How Is Animal Imagery Effective Throughout the Novel Disgrace?
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How is Animal Imagery Effective Throughout the Novel ‘Disgrace’?Firstly, Melanie is David’s prey because he portrays Melanie “Like a rabbit with the jaws of the fox close on it’s neck” because David is comparing himself to a fox, preying upon Melanie, who is being compared with a rabbit in this simile. This is because he sees himself as a predator towards her, closing her down and preparing to kill her which is effective because it conveys great urgency with a life or death situation. In addition, the phrase “close on it’s neck” portrays how David is a threat towards Melanie because it illustrates his lack of care for her, and his understanding of what he’s doing is wrong which is effective because it suggests how Melanie cannot control David because she is the weaker of the two and doesn’t have his respect.Secondly, David lacks morals because wonders “What should a predator expect when he intrudes into the vixen’s nest, into the home of her cubs?”. This is a rhetorical question and makes the reader think about how David’s presence may be affecting Saraya’s life because he is invading her privacy and trespassing into her home, which has effect because a home is supposed to be a place where people can be safe from people similar to David, but he has taken that away from Saraya. This is because he lacks respect for her in the same way that the predator lacks respect for the vixen and her cubs. Also, Saraya has a responsibility and a mother’s instinct to protect her children from David because he is a “predator” and is a much greater threat than if she was on her own because she has to make sure she defends her children as well as herself which conveys how animal imagery is effective because the comparison is made between the way that David treats Soraya and the way that the predator treats the vixen.
Thirdly, David knows he does a lot of bad things, he believes that he is “the worm in the apple” and turns good things bad. In this metaphor, he is worm a turning an apple bad, the apple is Melanie portraying how Melanie was a good student and David began to turn her bad when he started seeing her regularly, we know this because she dropped out of the university which is effective because it implies that she left the relieve herself from David because he has damaged her by having sex with her. Furthermore, David has compared himself with a worm spoiling an apple demonstrating how he is a man spoiling a perfectly good woman which indicates how animal imagery is effective because it suggests how he believes he is a spoiler of good things.Moreover, Melanie’s parents are very unimpressed because they “Never thought we were sending our daughter into a nest of vipers”. This metaphor claims the university is a “nest of vipers” because of what David has done with Melanie which has effect because it supports that David has damaged the reputation of the university. Additionally, the phrase “nest of vipers” has connotations of a group snakes that will attack to kill portraying how the university is full of people who will harm you because snakes provide a threat to humans because they are sly which illustrates how animal imagery is effective because vipers are feared by most humans and the quotations gives the image that the university should be too.