A Changed Man

The Change in David Lurie's attitude was a mix of his new country life and the violent attack he and his daughter suffered in the farm. After being burned, his face was not the handsome one of a 52 year old man. A man who was used to attract women and taking them to bed. His face turned repulsive, a face even kids would be scared of. The fact that he will never be able to have the same power over women has changed him deeply. Women now see David as a weak man, including the ones in town, his daughter Lucy and Bev. The situation he encountered was very unfortunate because he could not defend himself or even protect his daughter from the attackers, but the excuse people in town made for him was that he was too old and no longer capable of fighting men younger than him. This might have had hurt David's ego, but now inside him he starting to recognize that he is getting old, a thought that had never crossed his mind when he was still at the city. In the city he would never have changed. Not only because he lived in commodity but because he was around "temptation". Also because if he had never experienced the attack he would still be the Casanova he has always been. To change who he has always been, he had to experience a situation that would give a radical turn to his way of life and that would make him see that life is different from what he was accustomed. In page 121 from "Disgrace", the narrator says. "If he came for anything, it was to gather himself , gather his forces. Here he is losing himself day by day." David is no longer the man he used to be. Not the handsome, not the young, and not the Casanova. The controlling David has dissipated. Before, when he was still living in the city he would be in control of the women he was involved with, but now in the farm he follows what Lucy says. When the narrative voice says, "He gives the page to Lucy to approve"(121). It shows a perspective of David's new personality after the attack. Before the attack he never would have asked a woman for permission of any sort, instead he would do his will, and he expected it to be followed. David's manly and controlling side is getting weaker, and he is starting to let women tell him what to do, which can be very surprising because at the beginning of the novel we knew a very different David Lurie. The country and the attack, a fusion of a place and an event has changed David, but it did not changed him in order for him to be a better man, but one that starts to inspire pity.