An Analysis Of Disgrace And Slow Man From The Perspective Of Bildungsroman

John Maxwell Coetzee(1940---), a famous South African writer, is one of the most influential novelists in the modern world. He was awarded English Booker Prize respectively in 1983 and in 1999 and Nobel Prize in literature in 2003. As a responsible and prolific writer, he often holds a critical attitude towards the world in his fiction, in which, he is trying to find the promising future.Coetzee?s novels have been analyzed from different perspectives until now, such as, colonialism, historicism, feminism, racialism and modernism. This thesis makes a comprehensive analysis of the characters in his novels Disgrace and Slow Man from the angle of bildungsroman and then provides a new method to reveal the deeper meaning of these novels. At the same time, the basic moral value of the heroes and their pursuit of equal identity will be expressed.According to Professor Rui Yuping, bildungsroman, also called “initiation novel” or “education novel”, is the fiction which usually focuses on the internal and external growth of a protagonist from childhood to adulthood. But the age contains the physical age and psychological age. Thus, the change of character during the development of the whole plot is extremely important. John Maxwell Coetzee?s fictions can be considered as bildungsroman because the protagonists achieve a lot through the mistakes they have ever made in their lives. Furthermore, they are mature finally in both internal and external world.This thesis contains six parts. The first chapter is introduction which introduces the author and his famous two works Disgrace and Slow Man. The second chapter explains the study on John Maxwell Coetzee?s fictions at home and abroad. There are few people analyzing Coetzee?s works from the perspective of bildungsroman. The third chapter provides the theoretical foundations of bildungsroman, explaining the concept of bildungsroman, its origins, and its characteristics. The fourth chapter analyses the protagonists? growth in their internal world in Coetzee?s works Disgrace and Slow Man. And they achieve their growth in the process of mistakes-initiation-reposition. The fifth chapter expains the protagonists? growth in their external world in Coetzee?s works Disgrace and Slow Man. The last chapter offers a conclusion as well as significance and limitations of the thesis.The study on his fictions from the perspective of bildungsroman can help readers understand the moral and psychological development of the local white and black people in South Africa before and after the period of apartheid, which has reference value to the research on contemporary initiation of male and female in family, morality, responsibility, and society.