Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel

Cosmopolitanism and Material Ethics 109

engage with and better appreciate the outlook of others. On thank-
ing Bill Shaw (Bev’s husband) for helping them after the attack, the
latter’s hackneyed response, “What else are friends for?,” triggers a
peculiarly profound interrogation of the word’s semantic properties,
which have important introspective ramifications (p. 102):

Modern English friend from Old English freond , from freon , to love.

Does the drinking of tea seal a love-bond, in the eyes of Bill Shaw?

[... ] Yet but for Bill and Bev Shaw, but for old Ettinger, but for bonds

of some kind, where would he be now? On the ruined farm with the

broken telephone amid the dead dogs. (p. 102)

Perhaps a more important facet of the character’s transformation
is evidenced in Lurie’s agonizing decision to respect Lucy’s choice
not to press charges against the men who assaulted her. Ironically,
this decision forces Lurie to apply his professed liberal principles of
individual will and autonomy to a painful echelon of universality,
thus making him commit to the ideals he already professes to follow.
An attendant result of this is a strengthening of the character’s liberal
values, as he now faces the world with a more accepting, more tol-
erant outlook. We might observe, for instance, the uncharacteristic
humility with which Lurie receives the pious advice from Melanie’s
devout Christian father: “The path you are on is one that God has
ordained for you” (p. 174). Instead of making a snide sarcastic retort,
Lurie replies with a dignified and restrained response that respects
the views of both parties. Such a reaction—a clear departure from
his vociferously defensive behavior at the beginning of the novel—
lends support to the popular assessment, propounded by commen-
tators such as Marianne DeKoven, that Disgrace is essentially a
“salvation narrative.”^57 However, this salvation is much more com-
plicated than one brought about by psychological shock and a con-
comitant discovery of humility. The kind of change that occurs in
Lurie is one that is gained and constructed, rather than one brought
about through the destruction of his character. Such constructive
change is grounded in the emotional bonds that Lurie slowly builds
with animals (particularly dogs) and, as will now be explicated, con-
stitutes a significant component in the character’s formation of a
universally oriented ontology.