Essay Questions

Outline a psychoanalytic elucidation of Norma’s bitterness.

Coetzee writes, "He (John Benard) met and married Norma while they were both graduate students at John Hopkins. Norma holds a Ph.D. in philosophy with specialism in the philosophy of mind. Having moved with him to Appleton, she had been unable to find a teaching position. This has been a cause of bitterness to her, and of conflict between the two of them." Psychoanalytically, Norma is applying Displacement to counter her frustration with joblessness. She displaces her bitterness on John although he is not the cause of her predicament. John becomes a target of the bitterness because he is closest to her; hence, an available target.

Expound Elizabeth Costello’s dominant ideology concerning animals.

Costello states, "In addressing you on the subject of animals…I will pay you the honor of skipping a recital of the horrors of their lives and deaths. Though I have no reason to believe that you have at the forefront of your minds what is being done to animals at this moment in production facilities (I hesitate to call them farms any longer), in abattoirs, in trawlers, in laboratories all over the world, I will take it that you concede me the rhetorical power to evoke these horrors and bring them home to you with adequate force." Costello holds that slaughtering of animals for human consumption is immoral and unjustifiable. Animals' rights have been violated by humans who mercilessly kill them for food. Costello suggests that animal's rights be upheld so that their lives would not be stopped abruptly.