the Quest For Self, Searching For a New Identity In J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace

Year 2019, Volume: 5 Issue: 2, 83 - 90, 25.12.2019

Aslı Çınar

Abstract

South African writer J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace depicts how colonialists once have the power and privilege and how it has changed with apartheidfree South Africa. As a result of this change, both the colonizer and the colonized have lost their center; dazed and confused, disoriented, they try to find their identities. The main character in the novel is David Lurie, a college professor having an affair with his student and the tragic event on his daughter’s farm as he is on kind of an exile are symbolic. The power in the country has shifted and David who is the representative of white dominant colonizer struggles. He himself is representative of the post-apartheid disorientation in Africa. His relationship with women throughout Disgrace is like the relation among Black South Africans and colonial powers Coetzee’s main character struggles as he searches for a new identity, and how hard to search for someone’s self and adopt the change in post-colonial South Africa. Searching for a new identity is one of the most important issues of Post- colonial countries. J. M. Coetzee, through his character David Lurie, shows how it is not easy to adopt the change, how it is difficult to try to find a new identity for one self.

Keywords

Post-colonialism, Quest for Self, Power shift, Violence, Identity Crisis

References

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