The Theme Of Disgrace

Thesis: Betrayal leads to feeling of guilt which forces the person in search of redemption either directly or through indirect actions and gestures.

As the characters age throughout the book, their self-awareness grows significantly. An example of this is while Sophie washes “the blood off her arms and cleans the knife” (175), her bravery and loyalty shines. She evolves from a shy child to a brave, young adult; Sophie becomes willing to sacrifice her life for others rather than a child who is insecure of her deviation. Equally important, David says, “When there is that, where is the word? There is only the inadequacy of the word that exists” (166). This thought identifies how he is able to acknowledge the capacity of his own deviation and the insignificance of spoken words; David recognizes the development of his comprehension about communication with “thought shapes.” Additionally, David recalls, “A series of memories cut off what my eyes were seeing—my Aunt Harriet’s face in the water, her hair gently waving in the current; poor Anne a limp figure hanging from a beam; Sally, wringing her hands in anguish for Katherine, and in terror for herself; Sophie, degraded to a savage, sliding in the dust, with an arrow in her neck…” (197). He exhibits a vision of the Waknuk community and its dark effects upon certain individuals. Seeing that he progresses towards more sophisticated topics, his realization of these impacts identifies a growth in his overall understanding about recent ventures. In conclusion, the advancement to adulthood corresponds with the journey from innocence to

Young David is being scolded by his teacher Miss Chestnut for getting up during class 28 times to lick the light switch, pencil sharpener and among other things. She decides to send a note home with David to tell his mother that she will be visiting to talk about his behavior. While this takes place, there is another form of a power struggle going on inside a young David’s head his OCD is whispering to him that he needs to do abnormal things such as smack the heel of his shoe to his forehead.

David must pretend, not just for the remainder of the novel, but for the next forty years, to be ignorant of Frank’s crimes, and much of what is happening because his parents do not realise that he has

David after eating is shooed away, David’s grandfather Julian gives him a .22 target pistol and asks him to shoot the “goddamn coyotes”. This is Julian’s way of ensuring that David, a child, will not return for a while, so the adults can speak. David rides off the ranch on his horse Nutty. Shooting round after round not aiming at anything worthwhile until he shoots a magpie”. The shooting of the magpie represents that good people can do bad things “I realized these strange, unthought-of connections—sex and death, lust and violence, desire and degradation—are there, there, deep in even a good hearts chambers”. The emotions David experiences awakens him to a calmness he has been longing for. After “Marie’s illness, Uncle Frank’s sins, the tension between my mother and father” David “needed to kill something” to release his emotional frustration which manifested in anger. The shooting of the magpie is the symbolic for David’s change, maturing him within the night. David thinks now he has power, the power to kill, aiming at Frank he wonders if the gun had been loaded and what would happen. David is very naïve in this way, as he believes he can deal with the consequences when he clearly cannot. However, he is

Being called a disgrace can be hurtful, but are you actually one? In the book,

The presence of guilt has been felt by all human beings. As guilt grows in a

Sophie allows for doubt to pierce its way into David’s life for the first time. At the start of the novel, when David first meets Sophie, he gets an insight into a deviant’s life. She has proven to be the first blow to efficiently impact David’s thoughts and make him question the authenticity of his society’s belief system. “It is hind-sight that enables me to fix that as the day when my first small doubts started to germinate.”

My reaction to this book is simple. I am in awe. I never knew that problems of this magnitude existed. I could never read the book multiple times, because for some reason, I don’t want to comprehend the fact a person could be so ruthless. Of course we've all heard stories; Charlie Manson, Ed Gein, etc, but to hear it from this standpoint is incredible. To try to understand what must have been going on in his head is painful. Another startling point noticed is, he went from David, to the boy, and then finally to "it." His mother had stripped him

Throughout the novel, David, the protagonist is abused and tortured several times by his very own father, Joseph Strorm and his recently discovered Uncle, Gordon. David’s father is a strict believer in his religion and is unyielding on the subject of mutations and blasphemy’s. If anyone neglects to follow his beliefs and rules, he has serious consequences for them, like with David, once Joseph found out that David knows a blasphemy, he immediately subjected to abusing him for answers. David’s father continues to beat him until he receives the information he demands. David has been abused more than once by his father and this is evident when David says, “I knew well enough what that meant, but I knew well too, that with my father in his present mood, it would happened whether I told or not. I set my jaw,

A recurring theme in the character of David Bell is his inflated opinion of himself. Chapter Two begins with David stating, “I was an extremely handsome young man” (DeLillo 2.11). David continues to describe his appearance in an almost scientific manner that would appear to be simply a factual statement. When David equates his relationship with his mirror as therapeutic, however, we see how much he stakes his opinion of himself on the way he looks. “I was blue-eyed David Bell. Obviously my life depended on this fact” (DeLillo 2.11).

Guilt is defined as an emotion of regret or accountability for some offense, which drives a person to make amends in some way. Shame is defined as a painful emotion arising from the consciousness of committing something immoral. The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink, is a novel that is filled with various examples of guilt and shame. Guilt is especially important because the symbolic meaning of the story contains illustrations of both collective and personal guilt. This emphasis on guilt begs the question: “How can the novel, The Reader, be seen as a study in collective and personal guilt?” The Reader can be seen as a study in collective and personal guilt because it shows how Hanna and Michael represent the guilt of Germans communally and individually.

The content of my paper will be an analysis of Augustine’s Confessions. I will focus on the first nine chapters of the book. First, I will write an introductory page about Augustine. Second, I will explain why Augustine wrote the Confessions and the importance of the Confessions as a philosophical work. I will analyze Augustine’s view of God and show the main theme of his book, which is, the sovereign God of grace and the sovereign grace of God. I will focus on Augustine’s view of God and His grace.

Referring back to the common theme of “Innocence” and Blake’s use of children to express innocence, we may begin to conjure up ideas as to why Coetzee chose to present the character, David as a child and why there are several loose ends to the story. We are provoked by the title, The Childhood of Jesus to explore the many possibilities as to how this book works as an allegory and the parallelism between Jesus and David.

Back to Coetzee's novel with the killing and tortures of an old barbarian man and his brutalized grandson. In the book they are referred as “frank and filthy”(10) by the magistrate even though the reader perceives the growing estrangement of the magistrate towards the Empire and their inhuman deeds. There is also the scene in the book when Colonel Joll beats naked barbarians in front of the crowd "not hatred, not blood lust, but a curiosity so intense that their body are drained by it and only their eyes live, organs of a new and ravening appetite." (115). Here the magistrate estrangement towards the event and the empire is at its climax. Describing the scene as an act of atrocity proves that the magistrate is completely estranged to