The Man Whore!!
March 14, 2007 by marina628
*First let me say this cover is waaayy better!
I really like the fact that every outside reading we do is so interesting to me. This book really grabs the reading and hooks you right in to the saga. You have David, the multiple Soraya’s, Melanie, the jealous boyfriend, and the college faculty/staff; all pulling together for this novel/soap opera that can be predictable at times but really getting the reading thinking. Well got me thinking anyway.
David sucks you in and makes you think he’s a creepy sexual, old man, who enjoys his alone time and fancies one specific whore. He tends to stalk any woman he is involved with only pushing anything that could be, to failure. At the same time he falls for this whore who he knows isn’t really the person he’s with and has a completely different life and she slips right out of his hands. He also makes you feel bad for him when, after trying to trap a young girl into a one night stand, he falls into the trap himself.
Then he simply pleads guilty to the charges he faces at the end of chapter six, instead of any attempt to try and keep his job or make a deal with the rest of the faculty and make a statement as they wish. He holds his ground which gave me the feeling that he was trying to cover her in a way. He refrained from telling the entire story of how she turned it around and went to him. He didn’t question any of the charges he believed he father forced her to report and left it as her being completely innocent.
Melanie who is presented as an innocent student turns out to be really questionable. She’s almost really hard to figure out because she’s described as turning away when he takes off her clothes or approaches her in any way. But as soon as she turns to him and asks to spend a few nights at his place it comes back around to hit him in the face. Then all of a sudden she has a jealous boyfriend that starts following her around and commanding her actions. It’s hard to determine her true character at this point.
The first and most important Soraya that David becomes truly attached to leaves as soon as anything personal is revealed about her. The discomfort of one of her clients knowing anything about her personal life completely destroys her entire job. When she lost the control she had over him not knowing anything personal about her, she lost control of the entire situation. As for the second Soraya things didn’t last very long in that situation and I think it’s because he was looking for a quick replacement and didn’t get the really connection he was actually looking for.
He mentions how his week is complete when he sees Soraya every Thursday and that he’s not a man that needs much and essentially doesn’t need a woman to go home with him. I got the feeling that as soon as Melanie gained this closeness to him and asks to spend the night at his place his tone completely changes from certain of what he was doing with his student, to completely unsure of what was going to happen next.
The characters in this novel are so misleading and show so many different sides I really find it very interesting. I’m looking forward to reading on to see what’s going to happen next!! And it really leaves me thinking why Coetzee wrote such a novel and whether or not this is a story about himself.
I agree with you about Melanie. What’s up with her? She seems like a very confsuing character to me. The whole “rape/notrape” thing is very questionable. It makes me wonder about her and her maturity level. Good observations!
I think that Melanie is intentionally created as a character with questionable motivation. Of course, I’m commenting now that we’ve finished the book, but I’ve since learned that this is Coetzee’s genius. Female silence in this novel is a device to make the reader wonder why accounts of women, as victims, have no validating representation in art, lit and culture. This, in turn, makes the reader examine how David functions as an oppressive male within these realms.
In essence, David’s point of view, as a man, lacks vital recognition of women as beings deserving of individual recognition and respect. Dogs receive more from him. When he finally experiences the anguish of his daughter’s violation, he makes no connection between himself and the men who attacked her. Violence seems to be the division for David. He isn’t violent with Melanie, Bev or the prostitutes. Instead, he is coercive, asserting an abuse of power. He violates each woman he encounters by exploiting a cultural structure as educator and consumer in a male dominated capitalist society. To continually employ these behaviors for personal gain, David’s sense of compassion for the feminine gender obviously never changes, regardless of appearances. Man-whore indeed.