![]() ![]() Then I talk about relevant passages from Disgrace regarding the various stages of the hero’s journey as described by Campbell. The white male protagonist Lurie in postindependent South African novel Disgrace does have power in some aspects (for instance, he conquers and seduces non-Western females) nevertheless, he loses his position in society by ruining his career and, hence, loses respect amongst his peers. Because this dissertation relates to both narratology and structuralism I provide short explanations of these 2 branches of literature criticism as presented in Peter Barry’s Beginning Theory. David Lurie is a middle-aged professor of English at Cape Technical University, where he is forced to spend most of his time teaching courses in. His turnaround comes after the attack by three men who rape his daughter. Besides Campbell’s theory, the theories of Propp and Stanford are presented and put to good use as theoretical background. This means that that David Lurie experiences a process personally which changes him in a positive direction. ![]() Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading, Derek Attridge implies that David Lurie grows on the reader through the entire novel and is a better person at the end (Attridge 183). The Ultimate Boon is usually something else but different times call for different heroes. In addition, the purpose of David Lurie’s journey lies in self-realization and self-reinvention, which isn’t common for the hero’s journey. I debate that, in spite of his less than heroic attributes, David Lurie is the protagonist of an adventure and follows Joseph Campbell’s pattern of the hero’s ditto. In this article I look at J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace from a somewhat different perspective. ![]()
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