Kunal Bindra

Mr. Kemp

ENG 3UI

Have you ever made a negative decision in the past that ruined or changed your future
forever? Do you ever wish you could go back and change those bad experiences? In the book
“Disgrace” by J.M. Coetzee tells a story relating to poor decisions affecting one’s future. In this
novel Coetzee chose to base his novel around a character named David Lurie, a university
professor at the age of fifty-two who unfortunately makes very negative choices that ruin his
own future. Coetzee influences us that one’s future can be ruined by negative decisions such as:
trusting another without thoroughly knowing them, an action which one knows will fill their life
with regret, and not running from one’s problem however, face them with a headstrong mind.

The moral of Disgrace is to show readers not to trust another without knowing them
thoroughly. In the novel David Lurie makes a negative decision about trusting someone who he
hardly even knows. “He gets up, locks the door of his office, and looks at the paper in his hand,
trying to figure out what has happened.”(Coetzee 45) What has happened is that, David Lurie
was walking home one night when he saw one of his students walking on the same pathway as
him. He caught up to her and they started to talk and then suddenly David Lurie invites her to
his house. After that night David and his student start an affair which is one of the most
negative decisions David makes. After a while David sees that his student is not attending class
and never coming to school however he doesn’t mind because he trusts her enough to perceive
that she is possibly sick or busy. The truth is that his student is using him to get what she wants
which is getting by in life the easy way. Unfortunately, David has become so emotionally
attached to this young woman that he begins to trust her so much because he believes that he
has found his true love. “The next morning, he receives a notification saying that someone has
lodged a complaint against him. The notification says that the complaint violates article 3.1
under the universities Code of Conduct.”(Coetzee 55) This quote ties up to the first quote about
David locking his door looking at the paper in his hand with shock. The paper David is looking at
is a complaint lodged by his student. The complaint says that David Lurie harassed his student,
sexually assaulted her and also let her keep passing the class without going to any classes. This
all relates back to, trusting another without thoroughly knowing them. David only knew his
student for about 2 weeks and David thought she was his dream girl which was foolish of him.
After the negative decision he made he was a disgrace to the city and society. There are people
all around the world who make the mistake of trusting people who they hardly know. For
example, when drug dealers tell kids that the products they are selling are great quality people
trust them which is dangerous because, you never know if he is lying or telling the truth
because we do not think about it as much such as how David did not think about if her student
was honest or not. Overall Coetzee is telling us that we should always know the person we
trust. We cannot risk trusting people we hardly know because we never know what could
happen.

An action which one knows will fill their life with regret yet they do it anyway is sheer
foolishness. In the novel, David acknowledges the fact that if he begins to have an intimate
relationship with his student there will be serious consequences. However, David picks lust
over reasoning and follows through with the decision that will ultimately change his life ” I
know that if I go through with this it can cause problems but, her beauty has me trapped”
(Coetzee 39). This quote shows how David Lurie knew what the consequences were if he slept
with his student, however he chose lust over reasoning. He was thinking about what could
happen however he made a negative decision. If David thought more about what could happen
and not go through with it he would not be trapped in a world of lust. An example of people
choosing lust over reasoning is the huge conflict with Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods did the same
thing as David. He knew if he got caught with what he was doing it could have serious affects to
his future however, he did it anyways. Around the world there are many problems just like this
about people choosing lust over love. All these points tie up to the question of why do humans
have the constant feeling of need. David feels that if he had a life full of lust and passion he
would have a happy life and this relates to Tiger Woods as well because Tiger thought his life
would be better if he had many affairs with women. Coetzee is saying that we have to stop all
this foolish behaviour because it causes many problems. Coetzee is speaking the truth; people
who are ever in situations like these have to push themselves to not get deeper in what they
are doing. David Lurie had a choice however when he could’ve pushed himself to stop what he
was doing it was too late. David got to deep with his student to get out of the situation. Overall
people need to start being more careful with what they are getting into because if they get to
deep in the wrong situation such as David Lurie, they could probably ruin their own future over
something that is not worth going for.

One should not run away from his problems because it makes them worse so they
should face them with a headstrong mind. “It is 8:00 o clock in the morning and his bags are
packed to head out of the city.”(Coetzee 67) This quote is said after David’s affair with his
student. David thought it would be the best to run away from his problem rather than battle it
head on. When David leaves the city it makes his problem even worse because in his old city he
is now known as a “Coward” who cannot face his problems. David sets off to his daughter’s
house because it is far away from his old city. A lot of people in the world are afraid to face
their fears because they think running away is a better solution. When A CEO of a company
resigns because something went wrong, it is the same thing as running away from problems.
The CEO would be to afraid to fix the problem just like David Lurie because they are ashamed
or they would not have the strength to do it. Since the CEO resigns it makes the problem bigger
because he could start to have a bad reputation similar to David’s case because when he left he
was called a lot of things such as a; coward, disgrace etc. Coetzee is sending out the message of
how humans have to stop running away from whatever problem they have whether it is big or
small. There is always a way to fix it however, we think we cannot face all the hatred from the
society when we try to make things better. Coetzee does a great a job of getting his message
across through the whole book. Overall we as people have to start being more determined to
fix problems rather then run away from them because as we see in David’s case when he run
away from his problems it got worse for him.

In conclusion we need to start thinking about our decisions more carefully by; trusting
people we actually know, think more about what will happen if we make a bad decision and
stop running away from problems we have. J.M. Coetzee has written a great book discussing
these three topics and proving his point well.