The Joycean Hero as a Treacherous Villain in J. M. Coetzee’s Summer time

Generally speaking, it could be argued that we tend to identify villainy more often with action than with thought. When we first think of a villain, we may link him or her to illegal acts (such as murder and rape). This paper will deal with a different kind of villain, one whose villainy is defined by his world view and his ideology, not just by his behaviour. I will be referring specifically to the figure of the writer as a heroic villain in the fiction of James Joyce and John Maxwell Coetzee to explore how a writer can become a villain just because of his beliefs. In order to explain this, I will take two similar examples: Gabriel Conroy, the protagonist of ‘The Dead’, the last short story of James Joyce’s Dubliners (1914), and the fictional John Coetzee, the main character of Summer time (2009), J. M. Coetzee’s fake memoirs. (In order to avoid confusion, I will be alluding to the character when I mention John Coetzee and to the author when I mention the complete name, i.e., John Maxwell Coetzee.)