A triumphant spirit: Pramoedya's literary legacy

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Sun, 05/07/2006 11:15 AM  |  Life

Norman Ince, Contributor, Jakarta

""My world was not rank and position, wages and embezzlement. My world was this earth of mankind and its problems.""
-- Minke, This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

When I was first introduced to Pramoedya Ananta Toer's fiction in 1986, I was looking forward to learning as much as I could about Indonesian culture, history, and people. With Pram I got all three, in spades. What I hadn't reckoned on, but ended up being most impressed by, however, was the sheer beauty of his storytelling.

The famous Buru Quartet is often referenced as Pram's most important literature, and for good reason: each of the four novels is brilliant. The story of Minke, a complex yet engaging character, forms the backbone of the tetralogy, but an array of other characters interact with Minke and often have their own unique stories to tell.

The entire work is set in early 20th-century Dutch East Indies, where the colonial power still reigns but faces an increasingly restive native population.

Setting the tone for what is to follow, This Earth of Mankind introduces a young protagonist who tries to establish his identity and societal role in a world full of love, hate, racial tensions, and hypocrisy. Reflecting an ambiguity borne of his confused loyalties, Minke's narrative alternates between the outrage of a Javanese aristocrat against the colonial regime and the frustration of a ""modern"" intellectual with the ""backwardness"" of his own people.

At one moment he fumes, ""Is this how people treat a raden mas and an H.B.S. student too? An educated person with the blood of the kings of Java running in him?""; the next he complains, ""What is the point in studying European science and learning, mixing with Europeans, if in the end one has to cringe anyway, slide along like a snail, and worship some little king who is probably illiterate to boot.""

Minke's intense struggle with his identity touches all of us, but especially those who are torn between two or more cultures: time the essence of Java was insulted, offended by outsiders, my feelings were also hurt. I felt so totally Javanese. But when the ignorance and stupidity of Java was mentioned, I felt European.

Though Minke's story drives the plot, Pram skillfully weaves other characters' stories into the novel. Foremost among these secondary characters are Nyai Ontosoroh and her daughter, Annelies, whose personal histories add depth and a sense of inevitability to the tragedy that unfolds.

In this colonial, male-dominated society, a native woman and her mixed-blood daughter are fated to be powerless and treated as property, but Pram ennobles them by showing the great pride and strength that one can maintain even in a losing cause.

To her parents who sold her, Nyai has these bitter words: ""Consider me your egg that has fallen from the egg rack. Broken. It's not the egg's fault."" For the daughter who she strives to raise as an independent woman, she says, ""Once in their lives people must take a stand. If not, they will never become anything.""

As much as advise her daughter, Nyai's words convey Pram's central theme not only for this novel but for the entire tetralogy. Intimate glimpses into the lives of Dutch colonizers, peasant rice farmers, native colonial officials, Chinese nationalists, Indonesian nationalists, mixed-blood children of European and Javanese descent, women sold into concubinage or the sex trade -- all illustrate the burdens and responsibilities of knowing or not knowing when to take a stand, or where to draw the lines of resistance.

In the main plots of This Earth and Mankind and Child of All Nations, Minke and Nyai Ontosoroh come together several times to make their stand against the colonial power. Though they may symbolize colonized or oppressed peoples everywhere, the power of Pram's storytelling makes them as unique and human as our own family members. In both novels, their stories build to crescendo-like endings of tension and drama, bringing tears and a sense of shocked disbelief.

While This Earth of Mankind and Child of All Nations present a remarkable cultural and political tableau of the rural society of the time, Footsteps, the third novel in the tetralogy, marks a shift in focus and a prime example of Pram's ability to create fiction around historical events. The setting moves to Jakarta, and Minke, though still a fascinating character, begins to play more of a secondary role as ""history"" emerges as Pram's true protagonist.

Aspirations of the various nationalist groups and the colonial government's responses shape Minke's decisions more than his own personal agenda, and Pram creates most of the dramatic tension through the interplay of powerful and complex political forces on a national scale

The final novel, House of Glass, completes this shift away from Minke's narrative. In a bold literary move that Pram handles to perfection, a new first-person narrator, Pangemanann (""with two n's"") takes over. As the colonial official in charge of keeping watch on and eventually using his power to destroy Minke, Pangemanann represents not only the corruption of the colonial system as a whole, but also the damaging psychological effect that such a system can have on its perpetrators.

In an ironic reversal of roles, Minke becomes the historical ""event"" that shapes his tormentor's destiny. Pangemanann cannot help but admire the man he must destroy, and in effect he seals his own personal descent into tragedy through Minke's incarceration and eventual death.

This final novel, more than any other, highlights Pram's ability to use point of view for effect. Pangemanann's narration serves two important purposes.

First, it allows the conceit that the tetralogy is a historical document -- in the final chapter Pangemanann vows to keep all of Minke's ""notes"" (the first three novels) and pass on his own notes (the fourth novel) for others to publish. Second, the narration from this point of view puts the burden of justification for its actions on the shoulders of the government and its officials, and Pram effectively shows that there were no moral grounds on which to imprison Minke, and by extension, Pram and the other political prisoners sent to Buru island.

Pram's short stories, though perhaps less well known, are equally as impressive and usually tell tales as tragic. Tales from Blora, for example, reveals the circumstances and struggles of the disadvantaged in rural Javanese society.

Ahyat, a young boy whose father sided with the Dutch during the war for independence, suffers humiliation from his teachers and peers; Inem, an eight-year-old girl given away in an arranged marriage, suffers physical abuse at the hands of her husband and later is ostracized by the community when she is suddenly divorced; Diah, caught with her sisters in the chaotic world of 1940's Java, suffers poverty and loss of home and family at the hands of her community's successive occupying troops -- Japanese, Dutch, communist, nationalist.

Tales from Djakarta, meanwhile, portrays characters from all walks of urban life, including criminals, prostitutes, high-ranking government officials, and upper-class housewives. Rather than focus exclusively on suffering, Pram also examines the decay of moral values in a rapidly changing and often chaotic society.

Pramoedya's fiction uncompromisingly focuses on the struggle of characters to cope with situations beyond their control. Each of his characters, so wonderfully unique, manages to portray a universal reality that crosses barriers of time, age, race and gender.

The range of these characters is impressive: Minke, the Indonesian nationalist who confronts colonial suppression; Ahyat, the ""outcast"" who suffers humiliation at school; Sanikem, Annelies, Inem, The Girl from the Coast females who all face being treated as ""property""; Jean Marais, the French artist who bears the scars of a mercenary past; Pangemanann, the Manadonese official who sells his soul to perform his duty ... the list goes on and on.

Pram paints the portraits of people and their problems, without offering any solutions. Yet despite all the hardship, his works convey a feeling of hope, that no matter what the circumstances, the human spirit will shine on.

The writer currently teaches literature to high school students at Jakarta International School, and has previously included Pramoedya Ananta Toer's fiction as part of a world literature rubric.

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