Teaching J. M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace has revealed new complexities in the book and in my teaching, and not just because my students' reactions were different from what I expected. When I'm teaching fiction I usually ask students to reflect on the sympathy they feel with the protagonist of the narrative, and how that sympathy is established. But this novel exposes the tenuous dangers of sympathetic reading, challenging readers to examine our judgments in the light of eloquent expression.

These were fifteen willing students from various disciplines, taking an introductory literature course to fulfill a general education requirement at the University of Redlands. Though I had warned them about the violence in the novel, they weren't really disturbed by that. In fact, they were very willing to confront the difficult sexual and racial questions raised by the narrative. But they were outraged at the protagonist David Lurie for his transgressions. The more strongly I defended David's reflections on his own failings, the more determined were my students to find him guilty, and so the opposition between their reading and mine, quite a natural occurrence in teaching, became more pronounced.