Analyze Lucy in Disgrace by comparing her to Lucy in William Research Paper

Analyze Lucy in Disgrace by comparing her to Lucy in William Wordsworth's The Lucy Poems. Explain at least three signi - Research Paper Example The work also dwells on themes of violence and exploitation and the indelible and tormenting lacerations they leave on the victims as well as the perpetrators. David, a professor, teaching communication in a technical university in South Africa, makes sexual advances on a vulnerable female student. He refuses to apologize and is sacked by the college authorities and he comes to his daughter Lucy’s farm to live with her. As he begins to adapt to the farming life, a gang of three black men launch an attack on the farm, beats him up and rapes his daughter. Ironically, the same callous treatment that he metes out on the women in his life rebounds on his daughter and he remains helpless, unable even to protect his daughter’s honor. The story, through the depiction of the lead character Lucy, thus portrays women as hapless subjects of male prowess and domination, which reduce them to the status of emotional wrecks. On the other hand, â€Å"Lucy,† a set of five poems wr itten by Wordsworth, an acclaimed English poet, tells the story of an unrequited love of an anonymous narrator for Lucy, an anonymous and undefined character. Contrary to the Lucy in the novel, the poems view Lucy in an entirely different perspective by objectifying her as a symbol of beauty and innocence. She represents the deep yearning and longing of the young male narrator’s unquenched heart. ... On the other hand, in â€Å"Disgrace,† Coetzee clearly provides the idea as to who Lucy is, what her conflict is and how she perceives herself as a part of the South African society and the perspectives from which that society will view her problem. Similarly, in the novel, the audience gets to know Lucy and her feelings from her perspective, through her actions and dialogs, which renders it a certain form of emotional intensity to the character. On the other hand, in Lucy poems, the audience never sees or hears Lucy in person. Whatever information the author chooses to share with the readers derives from the narrator’s perspective and the perception that this anonymous person conceives and reveals about her. Thus, the author wraps his female character in a shroud of mystery and alludes to her traits by way of using distinct and vivid imageries but ambiguous attributes to her existence such as every day she looked â€Å"Fresh as a rose in June† and the narrator l amenting, â€Å"O mercy!† on the event that she is dead (Wordsworth Poem I Lines 6, 27). From these allusions, the audience is not able to make out whether Lucy is a person who actually has lived and died, or whether she just symbolizes some aspect of nature. In contrast, Coetzee’s Lucy comes alive on the pages through the straightforward narration of the stark realities of her existence and the depiction of her vivid emotions as can be evidenced from her denial of her father’s offer to send her to Holland saying that â€Å"There is nothing you can suggest that I haven’t been through a hundred times† (Coetzee 157). This dialog illustrates the emotional trauma of the character and the conflict she undergoes, through her own narration of it.