Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s “This Earth of Mankind”

Being a country once dominated by the colonial powers, Dutch and Japanese respectively, literary and cultural development in Indonesia come hand in hand with nationalism. There was a degree of captivation and interest of the native population, the Western-educated native aristocracy in particular, to Western institutions, cultural styles, and political ideas. Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s “This Earth of Mankind” highlights the reality of Dutch colonial government in Indonesia, which was driven with contradictions between the desire to control the locals and the desire to bring them progress, as well as the portrayal of women in the society through the lives of Minke and Nyai Ontosoroh.

Minke is a young intelligent man who struggles to seek his identity in his own land that places his native people at the bottom of the social hierarchy in the Dutch East Indies. He believes that he belongs to his people when he utters, “I had no European blood in my body.” (Toer: 20) However, he who had received a modern education in Netherlands, were beginning to feel the weight of the colonial oppression. He begins to think more of his identity when he encounters a concubine of a Dutch official, Nyai Ontosoroh. Her statement gives him some sense of the hypocrisy of the Dutch when she utters, “You could study for years and years, and no matter what you studied, your spirit will be educated to do the same thing: to admire Europeans without limits or ends, so that you no longer know who you are and where you are." (Toer: 336) This declaration of Nyai’s seems to awaken and shape his national consciousness.

Minke finds him helpless when his wife, Annelies is taken away from him. Despite being Western-educated, he still couldn’t defend his wife simply because he is a native. However, he gains his strength and courage when his mother-in-law, Nyai Ontosoroh keeps encouraging him to fight for his rights. This is clearly depicted when she says, “Even if we don’t have a lawyer, we will be the first Natives to oppose the European court” (Toer: 332) In his article, “The Social and Intellectual Ideas of Indonesian Writers, 1920-1945”, Tham Seong Chee posits that the emerging modern educated Indonesian elites were frustrated because they were denied access to positions of authority in the colonial civil service. (Tham: 102) Hence, this leads to another consciousness in Minke which is the consciousness that a racial gulf separated the native community from that of the Dutch.

Another issue highlighted in this novel is the injustice treatment of the women as can be seen through a strong character, Nyai Ontosoroh. She is being treated unfairly because, like Minke, she is also a native and worse still, a concubine who is looked down upon. Hence she has “no business with this court”. (Toer: 329) Her rights have been denied by the Western court and she despises the idea of it. Her awareness and hatred towards the Europeans are illustrated, “In the end,’’ she said later in a soft voice, “the issue is always the same: European against Native, against me. Remember this well: It is Europe that swallows up Natives while torturing us sadistically…Eu-r-ope…only their skin is white,’’ she swore. “Their hearts are full of nothing but hate.” (Toer: 329)

The conclusion that can be drawn from this novel is that not everything from the West is good. Minke being naïve and accepts the Western culture wholeheartedly does not bring any good to him. Instead, his acceptance of the Western, the Dutch in specific, is shaking his fundamentals of his own culture and forces the natives to comply with the rules of the Western, the rule that is so unfamiliar and irrelevant to their context. Besides seeking for identity, Toer also explores the inhumane treatment of women, the nyais specifically, and the human system that degrades them and brings them down in the eyes of the society.