Born in 1925, Plumdia ananda Toure is the most outstanding and representative writer after Indonesian independence. He is famous for his excellent novels in Southeast Asia.
1965, after the "September 30th Incident", Plum Dia was arrested and detained in Bulu Island and other places in 14. He didn't feel depressed or lose his artistic talent. Instead, he completed 1 1 masterpieces under extremely difficult circumstances, among which On Earth is one.
The World is the 1 part of the novel trilogy, named Blue Island, and the other three parts are Children of the Nation, Footprints and Glass House. This "four-part" story is coherent and integrated. With vivid characters and magnificent scenes, the historical picture of 1898~ 19 18, a major historical turning point, is reproduced. From 65438 to 0980, the first two parts of the trilogy "On Earth" and "Children of All Nationalities" were published one after another, which caused a sensation in Indonesian cultural circles and attracted the attention of world literary circles.
The World focuses on the love story of a pair of Indonesian youths, showing various contradictions in Indonesian society at the end of 19, and reflecting the colonial oppression of the upper class people in Indonesia. The hero of the novel, Mink, is an indigenous young student in Indonesia. He accidentally visited a white aunt, Wintosoro, and met her beautiful half-blood daughter, Annalis. They hit it off. Aunt Wintosoro tried her best to support their free love. For the sake of pure love, Mink despised all kinds of prejudices and slanders of the upper class and resisted the pressure of his family. Annalis is committed to her own choice and is willing to be the wife of the aborigines. After Mink graduated from high school, they got married according to Islamic custom. However, the good times did not last long. Annalise's half-brother in the Netherlands appealed for inheritance, citing white law to deny her mother-daughter relationship with Aunt Wintosoro and her husband-wife relationship with Mink. The unreasonable judgment of the White Court triggered an armed riot. Finally, under the pressure of military police, Anneliese was sent to Holland alone. This tragic story profoundly reveals the helplessness of the Indonesian nation under Dutch colonial rule and their resistance to oppression.
The stage center of In the World is the "Le Yi Farm" of Aunt Winto Munro's house. This farm is typical and symbolic, and it is actually a microcosm of Indonesian colonial society at that time. In this small world, the white farmer Melema and his white son Maric represent the rulers with colonial privileges; On the other hand, Melema's concubines, Aunt Wintosoro and Mink represent the bullied powerless people. Half-breed Robert and Anna Alice are divided middle classes. Although they belong to white society, they are not as good as pure white people everywhere. Robert tends to be a white father and goes to the abyss of depravity. Anna Alice closely linked her fate with the mother and lover of the aborigines. Contradictions between them revolve around love, marriage, industry and so on. It seems to be a family contradiction, but the essence is fierce national oppression and resistance. In a certain sense, it can be said that it was a concrete reflection of the basic contradictions in Indonesian colonial society at that time.
Aunt Wintosoro, the heroine, is the main character portrayed by the author. She not only has outstanding personality, but also has a strong fighting spirit against feudalism and colonial oppression, which is a symbol of Indonesian women's awakening from deep sleep. /kloc-when he was 0/4 years old, he was sold by his greedy father to the manager of the sugar factory and the Dutchman Melema as a concubine, and became a white domestic slave, ready to satisfy his master's any desire at any time. Because it is not a formal marriage, the children she gave birth to are also looked down upon by the aborigines. In the pyramid-shaped colonial society in Indonesia, indigenous women are at the bottom, and the relationship between aunt and master is slave-like, lower than handmaiden and lower than prostitute, which is a kind of women with the worst fate. From the day she was sold like an animal, she felt that her personal dignity was greatly hurt in her young mind and refused to see her biological parents again. In order to get rid of the enslaved status, she worked hard to learn culture, Dutch, raise cattle and manage farms, and dreamed of saving her lost personal dignity by improving her own value. She used her owner's annual salary as a fund, bought shares in the farm, worked hard day and night, and finally became the manager of the well-known "Le Yi Farm".
However, in colonial society, any efforts of indigenous aunts to stand on their own feet are futile. She was repeatedly hit: she went through legal procedures for her mixed-race child, but the law did not recognize her rights as a biological mother; After Melema's indulgence, the White Court in Surabaya awarded most of the inheritance to Melema's married son Maric in the Netherlands. She worked hard all the year round, but in the end she was empty-handed. Obviously, she is her own daughter, but she has to be taken to Holland far away from the ocean and watched by others. In the face of a series of tragedies caused by Dutch colonists, Aunt Wintosoro protested and accused in the Whitehall: "Who made me a concubine?" Who forced indigenous women to be aunts to Europeans? It is you who are honored as masters, you Europeans! Although she vowed not to let her tragedy happen to her daughter again, she was determined to fight for "her daughter's dignity" and used all legal means to carry out tenacious resistance, but in colonial society, this kind of personal resistance was insignificant. A woman who has knowledge of European culture and can manage a large farm independently cannot control her own destiny and protect her daughter, and the suffering of indigenous women under colonial rule and feudal oppression is unimaginable.
Mink, the hero of the novel, is a typical example of early Indonesian new intellectuals trained by western education. Born into a feudal aristocratic family, he was despised by white society just because he was an aborigine. His name is the English homonym of the white teacher calling him "hairy monkey" when he was in primary school. He became the only indigenous student in Dutch high school by virtue of his father's aristocratic status, but he was often teased and bullied by his classmates. He is smart, capable, excellent in learning, has firm national self-confidence, and does not want to be treated unfairly. He tries to show the value and significance of his existence to the white society with his own efforts and struggles. After accepting western science and culture, he gradually woke up and became the first generation of intellectuals with national consciousness in Indonesia, which was different from feudal nobles. In order to defend and protect his wife from robbery, he fought side by side with his aunt Wintosoro, and he was the first pioneer of Indonesian intellectual consciousness. He summed up the lessons from his bitter experience of colonial oppression and bullying, and began to observe the suffering of the nation from a new perspective, seeking a way out for the whole nation. In the white court, he was surprised that European teachers, his "enlighteners", would ask many "disgusting, shameless and obscene" questions. He bravely published an article attacking the inhuman trial of the White Court, forcing the school to cancel the decision to expel him. At the graduation ceremony, he boldly and proudly announced his wedding, not afraid of social prejudice and attacks. When his wife, Annalis, was unjustly sent back to Holland, he was filled with indignation and put up a final resistance. But under colonial rule, he can only do his "duty" to resist, in order to show his so-called rights "until he can't resist". As Aunt Wintosoro said to him at the end of the novel: "We resisted, my child, my child! We have done our best and made the most decent resistance! " Although Mink and Aunt Wintosoro failed in their struggle to defend their rights and interests because of their weak strength, they have realized: "Indigenous people have suffered like us all their lives, just like stones at the bottom of rivers and mountains, which have been chiseled by others and are silent. If everyone gets up and shouts like us, it will be vigorous and may be turned upside down. " Therefore, they will never stop resisting, but will definitely join the resistance of the whole nation and strive for the liberation of the whole nation.
The third protagonist in the novel is Anna Lisa. She is naive, beautiful, kind and hardworking, but sometimes she shows a fragile character. She is a half-breed. Although legally recognized as having European ancestry, she sympathizes with her mother, Aunt Wintosoro, and is willing to be an aborigine and an aborigine wife when she grows up. She is weak in the face of adversity, which reflects the general character of indigenous women who have been exploited by colonial and oppressed by feudalism for a long time.
In addition to the above three characters, the author has also successfully created many characters from all walks of life. In this novel, the author does not simply divide the characters into good guys and bad guys, let alone classify all white people as colonialists, but grasps the complexity of colonial society: ethnic contradictions are intertwined with class contradictions, white Democrats oppose white rulers, feudal traditional concepts struggle with western capitalist ideas, and so on. Giving all kinds of characters different personality characteristics makes them typical and symbolic, which makes the awakening and struggle of the Indonesian nation reflected in the novel have 65433. This shows the maturity of the author's creative thinking.
In the World is written in the first person. Mink, the protagonist of the novel, did not objectively describe the facts he heard and saw as an outsider or bystander, but poured out his personal experience and true feelings as a party and lyric protagonist, with sincere feelings. This kind of writing not only makes the story beautiful, but also makes readers feel particularly cordial and touching.
In addition, "On Earth" is the author's later work, which breaks through the traditional style formed by the author in the early stage. In addition to maintaining the advantages of meticulous description and being good at depicting the contradictions in the inner world of characters, there are also new innovations in plot structure and language. In the past, when the author unfolded the story, the structure and plot arrangement were loose and sometimes unreasonable, but this has been fundamentally changed in the world. This novel is ingenious in conception and complete and compact in structure.
"On Earth" and other "Tetralogy" are both integrated and independent. The plot is handled skillfully and properly, and the sudden pen stroke often becomes suspense, which makes the whole story ups and downs and patchwork. In order to better educate the younger generation, the author boldly adopts popular language that is easy to understand and puts philosophy in a smooth and soothing description, which has far-reaching feelings.