J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace

1475 Words3 Pages

The ethics of desire and shame include the main issues at the heart of Coetzee’s Disgrace. Coetzee remarks the issue of human sexual ethics in David Lurie’s desires. While some who read this novel feel distressed at David’s lack of control over his desire, David himself fairly confident in his manners. David feels no embarrasment for the actions of his manners, but rather disgrace for yielding to social pressure after taking an hypocritical apology and shame of his daughter’s raping. David claims that the relationship between Melanie lies in the ‘‘ rights of desire’’ (90). In this exclamation, David makes the contradiction between the right to desire and reproduction and opposite ideas of undesired love or rape. I will question whether the David’s treatment of women loving or immoral or David has the right to seduce or he goes into unethical areas through his desire. At the end, Coetzee claims that while it is ethical to have right to your own behavior, it is not ethical to harm others.
Coetzee claims David’s inner thoughts which include lust and desire. At the beginning of the Disgrace, David’s relationship with Soraya has ‘‘ solved the problem of sex’’. He believes that how wrong he is about Soraya when he thinks Soraya as ‘‘ too old enough to be her father’’. However, David’s desire is a hindrance in making a moral decision. His temperament is never going to change and he lives in his emotional world. Lurie missed what was going on about Soraya because she denies that she even knows who Lurie is. What urges David to follow the pleasure with her is based on the inner lustful behavior and desires arising from egoistic feelings.
David’s typical mind slides one side to another. The desire of David’s m...

... middle of paper ...

...eels for having a sexual relationship with a much older man whose manners disgust her to come to an end. Disgrace does not come from himself because of his sexual desires but rather in the eyes of others who humiliate his actions, such as Melanie cleans herself of him and tries to escape the real situation while having encountered. According to Melanie’ s situation, David remains the still and though he knows that it is unethical for his social potion, does not apologize for the desires and the relationship which has brought him great pleasure and desire.

Works Cited
Wojtyla, Karol. Love and Responsibility. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1981. Print.
Coetzee, J.M.Disgrace. London: Vintage.1999.Print.
Giles, Jana M. Of Gods and Dogs. The Postcolonial Sublime in Coetzee’s Disgrace
Wright, Laurence. David Lurie’s learning and the meaning of J.M.Coetzee’s Disgrace

Show More
Related

  • James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room

    2969 Words  | 6 Pages

    ...rget it. This negative view of homosexuality is enforced by society, which David absorbs into himself.

    Read More

  • Human or Husk: Female Agency in The Knight's Tale and The Miller's Tale

    1702 Words  | 4 Pages

    Cornelius, Michael G. "Sex and Punishment in Geoffrey Chaucer's 'The Miller's Tale.'" Human Sexuality. New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2009. 95-104. [ILL]

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Flowers Of Evil By Baudelaire

    132 Words  | 1 Pages

    Criticizing the cruelty of society, Baudelaire begins his book, Flowers of Evil, with a warning. To foreshadow the disturbing contents that his book focuses on, Baudelaire describes the unpleasant traits of men. Lured by the words of the Devil, people victimize others. Grotesque images of torture and swarming maggots exemplifies the horrors of our actions. Yes, our actions. Baudelaire puts shame to every human, including the reader, through the word “ours.” Humiliated, the reader dare not to allow himself to be guilty with the worst sin – boredom. Separated by dashes, the last sentence commands the reader to choose whether to fall to the worst or save himself a little bit of dignity. Accused and challenged, the reader is pressured to ponder

    Read More

  • Tale Of Kieu Analysis

    1226 Words  | 3 Pages

    She not only lost a newfound love, but she was also being torn away from her father, mother, and sister. However, her troubles had only just begun. Kieu and Scholar Ma left for his home—a brothel he owns and operates alongside a woman named Dame Tu. Kieu was shocked to find out how little she knew about the man she married. After learning of Kieu’s misfortune and the reason she is there, Dame Tu allowed Kieu to live in the brothel, but not be obligated to host guests (Thong 66). After many meaningless, dreary days, a man visited the brothel that appeared to be taken with Kieu (Thong 68). He offered to come under cover of night and rescue her. He came to her as promised, put her on her own horse, and they rode away. Soon into the ride, he abandoned her, and she was left lost and alone. A band of men on horses surrounded her and dragged her back to the brothel (Thong 70). It was then Kieu realized she was set up by Dame Tu, and the man never had any pure interest in her at all. Dame Tu brutally beat Kieu upon her return (Thong 70). Kieu’s heart was broken once again over her twisted fate. After her attempt to run away, Kieu was no longer allowed the privilege of not welcoming guests. Dame Tu taught her the ways to charm and ensnare men,

    Read More

  • The Battle for Power in the Garden of Eden

    617 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout their relationship, Catherine tries more and more to control David. She forces him into cutting his hair and dying it like hers. She wants him to be just as darkly tanned as she is and drink the same drinks he drinks. She begins an argument over his clippings of reviews of his books and tells him she wishes h...

    Read More

  • Theme Of Empathy In Trifles

    2049 Words  | 5 Pages

    Devising the perfect murder is a craft that has been manipulated and in practice dating back to the time of the biblical reference of Cain and Abel. In the play, “Trifles” exploration is focused on the empathy one has for a murderer who feels they have no alternative from their abuser. As a multifaceted approach, the author Glaspell gives her audience a moral conflict as to whether murder should be condemned based on the circumstances rather than the crime. Presenting Mrs. Wright as the true victim of the crime of domestic abuse rather than a murderer gives Glaspell a stage which shows her audience the power of empathy.

    Read More

  • Custom Shakespeare's Hamlet Essay: Hamlet and Gertrude

    1925 Words  | 4 Pages

    Hamlet, a play that centres on the crisis of the masculine subject and its "radical confrontation with the sexualized maternal body," foregrounds male anxiety about mothers, female sexuality, and hence, sexuality itself. Obsessed with the corruption of the flesh, Hamlet is pathologically fixated on questions of his own origin and destination -- questions which are activated by his irrepressible attraction to and disgust with the "contaminated" body of his mother. (1)

    Read More

  • Essay On A Character Is A Caricature

    965 Words  | 2 Pages

    In this it is seen that the primary utility of the novel lies in its ability to explore an array of possible existences. For these possible existences to tell us something of our actual existence, they need to be populated by living beings that are both as whole, and as flawed, as those in the real world. To achieve this the author must become the object he writes of. J.M. Coetzee states, “there is no limit to the extent to which we can think ourselves into the being of another. There are no bounds to the sympathetic imagination” (35).

    Read More

  • Destroyed by Sexuality

    990 Words  | 2 Pages

    In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, women are oversexualized, and are given no role other than to be the item of a man’s desire. The promiscuity of the only two women in the play, Gertrude and Ophelia, detracts from their power and integrity, and allows Hamlet a certain amount of control over them. Gertrude’s sexual lifestyle is often mentioned by her son, Hamlet, and Hamlet uses his knowledge of Gertrude’s sexuality as a means to criticize her. Ophelia’s sexuality initially appears to be controlled by Laertes and Polonius, and Hamlet takes advantage of the naive image that she is required to keep. However, in her later madness, Ophelia taints this image by revealing that her innocence is feigned. By exposing the sexual natures of both Gertrude and Ophelia, Hamlet strips these women of any influence they may have had, and damages their once-honourable names.

    Read More

  • David Lurie's Change In Disgrace By J. M Coetzee

    1237 Words  | 3 Pages

    David Lurie was one of the most contrasting characters I’ve ever read about. He’s been through so many rough obstacles in his life. In the novel, “Disgrace”, by J.M Coetzee, Lurie goes from prostitutes to sexual charges to nearly dying and finding out his daughter's been raped. It's safe to say he has been through hell and back. He experiences drastic changes when adjusting to different environments throughout the novel. Does this mean he changes as a person? I do believe David Lurie does change when it comes to his personal character. By looking at quotations from the novel, you can get an idea of the change of character that occurred to Lurie.

    Read More

  • Much Ado About Nothing - A Feminist Perspective of Hero

    915 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the plays female sexuality is not expressed variously through courtship, pregnancy, childbearing, and remarriage, as it is in the period.  Instead it is narrowly defined and contained by the conventions of Petrarchan love and cuckoldry.  The first idealizes women as a catalyst to male virtue, insisting on their absolute purity.  The second fears and mistrusts them for their (usually fantasized) infidelity, an infidelity that requires their actual or temporary elimination from the world of men, which then re-forms [sic] itself around the certainty of men’s shared victimization (Neely 127).

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Michel Foucault's 'The Use Of Pleasure'

    1709 Words  | 4 Pages

    This essay will analyze and critique Michel Foucault’s (1984) essay The Use of Pleasure in order to reveal certain internal weaknesses it contains and propose modifications that would strengthen his reading of sexuality as a domain of moral self-formation. In order to do so, it will present a threefold critique of his work. Firstly, it will argue that that his focus on solely the metric of pleasure divorced from its political manifestations underemphasizes state power as a structuring principle of sexuality. Secondly, it will posit that his attention to classical morality privileges written works by male elites and fails to account for the subtexts that would demonstrate other forms of morality. Finally, it will argue that the nature of actors’ resistance to moral codes, explicated through Butler’s concept of iterability and signification, is an important factor that should also be considered. As a result of this critique, this essay

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Homosexuality In Giovanni's Room

    1203 Words  | 3 Pages

    David’s mother died when he was young, he was raised by his aunt and father in Brooklyn, New York in the 1950’s. One summer during school break, David has a sexual encounter with a boy from school named Joey. The personal guilt and shame that David experienced after this encounter caused him to be hurtful to Joey in school which also led to the end of the friendship they shared prior to the affair. David knew it was not acceptable for a man to be intimate with another man, his enjoyment of this experience contributed to the feelings of shame and guilt that followed.

    Read More

  • Charles Dickens: David Copperfield

    1976 Words  | 4 Pages

    The novel generally shows that those days’ values, norms of those days are, the dilemma of the weak; equality notions in class differences, richness, and marriage among people. However, my scope is only education and family institution. First of all, I need to emphasize major conflict that are David is born fatherless, and when he is seven years old his mother marries Edward Murdstone, who is unkind and offensive to David and his mother, first event that I realized in the novel. It is a confliction between norms and values because any of societies do not accept being cruel individual behaviors. As it seen, it is unfair and unacceptable because those behaviors harm integrity of family’s values. Anyhow, David protects himself in one of his stepfather’s de...

    Read More

  • Sons and Lovers as Bildungsroman

    930 Words  | 2 Pages

    As a twentieth century novelist, essayist, and poet, David Herbert Lawrence brought the subjects of sex, psychology, and religion to the forefront of literature. One of the most widely read novels of the twentieth century, Sons and Lovers, which Lawrence wrote in 1913, produces a sense of Bildungsroman1, where the novelist re-creates his own personal experiences through the protagonist in (Niven 115). Lawrence uses Paul Morel, the protagonist in Sons and Lovers, for this form of fiction. With his mother of critical importance, Lawrence uses Freud’s Oedipus complex, creating many analyses for critics. Alfred Booth Kuttner states the Oedipus complex as: “the struggle of a man to emancipate himself from his maternal allegiance and to transfer his affections to a woman who stands outside the family circle” (277). Paul’s compromising situations with Miram Leivers and Clara Dawes, as well as the death of his ...

    Read More

More about J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace

Open Document