Prof. David Lurie, the protagonist of J.M. Coetzee’s novel Disgrace, is portrayed as an enigmatic character. In the initial reception, the readers find him as a virile person, who gives much importance to his sexual pleasure. A professor at Cape Tech. University in the profession and a divorced man in his family life, Professor Lurie balances his emotional and intellectual life by teaching in the university and visiting professional sex workers once a week. His sexual engagement with different kinds of women in the preliminary phase of the novel makes him “a sexual predator”. However, the balance begins to deteriorate when Prof. Lurie seduces Melanie, a student in his university. The white professor seducing a black girl in post-apartheid South Africa becomes meaningful in the novel. As the plot develops, Lurie faces difficult situations: his sexual scandal with Melanie works as an exciting force, the case in the university and his dismissal from the job as rising action or complication, his daughter being raped by the black men as the climax and his acceptance of a job in animal euthanasia as the resolution of the plot. These different plot stages correspond with Prof. Lurie’s different phases in the novel: indulgence phase, denial phase, confrontation phase, realization phase, and finally, the reconciliation phase. The reconciliation phase works as the resolution and brings a paradigm shift in the protagonist’s destiny, culminating to a philosopher’s stage.
