My Reaction to Disgrace

When I first looked at the cover page I was impressed with the fact that this novel won The Booker Prize. After reading the comments on the back page I became even more interested in reading the novel. During the first few chapters, I couldn't put the book down. The chapters were short and the plot was rapidly unfolding. The style of writing is simple and leaves a lot of room for interpretation even though the speaker explains everything going on in his head. One of the things I found irritating though were the small phrases or words in different languages and the allusions referring to the life of Byron. I found myself continuously referring back to the Internet to try to find the meaning of the words and more about the mentioned allusion.

By the time I reached the climax, I began to lose interest in the story. When Lurie goes to live in the country with his daughter, the story becomes dull. The only engrossing event is the climax which is only a few pages long. From that point on there is a lot of repetition. Lurie and his daughter constantly argue about the lurid details of the attack and specifically Lucy's rape. Towards the end of the novel, Lurie becomes more absorbed in his work. For pages, he talks about the life of Lord Byron and his affair with Lady Caroline Lamb.

Finally, I reached the ending. As glad as I was to have finished the novel, I felt that the ending was very abrupt. The author leaves the reader with a sense of uncertainty. Coetzee does not verify whether Lucy marries Petrus or not, and he also hints that Lurie might have cancer.

Is Shakespeare Overrated?

Shakespeare’s work is captivating, compelling, and gripping. Readers of any era, culture, or ethnicity can relate to his works, this adds to his popularity. His works examine the different aspects of the human nature. The themes he deals with are universal making his works timeless. In Romeo and Juliet for example, Shakespeare tells the story of two lovers separated by their families. Many can relate to this since lovers have always been separated because of their differences which include class, race, age, gender…etc.

His works overflows with imagery and figurative language, he also uses poetic devices and is especially known for his puns. In “Hamlet” for example Shakespeare uses puns extensively in the following lines uttered by Hamlet:

" …This fellow might be
in's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes,
is recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers,
his recoveries: is this the fine of his fines, and
the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate
full of fine dirt?..."

Shakespeare uses images and figurative language in his sonnets allowing the readers to become engrossed in them. In one example from sonnet 29, Shakespeare uses a simile to compare his state to a lark singing in the morning.

Even though Shakespeare has proven himself to be a master playwright and poet, he is not necessarily the greatest writer of all time. Countless other poets and writers deserve to be given the same recognition. Although the number of sonnets he has written is menacing it does not mean that they are better than those written by poets throughout the centuries and in different languages. Other than the excessive use of puns, William Shakespeare’s works are not very different from the works of other great writers.

A sonnet by me

Time

Time flows carrying oblivious bystanders
Time rushes by with deceptive ease
She is impatient and unforgiving
She never lingers and always leaves

Time has no conscience, she feels no guilt
She is sometimes vindictive and always cold
She dangles strings of hope then pulls them away
Time tempts the young and tortures the old.

Those who are able to learn from her wisdom
Possess the greatest power of all
If they can befriend man's ultimate enemy
They can conquer any obstacle, big or small

Time is always watching, lurking around the corner
And only the prudent learn to embrace her.

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Do u feel like doing something crazy?! Do u want to scream?! Are u hyper from recently ingesting a large amount of coffee?! If u answered yes then leave this blog NOW! This blog was created by bored bloggers with bored bloggers and for bored bloggers to bore anyone who enters. If u are about to fall asleep or have absolutely positively nothing else whatsoever to do then this is the perfect blog for you. (N.B. many thanks to Mr. Webster for giving us the inspiration to create this blog.)

Sonnets

I found sonnets to be a very interesting as a poetic form. Since sonnets only consist of 14 stanzas, poets must incorporate a lot of meaning in a few sentences. This makes sonnets a very rich form of poetry. At the same time sonnets are precise and the speaker does not bore the reader with long sentences and unending paragraphs. In the first eight lines of Shakespear's first sonnet the speaker discusses how beauty fades as the beautiful grow old and time passes. If the beautiful are only concerned with themselves and do not share their beauty with the wold through sex it will eventually die out. In the 11th line, the speaker says,"Within thine own bud buriest thy content". Within the context of the sonnet the bud could be interpreted to mean penis and its content is the sperm. Many Shakespearean sonnets contain similar words with dual meanings making them interesting to read since the reader can interpret it differently every time.

JM Coetzee: Lurie's problem of sex

1. The first line of the novel begins with "For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sec rather well." What is the "problem" that he has solved? Has he really solved it?

David Lurie believes that he has solved the problem of sex. For him the problem is having sex without having to deal with the complications that follow. After getting married and divorced twice, he has come to realize that he does not need to be married and have children to be happy. He is content with his mediocre job and lifestyle and believes that 90 minutes of sex a week is enough to satisfy him. When the prostitute, Soraya, who he sleeps with is forced to stop working for a few weeks, he is unable to stay away from her and hires a private investigator to track her down. When he is unable to be with Soraya, he quickly finds someone else to satisfy him. He sleeps with one of his students, Melanie, who is young enough to be his daughter. Their relationship is very awkward. On the hand she is his lover, yet on the other hand she is like a daughter to him. Lurie knows the consequences of sleeping with a student but even when he realizes it has gone too far he is unable to sever all ties with her because he has quickly grown attached to her for the simple reason that she satisfies him emotionally and sexually. David Lurie believes that having sex once a week with a prostitute satisfies him but he does not realize that he is getting attached to anyone who is able to satisfy him sexually in order to fill an emotional gap.