A Hero in Disgrace: The patterns of a hero in David Lurie’s twist of fate
In this essay I look at J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace from a rather different perspective. I argue that, despite his less than heroic attributes, David Lurie is the protagonist of an adventure and follows Joseph Campbell’s pattern of the hero’s ditto. Furthermore, the goal of David Lurie’s journey lies in self-realization and self-reinvention, which is not typical for the hero’s journey.