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Bill Shaw
One of the three men who attack David and rape Lucy. A teenager who is somehow related to Petrus, Pollux has unidentified (or at least unspecified) cognitive challenges, though this doesn’t deter David from attacking him when he catches him watching Lucy dress through the window. This takes place shortly after Pollux moves in with Petrus, and though David wants to call the police to tell them about the young man’s presence, both Petrus and Lucy dissuade him from doing so. As such, David lets a dog maul Pollux when he finds him peeping on Lucy, all the while screaming things he’s never said before in his life, like, “Teach him a lesson, Show him his place.” These phrases draw upon the fraught history of South Africa’s tense race relations, suggesting that part of David’s scorn for Pollux has to do with the fact that the young man is black. Before he truly injures Pollux, though, Lucy rushes out and helps the boy, who runs away saying, “I will kill you!” and “We will kill you all!”
Pollux Quotes in Disgrace
The Disgrace quotes below are all either spoken by Pollux or refer to Pollux. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 15 Quotes
‘[…] Petrus is not an innocent party, Petrus is with them.’
‘Don’t shout at me, David. This is my life. I am the one who has to live here. What happened to me is my business, mine alone, not yours, and if there is one right I have it is the right not to be put on trial like this, not to have to justify myself—not to you, not to anyone else. As for Petrus, he is not some hired labourer whom I can sack because in my opinion he is mixed up with the wrong people. That’s all gone, gone with the wind.’
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Chapter 23 Quotes
‘I don’t trust him,’ he goes on. ‘He is shifty. He is like a jackal sniffing around, looking for mischief. In the old days we had a word for people like him. Deficient. Mentally deficient. Morally deficient. He should be in an institution.’
‘That is reckless talk, David. If you want to think like that, please keep it to yourself. Anyway, what you think of him is beside the point. He is here, he won’t disappear in a puff of smoke, he is a fact of life.’
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Pollux Character Timeline in Disgrace
The timeline below shows where the character Pollux appears in Disgrace. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 22
...tells him that the boy who was at Petrus’s party has returned. His name is Pollux, she explains, and he is living with Petrus. Apparently, Pollux is Petrus’s brother-in-law and has...
(full context)
...with Petrus, this time lamenting the fact that Petrus lied to him about not knowing Pollux. Now, though, Petrus doesn’t pretend to be friendly, instead saying that he’s simply protecting his...
(full context)
Chapter 23
While walking Katy the next morning, David comes upon Pollux watching Lucy dress through the window. “You swine!” he screams, slapping Pollux in the face...
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Blood leaks from Pollux’s arms, and as Lucy helps him up to bring him into the house, her “sash”...
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In the aftermath of his fight with Pollux, David finds a room in a nearby hotel and works at the Animal Welfare League...
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Chapter 24
...Several days later, he visits Lucy’s farm for the first time since the incident with Pollux. David watches her proudly as she gardens, thinking about how she has become her own...
(full context)
