You act as if everything I do is part of your life story. You are the main character; I'm a minor character who doesn't appear until halfway through the film. Well, contrary to popular belief, people are not divided into majors and minors. I am not a minor. I have a life of my own, as important to me as yours is to you, and in my life I am the one who makes the decisions (Coetzee 174) This is a touching statement made by Lucy Lurie to her father David, the protagonist and central consciousness of Misfortune. It is his response to his lack of understanding of his life choices and his lack of deep respect for anyone but himself. It is his handicap, his inability to understand anything outside of his self-reflections, and his attitude is due to a level of arrogance and sense of privilege, as he continues his attempts at self-elevation. Lucy is protesting his inability to understand his life choices and the root of his lack of deep respect for anyone but himself. When David loses his place at the University due to his arrogance, - a reading of the "disgrace" of the title, whether he feels it as such or not, - his partly conscious and partly unconscious search for reconciliation forces him to listen to the voices of previously silenced, female, and Black people represented in the passage her daughter just quoted. In his narration, David bends the scope of his story towards the difficult condition of women, rather than towards those "of colour" in a post-apartheid South African landscape. Lucy is a convenient representation for David of those who have actually fallen from grace in post-apartheid South Africa, while David represents those who have apparently fallen from grace and who evade the reality of their actions, those unapologetic and remorseless masses who excuse ... half paper. .....t of vipers. No, Professor Lurie, you may be high and mighty and have all kinds of degrees, but if I were you I would be very ashamed of myself, so help me God. If I got the wrong end of the stick, you can tell now, but I don't think so, I can see it on your face.' Lurie whispers back, “excuse me, I have business to attend to and he is leaving” (Coetzee 38). David's response to Melanie's father in the passage above only further demonstrates what echoes throughout the text. His avoidance, hypocrisy, and inability to apologize become apparent. In that scene at the beginning of the novel we see David's ability to evade a clear transgression he has committed when confronted, and thus gives us insight into the person we will depend on to tell us the story. Works Cited Coetzee, JM (2000 ) Disgrace. London: vintage.