Cosmopolitanism and Material Ethics 101traditionally associated with passion is clearly deliberate. However,
one major difference in the rendering of Lurie’s humor and char-
acter is the use of the third-person voice, more specifically in the
form of free-indirect discourse. Although this is by no means new
in itself, Coetzee uses the mode in an innovative way that intensi-
fies the impression of Lurie’s singularity. As is substantiated below,
this narrative mode is used to advertise the presence of the narrator
at key moments so as to evoke in the reader an uncanny sense of
distance from the protagonist, which draws our attention to Lurie’s
singularity as a physical and, therefore, vulnerable being.
Although subtly achieved, the role of the novel’s narrative voice
in producing these ethical effects is of great importance. This voice
oversees a number of metafictional moments in which the hetero-
diegetic narrator appears to be in dialogue with Lurie’s thought
processes (rather than simply reflecting them). The free-indirect
discourse mode not only involves (as it always does) a privileged
access between narrator and protagonist, but is also attended by
a playful self-reflexive rapport between the two, which appears to
be actively collusive in its function as mediator, rather than solely
descriptive. When describing “Soraya,” for example, the narrator
explains that “she thinks vagabonds should be rounded up and put
to work sweeping the streets,” before passing the subtly ironic judg-
ment: “How she reconciles her opinions with her line of business he
does not ask” (p. 1). The fact that this whispered reference to Lurie’s
liberal principles (with the veiled criticism of Soraya’s conservative
and ineagalitarian politics) is made while engaging in an activity
that exploits sociopolitical inequality, clearly lends the statement a
distinctly ironic tone.
Although we witness a substantial transformation in Lurie (in no
small part a result of his experiences) much of his irreverent, sardonic,
and often supercilious manner of viewing the world remains more
or less intact by the novel’s close. By retaining many of the quirks
we witness Lurie exhibit before he makes his transition, Coetzee
therefore forces the reader to consider the character’s ethical and
ontological growth on his own terms, with all its peculiarities and
contingencies. This has the effect of confounding a clinical abstrac-
tion of Lurie—the human being—from the character’s ethical