.
imaginary,
10.
noting,
David Lurie is certainly impractical, unrealistic having a "relationship" with a student. David Lurie is certainly passionate, but passionate about women? He's definitely passionate about Wordsworth and Byron, and the opera he's writing, and his daughter. Are his relationships with woman in any way romantic by the definition? Yes, yes they are---with Soraya, with Melanie, with Bev, with Lucy. But he must lead, he must be in control, and once he's lost that control, he's lost. He seeks out Melanie, invites her over, then pursues her in her own home, however, when she unexpectedly comes to his house he mentions:
"The last thing in the world he needs is for Melanis Isaacs to take up residence with him. Yet at this moment the thought is intoxicating."
Eros: From Wikipedia
Eros (Greek: Ἔρως), in Greek mythology, was the primordial god of lust, beauty, love, and intercourse; he was also worshipped as a fertility deity. His Roman counterpart was Cupid, "desire", also known as Amor, "love". In some myths, he was the son of the deities Aphrodite and Ares, but according to Plato's
Like
Dionysus,
According to tradition which was made by Eratosthenes, Eros was principally the patron of male love, while Aphrodite ruled the love between men and women.
Does David Lurie fit into being Eros’ servant?
]]>
Lurie's Ego
David Lurie starts the novel off thinking very highly of himself. He considers himself like Byron, the suave womanizer that all the ladies want. He has a difficult time understanding when women don't necessarily like or want his affections, such as in the case of Melanie, and even not realizing that Soraya was only doing a job. His ego causes himself to block out these contradicting moments, or pretend they don't exist.
He believes he can do no wrong, and comes up with excuses for his actions based on his nature, and believes them beyond his own control. He is a "servant of Eros" he says as an explanation of why he preyed on Melanie. He couldn't help it. Letching, he justifies later, is simply one trying to cling onto the last vestieges of youth that they once had, and who can blame them for that?
Over the course of the novel, one can see David's ego crumbling. He sleeps with Bev shaw because he feels that he no longer deserves the young beauties he has so brazenly pursued before.
However, he still feels he is doing Bev Shaw a "favor" by sleeping with her.
Eros: From Wikipedia
Plato's
he
Symposium he was conceived by Poros (Plenty) and Penia (Poverty) at Aphrodite's birthday. This explains the different aspects of love. Like
,
Dionysus, he was sometimes referred to as Eleutherios, "the liberator".
According to tradition which was made by
Does David Lurie fit into being Eros’ servant?
Because Eros is “the patron of male love” then yes. Eros isn’t solely concerned with relationships as he is concerned with satisfying the passion of males, which in turn comes from women. So, to answer the question, yes he is the servant of Eros.
]]>
in
-The theme of rape in Disgrace has many different elements, most of which leads back to the time period in which the novel was written. Lurie's failed relationships with the women in his life ultimately leads his disgrace, the question is, why do his relationships with women take center stage in the novel? Some of the elements Coetzee uses surrounding the rapes in the novel and their consequences may come from feelings that he had experienced in his personal life. Growing up anti-apartheid in an aparthied government, he expressed his feelings of alienation from his fellow Afrikaners in his biography Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life. His sense of alienation from those around him is seen in Disgrace with Lurie and his fellow professors after the affair becomes public, between Lurie and his daughter Lucy, and Lucy after her rape. Coetzee also describes in his biography about the laws that divided the different races in his land and how that served to further alienate him from everyone else. This is obviously seen in Disgrace between David and Lucy and their South African neighbors. The theme of dominance in relation to rape is also seen in his biography, growing up with anti-apartheid parents and also voicing his outrage on the Vietnam war, the dominance that one race or group of people imposes on another is seen in Disgrace, in the post-apartheid era Lucy's rape is seen as the act of the rapists asserting their dominance over her. With Professor Lurie also, even though his might be more sub-conscious, it is clear from some of Melanie's reactions to him that she believes that he posseses some kind of dominance over her.
do.
Author
]]>
classical
).
8.
of or pertaining to a musical style characteristic chiefly of the 19th century and marked by the free expression of imagination and emotion, virtuosic display, experimentation with form, and the adventurous development of orchestral and piano music and opera.
"To the extent that they are together, if they are together, he is the one who leads, she the one who follows. Let him not forget that."
Eros: From Wikipedia
Symposium
he was conceived by Poros (Plenty) and Penia (Poverty) at Aphrodite's birthday. This explains the different aspects of love. Like
Dionysus
, he was sometimes referred to as Eleutherios, "the liberator".
by
Eratosthenes
,
Does David Lurie fit into being Eros’ servant?
Because Eros is “the patron of male love” then yes. Eros isn’t solely concerned with relationships as he is concerned with satisfying the passion of males, which in turn comes from women. So, to answer the question, yes he is the servant of Eros.
]]>
This page is about J. M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace. The page focuses on the topic of rape which is involved in the book. Please post your opinions and other resources about this topic in regards the Disgrace.
Professor Shattuck's Students' Comments:
at 7:28 pm on Oct 21, 2009
Thank my group for those pics haha...Im afraid my parents might see I was googling pics of "rape" on the internet and get suspicious haha....and on your views of Melanie I totally agree, as I read that part of the book I kept expecting her to get off her sorry tail and handle the situation but it never came....seems "it never came" for a lot of characters in this book which is why I hated it so much...people with a lack of backbone make me sick...but thats one man's rant, whats your take?
Questions: What was Lurie's motivation for "raping" Melanie? And why did Coetzee put this in the story?
Answers:
-The motivation that Lurie has towards "raping" Melanie is that its a uncontrollable temptation. He is a man who really has nothing to live for and just looking for some free lovin basically.. Its said that in the book he grows intensely towards her and tries to find out her everyday life.. Lurie is a man who has a very high sexual appetite and really doesn't see what will happen is its refused and what the consequences are. What I believe is that Coetzee puts the rape of Melanie is the story to foreshadow what will happen to him and later basically ruin his daughters life based on his
According
-According to Coetzee's biography, he was a very shy man. He didn't drink, smoke, curse, or anything. He was very quiet and didn't leave his house often. He may have put the many rape scenes i this story as sort of his way of living another life. Most writers write books in order to step out of reality. This kinda goes into Freud's
Questions:
Do you think Melanie was raped or a willing participant?
Answers:
-To answer the first question i believe it was a full rape. She didnt want to do it in the first place and just gave in to his desires at the end. If he didnt go forward with her at all there wouldnt be a sexual relationship with them at all. Everything that has happened was cause by Lurie and Melanie was just caught by the trap. ~ Juan
Does Melanie think, "What can he do to me if I say no?"
And
-And to answer the second one she probably didnt directly think of it but more as common sense that this man is a maniac and if i refuse his wants he will do something stupid, so she just let him do what he wanted to not make matter worst than what they are. ~ Juan
Questions: What motivation did the three men have for raping Lucy?
-There may have been a few reasons the men were motivated to rape Lucy. They could have wanted to hurt her because she was a white woman. This may have been a way for them to get back at the white race for apartheid. They might have also just been bored. Delinquents tend to think of insensitive things to do in their spare time; in this case they filled their extra time with rape. Personally I believe that the three rapists were motivated by Petrus. I think that Petrus arranged the rape to most likely run Lucy away or damage her enough emotionally to where she would give up her land. It is really strange that they would just come to Lucy’s house the one day that Petrus was nowhere to be found. I feel like they were carrying out a plan orchestrated by Petrus. Because if they were self motivated I don’t believe they would have done more than just rape and steal. I feel like killing the dogs and burning David was overboard and odd for a routine rape. ~
Group Projects:
Why did Coetzee include rape in Disgrace (Stephanie and Brittany)
-The theme of rape in Disgrace has many different elements, most of which leads back to the time period in which the novel was written. Lurie's failed relationships with the women in his life ultimately leads his disgrace, the question is, why do his relationships with women take center stage in the novel? Some of the elements Coetzee uses surrounding the rapes in the novel and their consequences may come from feelings that he had experienced in his personal life. Growing up anti-apartheid in an aparthied government, he expressed his feelings of alienation from his fellow Afrikaners in his biography Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life. His sense of alienation from those around him is seen in Disgrace with Lurie and his fellow professors after the affair becomes public, between Lurie and his daughter Lucy, and Lucy after her rape. Coetzee also describes in his biography about the laws that divided the different races in his land and how that served to further alienate him from everyone else. This is obviously seen in Disgrace between David and Lucy and their South African neighbors. The theme of dominance in relation to rape is also seen in his biography, growing up with anti-apartheid parents and also voicing his outrage on the Vietnam war, the dominance that one race or group of people imposes on another is seen in Disgrace, in the post-apartheid era Lucy's rape is seen as the act of the rapists asserting their dominance over her. With Professor Lurie also, even though his might be more sub-conscious, it is clear from some of Melanie's reactions to him that she believes that he posseses some kind of dominance over her.
-Another theory would be that because Coetzee was so terribly shy in his actual life he used the novel as an excape, like most authors do.
Author Rian Malan descibes Coetzee as: "a man of almost monkish self-discipline and dedication. He does not drink, smoke or eat meat. He cycles vast distances to keep fit and spends at least an hour at his writing-desk each morning, seven days a week. A colleague who has worked with him for more than a decade claims to have seen him laugh just once. An acquaintance has attended several dinner parties where Coetzee has uttered not a single word." (qtd. In Cowley) Like it was said below, this theory relates directly to Freud's theories.
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1.
of, pertaining to, or of the nature of romance; characteristic or suggestive of the world of romance: a romantic adventure.
ardent; passionate; fervent.
7.
with
classical ).
8.
of or pertaining to a musical style characteristic chiefly of the 19th century and marked by the free expression of imagination and emotion, virtuosic display, experimentation with form, and the adventurous development of orchestral and piano music and opera.
"To the extent that they are together, if they are together, he is the one who leads, she the one who follows. Let him not forget that."
Eros: From Wikipedia
Like
Dionysus
, he was sometimes referred to as Eleutherios, "the liberator".
According to tradition which was made by
Eratosthenes
, Eros was principally the patron of male love, while Aphrodite ruled the love between men and women.
Does David Lurie fit into being Eros’ servant?
Because Eros is “the patron of male love” then yes. Eros isn’t solely concerned with relationships as he is concerned with satisfying the passion of males, which in turn comes from women. So, to answer the question, yes he is the servant of Eros.
Bev---It was a meaningless encounter. He was doing her a favor. He didn’t like her appearance, but because he’s getting older, and dying, he has to get what he can get.
Melanie---Lurie likes witty women, like Rosalind (which makes one wonder why it failed), but Melanie, Soraya, Bev are surely not witty. He obviously doesn’t know what he wants.
However- what he wants is clearly not Melanie. He does not spend any time to get to know her, but it is clear they do not share interests by their faux-'dates', when Lurie would show her things such as movies willing her to take interest, and she would not. It is obvious his only real attraction to her is his desire for her beauty. Thus, in his suconcious desire for a 'relationship', his mind starts trying to mold her into his ideals. He attempts to make her more exotic (like soraya, who he was content with). For example, he finds her name "doesn't suit her", and decides it would be better with a shifted accent to make it better. He also tries to idealize her into a submissive woman. He refuses to believe that Melanie would decide to file a complain against him herself, and decides that she must have been pressured by her family or the boy Ryan. He insists that Rosalind not blame her, that it wasn't her fault.
Soraya--- Exotic. She was what satisfied him. He wanted more, having imaginations of being that step-father, and pursuing her outside of Discreet Escorts. Again, Lurie is either trying to convince himself he doesn’t want a relationship, or Coetzee is trying to get us to believe he doesn’t. Soraya, being the first relationship in this novelalready makes the reader question Lurie and his motives.
Maybe, when they are witty, he doesn’t have control because these women can think for themselves. Lucy surely could make her own decision, and didn’t even want David’s input---this all happens after the rape. She doesn’t want anybody to know, she doesn’t go to the police, she makes arrangements with Petrus. All these things she has decided, was without Lurie’s input. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Does Lurie only prosper in his relationships with submissive women? If Melanie hadn’t ratted him out, one could say such a thing.
Does Lurie respect women?
Issues may also stem from Lurie's attitude towards women in general. David Lurie clearly doesn't regard women as his equals, he sees them as more of objects for a man's pleasure. For example, whenever he comes in contact with a lady in the novel, the very first thing he will mention will e her appearance and whether he finds it attractive or not. He especially does this with his daughter, Lucy (and her friends) and the Issacs daughters. He bases a lot on a woman's appearance.
"He does not like women who make no effort to be attractive. It is a resistance he has had to Lucy's friends before" (72).
It may stem from his subconcious ideas that women don't really own themselves, that they should desire to please him. He tries to pursuade Melanie to sleep with him by telling her
"A woman's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is part of the bounty she brings to the world. She has a duty to share it" (16)
He says it as some sort of poetic wooing, but he genuinely believes this to be true.
"She does not own herself" he believes. "Beauty does not own itself" (16).
He may instead (or also..) bring up something sexual when meeting a woman, such as past sexual relations or what he desires.
"I know your sister, I know her well... fruit of the same tree, down probably to the most intimate detail...the two of them in the same bed: an experience fit for a king" (164)
recant his thoughts upon first meeting Desiree.
"His best memories of her are still their first months together: steamy summer nights in Durban, sheets damp with perspiration. Rosalind's long, pale body thrashing this way and that in the throes of a pleasure that was hard to tell from pain" (187)
David thinks when he meets Rosalind after returning to Cape Town. Even through all the support and the years they have known each other, the first thing he thinks of is sex.
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Questions: What motivation did the three men have for raping Lucy?
There may have been a few reasons the men were motivated to rape Lucy. They could have wanted to hurt her because she was a white woman. This may have been a way for them to get back at the white race for apartheid. They might have also just been bored. Delinquents tend to think of insensitive things to do in their spare time; in this case they filled their extra time with rape. Personally I believe that the three rapists were motivated by Petrus. I think that Petrus arranged the rape to most likely run Lucy away or damage her enough emotionally to where she would give up her land. It is really strange that they would just come to Lucy’s house the one day that Petrus was nowhere to be found. I feel like they were carrying out a plan orchestrated by Petrus. Because if they were self motivated I don’t believe they would have done more than just rape and steal. I feel like killing the dogs and burning David was overboard and odd for a routine rape. ~ Thomas
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Martin
There have been a few different ideas thrown around about why David decides to kill the dog early. The suggestions range from it being a symbol of David just giving up again - all the way to the decision being a symbol that David has lost his sense of compassion. I don't strongly believe there is an end-all answer. Throughout the book, David wrongs those who respect him - who look up to him - simply to give himself immediate gratification. When David decides to kill the dog, it is licking him - trusting him - respecting him. The decision to put the dog out of its misery may be David's way of giving up the gratification he receives from man's best friend in order to do what is ultimately best for the dog. This is perhaps a new beginning to a more compassionate and disciplined David.
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1.
of, pertaining to, or of the nature of romance; characteristic or suggestive of the world of romance: a romantic adventure.
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Martin
The ending of Disgrace is unclear, inconclusive. Coetzee probably intended it that way. Whether or not a grand-slam ending occurred is left up to the reader. The purpose of the novel was to use a story to illustrate the struggles of post-apartheid South Africa and it was written in a time when there really was no conclusion to the struggles.
Discussion:
For all our comments amonst ourselves.
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How the view of the narrator affects the reader's opinion...
As I got deeper into the wiki and my research I had to keep reminding myself that we can never fully know the thoughts of the other characters, especially the rape victims, and that in turn must affect the way we read and digest the research and information in this novel. We can pick up cluesthroughDavid's thoughts and actions but that is about as much insight into the other characters as we can take in from first person perspective.
Rape in South Africa Statistics
v It’s estimated that a woman born in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped than learning to read
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3.)He
4.) Whether or not Pollux represents the next generations depends on your interpretation of the novel. Also the anwer to that question depends on what you mean by the next generation. Do you mean the next generation of black South Africans? The next generations of post apartheid South African males? In both cases I think the answer is no. For one in the novel Pollux is describe and a troubled child. Therefore, we can conclude that he is mentally unbalanced and his behavior is abnormal. Pollux behavior cannot be indicative of the next generation of black South African males because his behavior is only indicative of himself. It would be a great generalization and the use of faulty logic to think that the actions of one or even a few rogue individuals could in anyway relate to the behavior of people that are not even born yet, if the word future is interpreted literally. I think Pollux's behavior shows that is ill in a physical and metaphorical way. He may be physically sick because he has a mental disorder. He is also metaphorically sick because he does not reason well. Someone that reason well would realize that their actions has large consequences and would in most cases obviate from situations in which harm can be done to any living being. Someone that reasons well would realize that it would not be inappropriate to act irrationally because they would not want the maxim that they followed to be universalized. Instead they might follow the categorical imperative according to Kant and they would fulfill their function as a human being and action rationally by using reason well according to Aristotle. Someone with moral excellence would realize that they are apart of a human community which must interact with each other in order to survive and even progress in any way.
5.)The History of Apartheid
Thanks Dr.Shattuck.
ASHLEY: I wouldhave never realized how much David Lurie and Pollux shared in common, had it not been for reading the article by Dr. Shattuck.
Shattucktalks
Brittany: Dr. Shattuck makes a few very good points. The story of Disgrace is not only about David Luries it is more about the relationships in the story and what they represent. The similarities between David and Pullox is unreal because you as a reader are supposed to hate Pullox. This relationship also ties into the Apartheid because Pullox is black and David is white but David is just as capable of committing a crime as anyone. This could be seen as representing the blending of two cultures because there is no better representation of power than equality. Tying back to the mirror image between David and Pullox both are villains, but as Dr. Shattuck points out in the article not just mirror images but it goes as far as insinuating David is Pullox's lost twin. A twin who are both created from rape. The location of power in the apartheid system begins with power over the blacks. It blends into the story as the power of Lucy over Petrus by the land, then shifts to Petrus's power over Lucy at the end of the story representing the post-apartheid system. The post-apartheid is also represented with her bringing this child into the world. She is saying that even things in the past should not prevent functioning effectively in society together. She is making a political statement against the actions of the three men against her.
Comments on the Article "Race in Disgrace" by David Attwell from the Journal Interventions Vol 4(3) 331-334 by Cedona W: As the title suggests the article addresses the topic of race in the novle Disgrace. The article pointed out things that I did not explicitly recognize in the novel. Attwell's point is that Disgrace can be seen as a novel that has several themes that include colonial history, South African history, male power, and male sexuality. In addition, a racial theme can be seen in the novel, but Attwell does not think it is the most prominent theme. He thinks that Coetzee tries to avoid any explicit connection between the racial tension in a South African enviroment and the characters in Disgrace. Attwell states that the character Petrus (name means the rock) actions to protect Pollux could be better understood if we understand his role as a peasant. According to Attwell, Petrus protected Pollux not for any racial reason. Petrus was concerned with attaining land and protecting a male member in his family that could help him achieve that endeavor. Interestingly, the article helped me to understand David Lurie a little better especially in regards to his relationship with women. The article expresses that David Lurie has a relationship with two non white females. Both Soraya and Melanie are described as non white females. We can infer this by Coetzee's description of Soraya in the novel and the meaning of Melanie's name " the dark one." In the apartheid era any intimate relationship between white and non white people was not socially acceptable, and marriage between them was illegal. Attwell also discusses the hearing that David Lurie was apart of, which was led by Mathabane. He suggests that the other members of the panel were non white and that the desire of some of the members for David Lurie to make a public apology may have had something to do with the South African history. Maybe David Lurie's actions were more controversial because Melanie was a non white student. Some may view the rape of Lucy as indicative of the role of race in Disgrace. David Lurie even acknowledges that Lucy would act differently if the men that raped her were white. Some critics accuse Coetzee as characterizing post apartheid South Africa as a place unsafe for white people. Therefore, they assume that in post apartheid South Africa white people may be victimized by black South Africans. The rape of Lucy may be interpreted that way. However, Attwell thinks that male dominance and sexuality is a more significant theme in the novel rather than racial tension. The article was great. I definitely suggest people read it.
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desires.
**Footnotes**
(1) Dr. Janice Swanson "Sexual Health and Aging" http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/sexual-health/HA00035
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Raymond Obstfeld Disgrace in the classroom
In this article, he shows his experience, his student motivate and how to solve problems in classroom. The author think classroom needs motivation and discussion, classroom does not need one answer for one question. He think the most important thing is everybody read novel and think, then have own idea and discussion. I agree his idea. I used to think Literature is a lecture to learn lots of expressions and grammar, to get reading knowledge. I experienced lots of questions which ask the feeling of character or author. I think nobody can understand what the author thoughts, but the author. So I think the author’s classroom is very good for students, because students can have own idea and grow up the idea, and by discussion they can exchange opinion and think again.
Tetsuya Toyama
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In this article, he shows his experience, his student motivate and how to solve problems in classroom. The author think classroom needs motivation and discussion, classroom does not need one answer for one question. He think the most important thing is everybody read novel and think, then have own idea and discussion. I agree his idea. I used to think Literature is a lecture to learn lots of expressions and grammar, to get reading knowledge. I experienced lots of questions which ask the feeling of character or author. I think nobody can understand what the author thoughts, but the author. So I think the author’s classroom is very good for students, because students can have own idea and grow up the idea, and by discussion they can exchange opinion and think again.
Tetsuya Toyama
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David Lurie's Early-Novel Relationships with Melanie and Soraya
The Womanizer Beginnings in Insanity.docx
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Raymond Obstfeld Disgrace in the classroom
In this article, he shows his experience, his student motivate and how to solve problems in classroom. The author think classroom needs motivation and discussion, classroom does not need one answer for one question. He think the most important thing is everybody read novel and think, then have own idea and discussion. I agree his idea. I used to think Literature is a lecture to learn lots of expressions and grammar, to get reading knowledge. I experienced lots of questions which ask the feeling of character or author. I think nobody can understand what the author thoughts, but the author. So I think the author’s classroom is very good for students, because students can have own idea and grow up the idea, and by discussion they can exchange opinion and think again.
Tetsuya Toyama
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actions with women.doc
Coetzee and Lurie lives seem much related to one another.doc
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Disgrace in the Classroom: A Tale of two teaching strategies -Raymond Obstfeld
It is very interesting article, “Disgrace in the Classroom: A Tale of two teaching strategies,” though it is not mainly discussing Disgrace at all. I could enjoy the article because it tells how teachers feel and learn from own lectures and how they struggle to teach literature and writing. The writer of the article is a teacher who lectures creative-writing-class. The article focuses on his struggle and achievement in teaching, especially using Disgrace. For the article, Disgrace is just an example that the writer uses in order to explain how he lectures such subtle but brilliant work. Surprisingly, although the article seems using Disgrace only for the purpose to explain writer’s both thematics and techniques, there are a lot of hints to analyze and read Disgrace. For example, the writer states Coetzee’s style of writing, which is “subtle without some of the overwrought metaphors and similes.” And the passive-aggressive protagonist makes the story unsympathetic. In addition, the article touches the excellence of the opening sentence; each word has each meaning to describe the opening story. The article also gives a hint, which help understanding the dilemma between desire and justice, using one poem.
Again, the article’s main theme is not about Disgrace but teaching strategies: The Close-Reading Approach and The Shotgun Approach. However, the article is helpful to read Disgrace, and it is just interesting to read. -Ryo Miyazaki
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Coetzee and Lurie lives seem much related to one another.doc
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relationship
The photograph below is from the movie and I think it depicts Lurie's concern and love for Lucy.
Rosalind---He used to find her alluring, and witty. But more so, their relationship was based purely on sex, which is something that women just aren’t responsive to. He at least listens to her. I believe that because he no longer lusts for her, that he can get to know her.
Bev---It was a meaningless encounter. He was doing her a favor. He didn’t like her appearance, but because he’s getting older, and dying, he has to get what he can get.
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]]>The first photograph can befound on a monumenton the outskirts of Johannesburg atthe site ofa student protest ending in violence on Jun 16, 1976.
The picture is of13 yr old Hector Peterson being carried by a young man after being shot in the backby a policeman. The second is an example ofa "homeland" area where black South African's were forced to live.
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1956.
The History of South Africa 1940 - 1956
In 1934, South Africa's two parties, South Africa party and National party merged to form the United party. Purpose of the merging is reconciliation between Africaners and Whites. However, those two parties spilit over in 1939. The reason is South Africa entered World War II as an ally of Unoted Kingdom. National party opposed strongly to be an allied of United Kingdom.
In 1948, the National party was elected. This is the origin of Apartheid. The National party ruled racial segregation strictly. The White minority controlled the Black majority.
The White minority had the highest standard of living in all of Africa. The Black majority remained disadvantaged by almost every standard, including income, education, housing and life expectancy.
-Ryo M., Tetsuya T.
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people
-- Kenny Burke
4. How was violence and crime controlled during apartheid and post-apartheid periods? What are some examplesinDisgrace?
Crime has changedinSouth Africa from largely political oriented violence, tothecriminal violence they have today. Interstingly, organized crime has increased dramatically during South Africa's move towards democracy starting around 1990. Where local criminal gangs were used to upset the activities of pro-democracy activists and now gangs have grown to point where it is difficult even to measure their growth. The South African Police Service(SAPS) has a serious problem on their hands now with so much organized crime that wasn't taken care of during the Apartheid period.The bestexample of crimefrom disgrace is of course the 2 men and Pollux who rape Lucy, lit Lurie on fire, killed the dogs, and stole their car. Although thiswas a fictional situation Coetzee I believe was aiming for realism and he would know more than anyone what South African life islikein rural areas where criminals go unchecked. The police never really do anything to helpin Disgrace otherthan report the theft andassault onLurie. We don't see police in the novel really except for then and this is mainly to create a feeling of helplessnessfrom thecharacters. This isvery close to the reality ofSouth Africa'sviolent crimes. Most criminals go unpunished due toa lack of resources andmanpower of the SAPS to control the wildfire of violence that has adeath grip on the country. South Africa was ranked first for rapes per capita. It is more likely for a woman to get raped than for her to learn to read. This makes Disgrace very realistic in that one of the central themes of the novel is rape. South Africa is also second for assault and murder per capita. South Africa also has a high record for car hijackings, mainly due to low car ownership rate, which also goes along with Disgrace when they stoleLurie's car. According to government statistics murder andarmed robbery have declined in the past years inSouth Africa but rape and car hijackings have notdecreased at all. Hijacking has actually been on the increase and rape has gotten so badSouth Africa is knowas the "rape capital of the world." All this crime has lead to a largeamount of private securitiy hired to guard gated suburban communities.Even the SAPS employ private security agencies to guard specific police stations so the officers can leave to fill their obligation to control and prevent crime. Police are seen as slow and unreliable which is why private security is a popular form of protection in post-apartheid South Africa. Many levels of protection are offered from footsoldiers to security checkpoints at building entry points. There has actually been an increase in financial fraud as well and theMinister of Financewanted to establish a call center so that businesses could check the authenticity of potential business partners. Crime has increased dramatically in post-apartheid due to apoorly maintained police forcewhich doesn't hardly pursue the criminals, and a governmentthat doesn't focus on crime for the problem that itis. Coetzee's pictureof rural South Africa really doesresemble this realityboth in thenature and frequency of the crimes, and in the police's handling of them.- Daniel Mann
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After reading Disgraceit seems to methat crime was not controlled by the police, but by the actual citizens themselves. For exampleLucy had manyoptions to help her rape problem, but going to the police was just nota helpful one. In my opinionthere were three practical options for her. She could marry Petrus,move away, or buy a gun and take her defensein her own hands. I willadmit that sheprobablywould have died if she would have chosen the lastoption, but that is not the point I am trying to make. The point I am trying to make is that, that is what it took in the country during apartheid and immediate post apartheid to survive and protect oneself. One could not rely on the police, but only themselves because crime and violence were just the way of life. It was almost impossible to live during apartheid and not have violence affect your life, especially if you were living in the country or housing projects. A person had to be ready to do terrible awful things, such as murder, to just survive the day. It also seems police response to blacks did not only get better after apartheid, police response to whites seemed to get worse. For example David was fired from his job for his rape, but his daughters rape went unpunished. This is just two cases, but it seemed like a point Coetzee was trying to make in his novel.
-- Kenny Burke
Group Responses to "Dis(g)race, or White Man Writing" by Dr. Shattuck
I thought Dr. Shattucks' article is really enlightening in what Coetzee meant by alot of the character's names and in the mirroring he did in the novel.
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From my readingofDisgrace I have formed opinions on how apartheid changed people and the way they acted during this timeperiod.Drawing on my experiences with people in bad, depressingsituations I have concluded that people can only be pushed so far before they change or start to act differently. Now, in the case of apartheid nobldy could expect a race to be so cruely treated and not fight back. The human spirirt is a very strong and powerful thing that can be used for good or bad. For example it did not suprise me that there was so much violence in Disgrace. What would you expect people to do when they can not turn to police for help because the police would just harm them. I would expect them to take matters into their own hands. I am sure that it started as people jsut protecting themselves, but as things grew worse for black south africans they began to look at their situation differently. They no longer looked at the situation as protection, they saw the situaiton as a war where offensive action was needed. In short these people thought I might as well be punished and persucuted for actually doing something wrong than for the color of my skin. For example Petrus saw an oppurtunity to obtain Lucy's land from her for free just by "showing" her that she needed protection. Now this may be morally wrong, but how is one to know what is right or wrong when all they have ever been shown is wrong? Not only did this happen, but it was socially unacceptable in the eyes of Petrus and his family for David to want to confront one of the rapists. They were appalled by his anger over this because they have probably seen members of their own famliy rapped and were not able to do anything about it. So these people were relishing in the fact that the tables were turned on David. They believed that he needed to just accept what happened because rape was just an everyday thing during this time.
4. How was violence and crime controlled during apartheid and post-apartheid periods? What are some examplesinDisgrace?
Crime has changedinSouth Africa from largely political oriented violence, tothecriminal violence they have today. Interstingly, organized crime has increased dramatically during South Africa's move towards democracy starting around 1990. Where local criminal gangs were used to upset the activities of pro-democracy activists and now gangs have grown to point where it is difficult even to measure their growth. The South African Police Service(SAPS) has a serious problem on their hands now with so much organized crime that wasn't taken care of during the Apartheid period.The bestexample of crimefrom disgrace is of course the 2 men and Pollux who rape Lucy, lit Lurie on fire, killed the dogs, and stole their car. Although thiswas a fictional situation Coetzee I believe was aiming for realism and he would know more than anyone what South African life islikein rural areas where criminals go unchecked. The police never really do anything to helpin Disgrace otherthan report the theft andassault onLurie. We don't see police in the novel really except for then and this is mainly to create a feeling of helplessnessfrom thecharacters. This isvery close to the reality ofSouth Africa'sviolent crimes. Most criminals go unpunished due toa lack of resources andmanpower of the SAPS to control the wildfire of violence that has adeath grip on the country. South Africa was ranked first for rapes per capita. It is more likely for a woman to get raped than for her to learn to read. This makes Disgrace very realistic in that one of the central themes of the novel is rape. South Africa is also second for assault and murder per capita. South Africa also has a high record for car hijackings, mainly due to low car ownership rate, which also goes along with Disgrace when they stoleLurie's car. According to government statistics murder andarmed robbery have declined in the past years inSouth Africa but rape and car hijackings have notdecreased at all. Hijacking has actually been on the increase and rape has gotten so badSouth Africa is knowas the "rape capital of the world." All this crime has lead to a largeamount of private securitiy hired to guard gated suburban communities.Even the SAPS employ private security agencies to guard specific police stations so the officers can leave to fill their obligation to control and prevent crime. Police are seen as slow and unreliable which is why private security is a popular form of protection in post-apartheid South Africa. Many levels of protection are offered from footsoldiers to security checkpoints at building entry points. There has actually been an increase in financial fraud as well and theMinister of Financewanted to establish a call center so that businesses could check the authenticity of potential business partners. Crime has increased dramatically in post-apartheid due to apoorly maintained police forcewhich doesn't hardly pursue the criminals, and a governmentthat doesn't focus on crime for the problem that itis. Coetzee's pictureof rural South Africa really doesresemble this realityboth in thenature and frequency of the crimes, and in the police's handling of them.- Daniel Mann
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