PRIDE AND AUTHENTICITY IN
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE AND
ANAK BAJANG MENGGIRING ANGIN
A thesis presented to the Graduate Program in English Language Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement
for the Degree of Magister Humaniora (M. Hum) in
English Language Studies
by
Francisca Purnawijayanti 036332006
Sanata Dharma University Yogyakarta
STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
In the minute the committee announced that I passed the thesis defend examination, I have just realized how impossible this project for me. Right after that, the flashback of the wonderful moments with many remarkable people came to my mind. How fortunate I am that I did not only learn about intellectual things but also about love and generosity. I will always appreciate their patience in guiding me through the path.
Because of that, my gratefulness extends to the Almighty and ever-living God, Jesus Christ, and the Virgin Mary. Thank you for never counting my infidelity and laziness, that You always bring me back to Your arms. Ibu Yustina Maria Sri Utami and Drs. R. I. Soekarni, M.Pd., my dearest parents in Malang, from whom I find the living example of faith. Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Sindhunata, my inspiration, the two of few people who tough enough to follow the rough path of authenticity. Dr. Novita Dewi, M.S., M.A. (Hons.), who has abundance love and patience and who willingly to be the advisor of me, such a stubborn student. Prof. Dr. James J. Spillane, SJ, who generously provides time and love to sharpen my English, both in writing and speaking. Dr. St. Sunardi, Dr. A. Sudiarja, SJ, and Drs. FX. Siswadi, MA, my great reviewers to whom I owe guidance in producing a better thesis.
My gratitude also goes to Dr. Gabriel Possenti Sindhunata, SJ, my boss, the chairperson of BASIS, the catholic cultural magazine, Dr. Bernard Kieser, SJ and
Dr. J. Haryatmoko, SJ from whom I dig up and learns about the meaning of the daily humanity. Yulianto, Slamet Riyadi, Maya, Mas Bino, Mas Budi, and the family of Pangoentji, thank you for your support!
ABSTRACT
Francisca Purnawijayanti. 2006. Pride and Authenticity in Anak Bajang Menggiring Angin and One Hundred Years of Solitude. Yogyakarta: English Language Studies. Graduate Program. Sanata Dharma University.
Based on the assumption that literary works have capability to represent human nature, this study attempts to grasp the nature of pride and authenticity by analyzing Sindhuna ta’s Anak Bajang Menggiring Angin (1983), especially the
relationship between Ramawijaya and Dewi Sintaand Gabriel García Màrquez’s
One Hundred Years of Solitude (1972), that of Jose Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula.
This study employs, respectively, the Actancial Structural Analysis as a tool to figure out the grammar of the narratives that underpin the desire structure in the stories and the Triangular Desire Theory to unfold the desire mechanism behind the structure. By employing these theories, this study not only grasps the nature of pride and its illusion as shown by the tragedy of Ramawijaya and Jose Arcadio Buendía, but also points out the power of authenticity as shown by Dewi Sinta and Úrsula.
ABSTRAK
Francisca Purnawijayanti. 2006. Pride and Authenticity in Anak Bajang Menggiring Angin and One Hundred Years of Solitude. Yogyakarta: English Language Studies. Graduate Program. Sanata Dharma University.
Studi ini secara khusus hendak menguak kekuatan destruktif yang terkandung dalam perasaan bangga yang dimiliki oleh seseorang. Dengan mendasarkan diri pada asumsi bahwa karya sastra adalah ungkapan ekspresi dan penggambaran perilaku manusia yang sesungguhnya, studi ini menelaah hakikat kebanggaan yang terkandung dalam Anak Bajang Menggiring Angin karya
Sindhunata dalam kaitannya dengan relasi Ramawijaya dan Dewi Sinta, dan One Hundred Years of Solitude karya Gabriel García Márquez terutama mengenai
hubungan Jose Arcadio Buendía dan Úrsula.
Untuk tujuan tersebut, studi ini memakai dua alat analisis. Yang pertama adalah Analisis Stuktural Actancial yang digunakan untuk menemukan struktur cerita yang akan menghasilkan struktur hasrat yang merepresentasikan kebanggaan yang dikandung para pelaku. Dan yang kedua adalah Analisa Hasrat Segitiga yang akan menguak mekanisme hasrat yang terkandung dalam struktur cerita.
Dengan langkah tersebut, studi ini hendak mengungkap hakikat kebanggaan yang diidap oleh Ramawijaya dalam Anak Bajang Menggiring Angin dan Jose
Arcadio Buendía dalam One Hundred Years of Solitude yang ternyata sangat
destruktif. Di samping itu, dengan metode ini, studi ini juga akan mengangkat kekuatan autentisitas Dewi Sinta sebagai istri Ramawijaya dan Úrsula sebagai Jose Arcadio Buendía yang tampaknya selalu dikalahkan.
Bertitik tolak dari hal tersebut maka akan terlihat bahwa sebenarnya nilai autentisitas yang ramah pada realita hidup, pada hakikatnya adalah lebih kuat daripada kebanggaan yang ambisius. Hal ini tampak, betapa heroisme Ramawijaya dan Jose Arcadio Buendía berakhir dengan mengenaskan. Sementara, Dewi Sinta dan Úrsula, walau tertatih-tatih berhasil memenuhi panggilan hidupnya.
TABLE OF CONTENT
Chapter One: INTRODUCTION ……….. 1
Chapter Two: THEORETICAL REVIEW 10 1. Actancial Structural Analysis……… 25
2. Triangular Desire Theory ………. 33
4. Methodology ……… 39
Chapter Three: THE PORTRAIT OF PRIDE: Actancial Structural Analysis ……… 41
1. ANAK BAJANG MENGGIRING ANGIN 1.1. Narrative Elements A. Synopsis ……… 42
B. Exposition of Main Characters ……… 44
1.2. First episode: Sastra Jendra Hayuningrat Pangruwating Diyu Tragedy 48 1.3. Second episode: Cupu Manik Astagina Tragedy ……… 53
1.4. Third episode: Ayodya Throne Tragedy ……… 57
1.5. Fourth episode: Dewi Sinta Tragedy in Alengka ……… 60
1.6. Conclusion ……… 65
2. ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE 2.1. Narrative Elements A. Synopsis ……… 68
B. Exposition of Main Characters ………. 70
2.2. First episode: Tragedy of the Unbridled Imagination ……… 76
2.3. Second episode: Pride and Tragedy ……… 79
2.4. Third episode: Macondo No More, The Third Tragedy ……… 82
2.5. Conc lusion ……… 84
Chapter Four:
THE POWER OF AUTHENTICITY: Triangular Desire Analysis 88
1. The World of Pride ……… 90
2. The World of Authenticity ………. 114
3. Conclusion ………. 132
Chapter Five: CONCLUSION ……….. 136
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Although, for some people, it is still an arguable subject of discussion,
inevitably, social science and literature have a worthy closed relationship.
Imaginative utterance of literature is one contribution to the way out of social science
rigidity. To some extent, literary work’s subjectivity is much more representative
than the objectivity of social science in delivering and lifting up humanity’s
problems. For the essential role of literature, Mario Vargas Llosa, a prominent
Colombian writer as well as marginalized-sided political activist, has this to say:
Literature is the best armor that protects human being from foolish prejudice, racism, and xenophobia, sectarianism of religion and politics and exclusive nationalism. … Literary work cultivates our critical sensitivity and fight for life. Such a thing prepares us to face the reality of life, which in fact is not as sweet as we hope.1
This is how literature shapes life, in term of enlightening and softening human
being’s heart in order to be ready as a praiseworthy part of life. On the one hand,
life’s harshness might be too much to bear. On the other hand, life is too worthy to be
neglected. Through literary works, it is possible to appreciate life from both sides.
Moreover, it gives learning that humanity’s problems are not merely about scientific
matter and literature has the potent ial to enlighten social science. Even, the most
preeminent figures of social science from Ferdinand de Saussure to Edward Said
1 Vargas Llosa, Mario, “And That’s The Way Literature …,” Georgetown Magazine, Summer 2001, p.
come from or have a profound literary background. St. Sunardi highlights that literary
works have the potential to enrich and enlighten social science when he says the
following:
Social science’s duty is no longer at the quest of the most possible society structure. On the other hand, social science has to solve the problem of how the structure serves society in defining their identity. In such context, narration is a versatile tool since it is capable of bearing subjectivity and identity to its most intense and wholesome stage.2
In the light of this notion, this study attempts to see how literary works
represent and articulate a petite realm of society’s problem of identity construction,
the entanglement of pride and authenticity. Such problem is latent but the influence is
a certainty. Pride provides illusion, which is able to elevate people’s honor as high as
they want which within second drags them out from their own life. Whereas
authenticity on the other side, invites and teaches people to be loyal to their ordinary
life which might be without surprise and praise.
One of the most legendary models of this problem is the life of the beautiful
Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe3. She died at her thirty-six when she was at her peak
of outstanding popularity because of drugs about forty years ago. During her career,
her charming beauty transformed her from an unwanted girl to be the most desired
woman that men ever wanted to sleep with. Moreover it seems that that is the very
quest of her life when she said, “I am not interested in money. I just want to be
2 St. Sunardi, “Ilmu Sosial Berbasis Sastra. Catatan Awal,” BASIS, no. 11-12, November – Desember
2002, p. 8-17.
3 Review of Marylin Monroe is based on Sindhunata, “Yang Cantik dan Yang Mati,” BASIS, no.
wonderful.” And that was how the story went; she was the most wanted as well as the
most hated because of her beauty. Even today, never ending stories about her go on
being written.
She gained her pride through her fame, which had been constructed by her
society. She was a kind of devout artist in following such construction for the sake of
fame and taking a risk for losing her authenticity. And she really realized that fact
when she said, “[Hollywood is] a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a
kiss and fifty cents for your soul.” Monroe remained committed with her choice and
gave her life totally to fulfill the condition of being a star. As Richard Dyer, an expert
of celebrity says,
Someone who wants to be a star has to posses something which is worth for the most people of his/her period. Moreover, for being a great star someone has to surrender his/her own identity to the constructed imagined personality of the society.4
That is how people treated her as they wanted which in fact raised a million
dollars. They put her in an unreachable pedestal for them and for herself. As a result,
she had to face that her friends and family, even her beloved husband rejected her real
ordinary personality. Before the ending of her life, she admitted how fame that had
given her pride trapped her into unbearable sorrow:
For me, fame is only a matter of a little tiny temporary luck. Fame never satisfies my self-fulfillment. Fame gives me warmth for only a second and leaves me behind in a desolate loneliness for the rest.5
That is a confession of a woman who had achieved the kind of life dreamed
about by most people but losing her own authentic life that she herself wanted. From
such social phenomena, this study attempts to explore pride and authenticity from the
point of view of literary works.
As such, this study will use two novels, Gabriel García Márquez’s One
Hundred Years of Solitude (henceforth OHYS) and Sindhunata’s Anak Bajang Menggiring Angin (henceforth ABMA) which, at a certain point are assumed to have
similarity in theme. Despite of the similarity, in fact, these novels have differences as
well, which will not be in the account of analysis since this study is textual-based.
However, the differences of the rest of the novels’ elements might be enrichment and
complementary elements that this textual-based study attempts to draw the line of the
theme among such differences.
As such, it is necessary to look at the following brief review of those novels as
well as the background of the authors from where the differences and similarities lay
but indeed have nothing to do with the analysis since this study does not intend to be
comparative study.
At some point in their lives, both Sindhunata and Gabriel García Márquez were
journalists who always took side of the poor and the marginalized. Henceforth, they
journalistic writings.6 As a matter of fact, being the weak and the voiceless is part of
their life, both during their career and in their private lives.
To discuss first Gabriel José García Márquez, he was born on March 6, 1928 in
Aracataca, a town in Northern Colombia. He is the eldest sibling of Luisa Santiaga
Márquez Iguáran’s and Gabriel Eligio García’s eleven children. Because of his
parents’ poverty, until the age of eight, he was raised by his grandparents. García
Márquez has witnessed his mother’s greatness. He knew how Luisa Santiaga’s love
to her family was unconditional. She accepted the four illegitimate children of her
husband and raised them like her own children. She even faced harsh reality patiently
and worked very hard to earn money when her husband left her and neglected the
family. He wrote in Living to Tell the Tale (2003), the greatness of his mother during
many difficult times as follows:
It was not difficult to carry out his charge to me. My mother was becoming accustomed to inopportune and uncertain times alone, and she managed them with reluctance, but with great facility. Cooking and keeping the house in order made it necessary for even the youngest children to help in domestic duties, which they did well. During this time I felt like an adult for the first time when I realized that my brothers and sisters had begun to treat me like an uncle.7
His mother’s virtues stayed so strongly in his memory that in his memoirs his
mother is the pivotal figure described in such a way that we can easily refer to Úrsula.
Besides her mother’s love and virtue, solitude is also familiar in Márquez’s life. He
says the following while reflecting on his family’s life:
6 On 15 February 2006, Sindhunata received Lifetime Achievement Award from Persatuan Wartawan
Indonesia (Indonesian Journalist Association) for his thirty – years – dedication.
That was the state of the world when I began to be aware of my family environment, and I cannot evoke it in any other way: sorrows, grieves, uncertainties in the solitude of an immense house. For years it seems to me that this period had become a recurrent nightmare that I had almost every night, because I would wake in the morning feeling the same terror I had felt in the room with the saints. During my adolescence, when I was a student at an icy boarding school in the Andes, I would wake up crying in the middle of the night. I need this old age without remorse to understand that the misfortune of my grandparents in the house of Cataca was that they were always mired in their nostalgic memories, and the more they insisted on conjuring them the deeper they sank.8
Nicknamed Gabito or “little Gabriel”, Márquez confessed in his biography that
his family’s experience inspired his writings. He said, “I feel that all my writing has
been about the experiences of the time I spent with my grandparents.”9 His novel No
One Writes to the Colonel, for example, is based on the experience of his grandfather,
Colonel Nicolás Ricardo Márquez Mejía, as a Liberal veteran of the War of a
Thousand Days. Also, Love in the Time of Cholera is based on his parents’ tragic
love story.
It is worth noting that Márquez’s eagerness to be a writer was firmly cultivated
when he was a law student at the Universidad Nacional in Bogotá. One day, he was
given a copy of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, which profoundly affected him. Since
then he could not deny that he had absolutely no interest in his formal studies.
Eventually, he decided to leave college. This decision was his parents’ regret,
especially his father for being the oldest son, he was the ultimate hope of the family
8 García Márquez, Living to Tell The Tale, p. 66.
9 Allen B. Ruch, “The uncertain Old Man Whose Real Existence was the Simplest of His Enigmas”,
for a better future, in terms of dignity as well as prosperity. But Gabito insisted on his
choice even arguing his mother when she came to him to talk about the matter over.
“Your papá is very sad,” she said. […] “And why’s that?”
“Because you’ve left your studies.”
“I didn’t leave them. I only changed careers.” […] “Your papa says it amounts to the same thing,” she said. “He stopped studying too, to play the violin.”
[…]
“I earn a living too, writing for newspaper,” I said.
“You say that so as not to mortify me,” she said. “But even from a distance anybody can see the state you’re in. So bad I didn’t even recognize you when I saw you in the bookstore.”
“I didn’t recognize you either,” I told her.
“But not for the same reason,” she said. “I thought you were a beggar.” She looked at my worn sandals and added: “Not even any socks.”
“It’s more comfortable,” I said.”Two shirts and two pairs of undershorts: you wear one while the other’s drying. What else does anyone need?”
“A little dignity,” she said. 10
Actually, dignity is also something of his quest through writing. Since he was a
child, he felt a deep inferiority. He was a shy boy and had difficulties in studying, on
the other hand, being a writer was a premonition for him. He narrated his experience
as follows:
It was very hard for me to learn how to read. It did not seem logical for the letter m to be called em, and yet with some vowel following it you did not say ema but ma. It was impossible for me to read that way. At last, when I went to
the Montessori school, the teacher did not teach me the names of the consonants but their sounds. In this way I could read the first book (The Thousand and One Night) I found in a dusty chest in the storeroom of the
house. It was tattered and incomplete, but it involved me in so intense a way that Sara’s fiancé had a terrifying premonition as he walked by: “Damn! This kids’s going to be a writer.”
Other than his little interest to study he was really a coy boy. When he had to
take over his wandering father’s responsibility as the bread winner of the family, he
had to struggle against his timidity. Very often, he lost the chance to get a credit
because of his shyness. He says,
I never could overcome my shyness. When I had to comfort the raw responsibility our wandering father had left with us, I learned that shyness is an invincible phantom. Each time I had to ask for credit, even when it had been agreed to ahead of time in store owned by friends, I put it off for hours in the vicinity of the house, repressing my desire to cry and the cramps in my stomach, until at last I dared to go in with my jaws clenched so tight I could not speak. There was always some heartless shopkeeper who would leave me in utter confusion, “You moronic kid, you can’t talk with your mouth sho ut.” More than once I returned home with empty hands and some excuse I had invented.11
Moreover, timidity was a phantom that haunted him restlessly, even when he
had been adult and being a member of Barranquilla Group, a prestigious group of
artists in Barranquilla city. Marquez tended to talk to his imaginary person rather than
to his friends. His reflection is as follows:
I had the impression that when the group talked, each one brought his grain of sand to the disorder, and the virtues and defect of each person were confused with those of the others, but it never occurred to me that I could talk alone about art and glory with a man who had lived for years in an encyclopedia. Often, late at night, when I was reading in the solitude of my room, I imagined exciting conversations I would have liked to have with him about my literary doubts, but they melted away without a trace in the light of the sun. My shyness grew even worse when Alfonso erupted with one of his extraordinary ideas; Germán condemned one of the maestro’s hurried opinions, or Álvaro shouted out a project that drove us out of our minds.12
Instead of being a looser, Marquez’s determined dream of being a writer made
him go through his flaw. Nothing could stop him, neither poverty nor timidity. Since
he was young he has been known as talented and prolific writer that in 1946, the
editor of El Espectador hailed him as “the new genius of Colombian letters”. He read
a lot of books and wrote many articles while building consultative relationship with
many prominent writers and improving his writing skill diligently. Some of his
efforts did not result very well but it did not depress him. Even the fatal failure of
publishing Crónica magazine strengthened his spirit to be a devout writer for the rest
of his life. More to the point, he has been familiar with poverty for along time thus
the unpredictable material earning of being writers did not discourage him. In a brief
passage, he illustrated his devotion as follows:
I was not disheartened. The trip to Cataca with my mother, my historic conversation with Don Ramón Vinyes, and my deep connection to the Barranquilla Group had filled me with an encouragement that lasted for the rest of my life. From then on I did not earn a centavo except with the typewriter, and this seems more meritorious to me than one might think, because the first royalties that allowed me to live on my stories and novels were paid to me when I was in my forties, after I had published four books with the most abject earnings. Before that, my life was always agitated by a tangle of tricks, feints, and illusions intended to outwit the countless lures that tried to turn me into anything but a writer.
He risked his life to begin his career as a writer through many hungry years.
Finally, on January 1965, the epiphany which would bring his triumphant moment as
a writer happened. When he was driving to Acapulco for a vacation with his family,
he grasped the inspiration for his future outstanding novel. Since then, he wrote
result, his wife, Mercedes became the one who had to think about surviving the
family and supporting her husband. She was looking for credit, sold the car and all of
the household appliance to feed the family and keeping up paper supplies for her
husband. And when he finished the novel, he was almost poisoned from nicotine, and
got a mental and physical breakdown. That’s the entire price he had to pay when he
wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude which won the Nobel Prize in 1982.
Editorial Sudamericanos in Buenos Aires, Argentina, firstly published this
novel under the original title Cien Años de Soledad in June, 1967. OHYS had been
widely reprinted and published in English and other languages all over the world.
Indonesia, this novel had been translated under the title Seratus Tahun Kesunyian,
published by Benteng Press, Yogyakarta, 2001. This study used the English edition of
the 7th edition of the Penguin Books, which has published this novel several times
since 1972.
Since the first day of publication, within a week, all of 8,000 copies of this
novel were sold out and within three years, half a million copies were sold as well.
Before the Nobel Prize in 1982, this novel had achieved at least three prestigious
international awards. In 1969, OHYS gained the Chianchiano Prize in Italy. In the
same year it was declared as the Best Foreign Book in France. In 1970, OHYS was
published in English and chosen as one of the best twelve books of the year in the
United States.13
13 Allen B. Ruch, “The Uncertain Old Man Whose Real Existence was The Simplest of His Enigmas”,
OHYS is a long narrative fiction with a huge scope. It covers particular
moments in the history of the Latin American people with their own nature so that it
is sometimes called magical realism literature. Actually such literature is not magic.
Its aim is to express emotions, not to evoke them. More than anything else, it is an
attitude toward reality that can be expressed in popular or cultured forms, in elaborate
or rustic styles, in a closed or open structure.14 Beside One Hundred Years of
Solitude, the members of this genre are Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979), Salman Rusdhie’s Midnight’s Children (1980), and Carlos
Fuentes’s Distant Relations (1980). And the others precursors are Franz Kafka, Jorge
Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier, Octavio Paz, and Julio Cortazar.15
On his account about his choice of such genre instead of realism, Márquez
maintains that, “Realism is a kind of premeditated literature that offers too static and
exclusive a vision of reality. However good or bad they may be, they are books which
finish on the last page.” Further, he contends, “Disproportion is part of our reality too.
Our reality is in itself out of all proportion.” For that reason, a “realistic” text is
hardly a satisfactory mode, much less an accurate presentation of the thing in itself. It
means that for Márquez such a “magic” text is, paradoxically, more realistic than a
“realistic” text16. In fact, by employing magical realism, Márquez articulates people’s
14 Leal, Luis, “Magical Realism in Spanish American Literature,” in Magical Realism. Theory,
History, Community, Durham & London: Duke University Press, 1995, p. 212.
15 B. Faris, Wendy, “Scheherazade’s Children: Magical Realism and Postmodern Fiction,” in Magical
Realism. Theory, History, Community, Durham & London: Duke University Press, 1995, p. 167.
16 Simpkins, Scott, ‘Source of Magic Realism/Supplements to Realism in Comtemporary Latin
painful reality and vanity from the bottom of their heart vividly. As a result, in his
appreciation of this novel, Prof. Lars Gyllensten of Swedish Academy has this to say:
“With his stories García Márquez has created a world of his own which is a micro-cosmos. In its tumultuous, bewildering yet graphically convincing authenticity it reflects a continent and its human riches and poverty. Perhaps more than that it reflects a cosmos in which the human heart and the combined forces of history time again burst the bounds of chaos-killing and procreation.”17
Besides gaining high appreciation from literary societies, this novel has also
attained a remarkably pre-eminent place in a variety of professional interests, for
instance the South American critics, who appreciated this novel as a cultural
document of the greatest significance, and North American critics, who considered it
as the high point of early postmodernism. This novel is taught widely and in a variety
of circular context, from courses on civilization and Latin America literature to
seminars on comparative literature and women’s study.18 One of criticisms on this
novel is found the article “Voices of Patriarchy: Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One
Hundred Years of Solitude” written by Susanne Kappeler in Teaching the Text,
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983. Those are the evidences that OHYS is a magnificent
17 Lars Gyllensten,
Press Release: The Nobel Prize for Literature 1982 Nobel Lectures,
(http://www.themodernword.com/gabo/gabo_nobel.html). 10 December 2005
18 De Valdés, Maria Elena and Mario J. Valdés, eds., Approaches to Teaching Ga rcía Márquez’s One
story that has captivated the heart of the readers and had the capacity to support many
kinds of interpretation.19
Next, it the account of the author of Anak Bajang Menggiring Angin, Gabriel
Possenti Sindhunata. He was born on May 12, 1952 in Batu, a small mountainous
town in East Java as the fourth of the eight siblings20. At that time, the family of
Sindhunata or Liem Tiong Sien was marginalized because they were poor Chinese.
They lived in a crowded neighborhood, called Kampung Hendrik. Sindhunata will
always remember how they had to work hard to make a living to his family. Although
all family members made an effort to earn money, they still lived on the edge of
poverty.
Sindhunata’s father, Liem Swie Bie, was a vegetables farm supervisor. He used
to ride his motorcycle to the farm early each morning for years. Finally his lung
ailment betrayed him so that he had to change his profession. He needed capital to
start with. The decision was to sell the house inherited from his parents, which was
then rented out without proper legal documentation. The occupants of the house
refused to let go of the house and only agreed to pay a low price for the house.
Desperately in need of money to start his new business, Swie Bie accepted the deal
and used that small amount of money to buy a run down van. Then again, too poor to
obtain a driving license and necessary legal papers, he operated the van illegally
19 Maria Elena De Valdés,”The Novel and Its Author”, in Approaches to Teaching García Márquez’s
One Hundred Years of Solitude, (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1990) p.3.
around the limited areas in his neighborhood with his sons in turn assisted him.
Consequently, he did not earn sufficient amount of money to support the family.
Some years later, Swie Bie’s health was getting worse until he was too weak to
do his job. In the end of 1979, he was collapsed. At that time, Sindhunata, who had
been a journalist in Jakarta, wanted to visit his father to bring him a second-hand tape
recorder as a gift for it was a luxurious thing for him. Sindhunata came just in time on
the day before his father passed away. Regretfully, the second-hand tape recorder,
which was sent by a courier, was still on the way. Nevertheless, the brokenhearted
Sindhunata turned the tape recorder on in front of his deceased father before the
funeral, wishing that his late father were listening his favorite music through “the
brand new” second-hand tape recorder.
After Swie Bie’s death, Sindhunata’s mother, Koo Soen Ling was completely
alone, she lost her beloved husband but she never lost her spirit of life. She was
always tough in taking care of her children by herself. Since she was young, Soen
Ling was a hard working housewife. She did many kinds of job to support his
husband, such as running a stall in her house, sewing, and cooking bakpao. Every
day, early in the morning, Soen Ling used to walk along mountainous path to the
traditional market to purchase various goods to sell again in her stall. To reduce the
overhead cost, she used no pub lic transportation, but carried the heavy load of her
purchase only in her two small hands. Sindhunata, who sometimes accompanied her,
recalls how slowly they could reach their home again because they had to make
As if the family burden was not enough, Soen Ling too had to sell her only
sewing machine to make both ends meet. Since then, she took orders of sewing such
as putting on the badges of karate uniform by doing it in the customer’s place. In her
seventies when she has a chance to enjoy her life, the trace of her hard work, her
aching knee, continues to disturb her. She died recently at her seventy seven.
Not only did Swie Bie and Soen Ling work extremely hard, but their children
did too. The sons of the family tried to become salesmen of lottery tickets. Of course
they realized the risk but that was all they could do. Even, they once almost got
caught by the police for so doing.
Such was the hardship that the family of Sindhunata a.k.a Tiong Sien, had to
endure during his childhood. His family might be poor yet from them he not only
learned about poverty and being marginalized but also about love, struggle, creativity,
and ingenuity. In the middle of poverty, young Tiong Sien never lost his happiness.
He was a remarkably active child. With his peers, he was used to wandering around
the neighborhood to have fun with themselves in a simple way, such as just walking
along rivers and going to many kinds of neighborhood where they learned poverty in
a wider horizon. No wonder his experience of wandering around not only gave him
happy times with his friends but also nourished his empathy for people’s suffering
which in the future was poured out in his writings.
Moreover, his passion of books and art was also promoted after his childhood.
He was a kind of child who was always curious about many things and he knew that
could not afford to buy him books. But, as if inherited ingenuity from his parents, he
found the solution. When he really wanted to read a certain book, he would “steal”
the book from the shelf of the store and put it back on the shelf when he finished it.
The same is true with his love of ludruk. By then ludruk, a traditional east Java
play, had become one of his favorites and is still so today. At that time, for the sake
of ludruk, he would enthusiastically walk everywhere with his friends to watch the
play. Ismail was one of his most loyal childhood friends with whom he used to share
his only one sarung when they watched ludruk. Of course they watched it without
paying money for the tickets. How could he do that? As he recalls his childhood, he
writes how he, as a poor child who wanted to watch ludruk, found a way without
buying a ticket:
I never had money to buy a ticket when a Ludruk group such as Putra Bakti or
Wijaya Kusuma performed in Gedung Kesenian Seni Sono, Batu, but I wanted to see it then. I always became a trespasser. Or, if I failed to trespass I would listen to the play from outside and wait patiently at the front gate until intermission. After that, the gate was opened for free.21
That is his confession about his poverty and ingenuity as well in his book Ilmu
Ngglethek Prabu Minohek (2004) which is about ludruk’s value of life. He dedicates
this book which consists of not only documentation but also philosophical discussion
by all committed players of ludruk. For Sindhunata, ludruk is his prominent part of
21 “Saya tak punya uang untuk beli karcis, ketika mereka main dalam grup Ludruk Putra Bakti atau
his life because in an unique and funny way, ludruk is his companion which has
advised and strengthened his faith during difficult times. Therefore, he is very glad
that in his fifties, he finally fulfilled his dream to write a book about ludruk.
Those are the experiences of Sindhunata which may be important factors that
cultivated his sense of art, culture, and empathy as a writer. Although brief, these
background circumstances of Sindhunata’s life provide a description of how profound
the communion between his writings and his own personal life is. That fact can be the
reason why it seems very clear that all of Sindhunata’s writings are overwhelmed
with theme of the struggle of the marginalized. Sindhunata had given birth also many
kinds of writings about his option for the weak, whether academic, jour nalistic,
religious, or in other literary genres. For example, he wrote about the movement of
the poor peasants and their life struggle in Java during 19th-20th century which earned
him first class degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Hochschule für Philisophische
Fakultät SJ München, Germany22. His Waton Urip (2005) is about the virtues of
becak riders in Yogyakarta, while Nggayuh Gesang Tentrem (2004) is a prosaic
Javanese Catholic prayer book. His concern about the merits of the marginalized is
poured out in his collection of poems, published under the title Air Kata Kata (2003).
As such, it is clear that Sindhunata writes in many kinds of genres, from
journalistic writings to poetry. Before being published as a novel in 1983 by
Gramedia Pustaka Utama, Jakarta, ABMA appeared as a Sunday weekly serial story in
22 Sindhunata, Hoffen auf den Ratu Adil-Das eschatologische Motiv des “Gerechten Königs” im
the KOMPAS daily newspaper during 1981. This eight-chapter novel is based on the
Ramayana epic with its distinctive feature on highly lyrical prose style23 and the
Javanese philosophy of life.
Besides, ABMA has inspired several artists. For example, Landung Simatupang,
a famous “king of monolog” theater worker performed his theatrical monolog of
“Anak Bajang Menggiring Angin” at Lembaga Indonesia Prancis (LIP), Yogyakarta
on 17th and 18 July 200124. ABMA also inspired Retno Maruti, a senior Javanese
traditional dancer, to perform “Alap-Alapan Sukesi” at the Graha Bakti Taman Ismail
Marzuki, Jakarta on 25th and 26 July 200425. Neng Peking, a dancer and
choreographer of Akademi Seni Tari Indonesia (ASTI) Bandung and Sekolah Tinggi
Seni Indonesia (STSI) Solo, also performed “Wanci Ratri” at Komunitas Azan,
Bandung on 19 September 200326.
Few studies on ABMA include “Shadow Boxing: Indonesian Writers and the
Ramayana in the New Order”, a journal article by Marshal Clark (2001); “Estetika
Struktur Novel Anak Bajang Menggiring Angin karya Sindhunata” by M.
Christinawati (1997); “Pandangan Hidup Masyarakat Jawa dalam Roman Anak
Bajang Menggiring Angin: Suatu Tinjauan Sosiologis” by Wiwin Yarniatun (1996).
The last two studies are undergraduate theses at Sanata Dharma University in
Yogyakarta.
23 Marshal Clark, “Shadow Boxing: Indonesian Writers and The Ramayana in the New Order”: 26. 24 “Anak Bajang dan Tafsir Landung Atas Teks,” Bernas, 17 July 2001.
Having looked at the lives of Márquez and Sindhunata, it seems that the
struggle of the weak is one of their passions. As such, both Sindhunata’s and
Márquez’s experience is the realization of what Rene Girard postulates that great
literary works should come from the value of the author’s spiritual journey. This fact
is a convincing ground to say that these two literary works can be analyzed together
because both of them share the same theme. Moreover, the brief biographical
information about the authors is also offered as a seed of further analysis on these
novels.
After the brief review of the authors’ background and the novels, it is time to
take a look at the snap shot angle of these novels. To begin with, here is some
interesting quotation of One Hundred Years of Solitude:
“Tell me something, old friend: why are you fighting?”
“What other reason could there be? For the great Liberal Party.” “You’re lucky because you know why,” he answered.
“As far as I’m concerned, I’ve come to realize only just now that I’m fighting because of pride.”
“That’s bad,” Colonel Gerineldo Márquez said. […]
“But in any case, it’s better than not knowing why you’re fighting. Or fighting, like you, for something that doesn’t have any meaning for anyone.”27
The conversation above, between Colonel Aureliano Buendía (henceforth
CAB) and Colonel Gerineldo Márquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude is the
former’s confession about the futility of his struggle. CAB is the second son of José
Arcadio Buendía, the founding father of Macondo. During the civil war, he became
27 Gabriel Garcia Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (New York: The Penguin Group, 1972), p.
the legendary leader and the most wanted man so that a mother willingly sent her
daughter to sleep with him. Eventually, at the beginning of his twilight period, CAB
realized that his struggle was solely for pride. Having been overwhelmed by pride, he
thought his chivalry was the whole purpose of his life, his self-fulfillment. Pride had
twisted his mind, and given him nothing except emptiness. For him victorious wars
were fought not for people’s welfare and nationalism, but instead for his own pride.
As such, Colonel Aureliano Buendía’s chivalry was only the manifestation of his
greedy pride, and nationalism was simply a cheap tool to satisfy his sinful pride. His
nationalist pursuit is worthless and undeserving of a fight. Pride made him spend
almost his entire life fighting silly wars and pursuing shameful love affairs.
Colonel Aureliano Buendía is one of Gabriel García Márquez’s characters,
which represents a person who becomes the victim of his own pride. This is the
pivotal theme of this master thesis, which focuses on a text-based study of Gabriel
García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1972) and Sindhunata’s Anak
Bajang Menggiring Angin (1983).
At the heart of Anak Bajang Menggiring Angin, gentleness is conquering
machismo. Dewi Sinta, the most faithful character in the novel, is the one who
possesses authenticity and she conquers the machismo of Ramawijaya. The following
is a comment by Laksmana, the stepbrother of Ramawijaya in the novel, when he is
ridiculing Ramawijaya and praising Dewi Sinta.
of your life. Why do you still doubt of her purity, Rama? Does your doubt actually show your own longing of what you do not possess?” Laksmana said bravely.
“ … Maka bila hari ini keindahan Dewi Sinta memancar lebih daripada biasanya, tidakkah kau dapat memahami bahwa keindahan itu adalah buah hasil keprihatinannya. Dewi Sinta telah menjadi wanita yang sesungguhnya kauharapkan, dan wanita yang demikian seharusnya menjadi sebagian dari dirimu, mengapa kau masih ragu-ragu akan kesuciannya, Rama? Tidakkah keraguanmu sebenarnya adalah kerinduanmu akan apa yang tidak kaumiliki sendiri?” tegur Laksmana berani. [The thesis writer’s translation here and
thereafter].
The fruit of Dewi Sinta’s persistence is her shining beauty, which has gently
challenged and ruined Ramawijaya’s machismo. But in what way does authenticity
ruin machismo and illusive pride? This is the path this study will try to outline.
Pride is a crucial problem for human nature. It is hard to distinguish illusion
from reality. Being trapped in an illusion of pride, people tend to live without
considering the worth of being authentic. People often hardly recognize that illusion
of pride terrorizes their life.
The theme of illusive pride has received some writers’ attention. Using their
literary works, they have discussed the theme with a great deal of variety and
profundity. René Girard, for example, is a prominent Frenc h American cultural critic
who has been interested in this theme. He had made several thoughtful analyses about
illusion of pride. His insightful study of literature results in technique called
Triangular Desire Analysis. It reveals the mechanism of human desire, which will be
employed in this study. Girard’s study has helped lay the convincing ground for this
especially pride. This study will try to show the manifestation of pride in the behavior
of the novels’ characters, unmasking it, and showing its consequences, which are
contained in both Anak Bajang Menggiring Angin and One Hundred Years of
Solitude.
In their beautiful satiric utterances, these novels invite us to live in authenticity,
which means achieving the meaning of life in an honorable way. This study will
prove that the honorable way is not of the same level with pride. In addition, this
study will also show the importance of always being grateful in any kind of
circumstances without being apathetic and continuously building a community of
love, where people always have a chance to learn how to love without hurting each
other. Neither nationalism nor pride is valuable enough reason to perform any harm.
Based on that notion and the assumption that these two novels bear illusion of
pride and authenticity as their pivotal theme, the problems emerged in this study are
as follows:
1. How do Anak Bajang Menggiring Angin and One Hundred Years of Solitude
portray pride?
2. How do Anak Bajang Menggiring Angin and One Hundred Years of Solitude
portray the relationship between pride and authenticity?
This study will limit its attempts only to the field of analysis. It deals with the
entanglements of Ramawijaya with Dewi Sinta and of Jose Arcadio Buendía with
This study will employ A.-J. Greimas’s Actancial Structural Analysis and
Girard’s Triangular Desire Theory to analyze both novels. These two theories are
tools to trace “the triangular track” of pride and showing “the straight line track” of
authenticity. Besides trying to seek the answers to the problems formulated above,
this study hopes to have another outcome i.e. to observe how Girard’s literary
criticism, which is grounded on western literature, is relevant for works outside the
“mainstream” category.
The subsequent part of this study is divided into four chapters. This chapter is
Chapter I. Then, Chapter II is a Theoretical Review, which includes discussion of
Actancial Structural Analysis and Triangular Desire Analysis which will be employed
respectively. Next is the application of those theories, i.e. Chapter III is for Actancial
Structural and Chapter Four is for Triangular Desire Analysis. Fina lly, Chapter V is
the Conclusion that will highlight the findings of this analysis and its relevance.
As such, by uncovering the worthlessness of pride and the worthiness of
authenticity in ABMA and OHYS, this study is an attempt to add to the understanding
of these two novels in particular, while providing grounds for the further study of
other novels with similar themes in general. Besides, the findings of this study are
hopefully able to be a highlight of such theme which actually relates to our daily
struggle, not only for the one who happens to be “the chosen” but also for society
which, frankly, unconsciously can be the helper agent who has contribution to
CHAPTER TWO
THEORETICAL REVIEW
Departed from its nature – a text-based literary analysis – this study employs
two kinds of textual analysis theories, i.e. Actancial Structural Analysis and
Triangular Desire Theory. It is necessary to do so because they are complementary
and handy tools for this study to pursue its aim, namely, to find the representation and
the relationship between pride and authenticity in the light of textual analysis. By
this, this thesis means to say that this study attempts to be not merely a textual
analysis by grasping the structure of the story but also tends to go beyond the
structural matter, i.e. grasping the mechanism behind the structure. The first analysis
is devoted to figuring out the structure of the stories. This will provide the answer for
the first problem formulation. The second is textual analysis with its emphasis on
analyzing the mechanism of desire behind the structure of the stories. The discussion
of theoretical background and how these two analyses are elaborated will soon be
done.
The last section of this chapter is about the methodology of study in which the
procedure of the theoretical background will be applied in this analysis.
1. ACTANCIAL STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS
The Actancial Structural Analysis is first coined by A. -J. Greimas who
attempted to develop a method to analyze and account for meaning, to outline a
grammar and syntax for signification28. Algirdas-Julien Greimas, a French
structuralist who was greatly influenced by Saussure, Vladimir Propp, Roman
Jakobson, and Lévi-Strauss, has examined many kinds of literary languages, such as
folktales, psychodramas, and philosophy to understand narrative discourse in term of
language itself, its own structure, and the signification. On the account of his study,
Greimas says,
The problem of signification is at the center of the preoccupations of our time. In order to transform an inventory of behavioral traits into anthropology and events in series into history, our questions must concern themselves with the meaning of human activities and the meaning of history. The human world as it appears to us is defined essentially as the world of signification. The world can only be called “human” to the extent that it means something. Thus, it is in research dealing with signification that the human sciences can find their common denominator. Indeed, if the natural sciences ask questions in order to understand how man and the world are, the human sciences pose the question, more or less explicitly, of what both of them signify.29
In the light of such semantic understanding, Greimas’s effort of signification
quest owes linguistics much since for him linguistics is the most handy equipment.
About this, he admits that linguistics was able to appear as the most suitable
28 Ronalds Schleifer, “Introduction” in Greimas, A. –J., Structural Semantic, (London: University of
Nebraska Press), 1983, p. xii
discipline because it was more fully developed, more formalized, it could offer to
other disciplines its experience and methods30. Therefore, he makes use of Levi
Strauss’s system of language whose object of interpretation is a socia l phenomenon.
Greimas also makes use of Ferdinand de Saussure’s distinction of langue and
parole31 and, Saussure’s notion of relationships of language elements which becomes
Greimas’ ground. He states as follows
Language can be examined in two ways: it can be seen as evolving through history, diachronically, so that phonemes can be seen to change through time and to be dependent on their historical contexts; or it can be seen as a complete structure at one instant of time, a diacritical structure in which the whole is dependent on the relation between the parts, and the parts themselves dependent on the oppositions between themselves gove rned by the whole (“structure”) that brings them oppositionally together.32
This notion of language, eventually, invites Greimas to develop such
dependency for or the reciprocal relationship for his analysis of narration. This means
to say that the reciprocal relationship of the internal elements of narration composes
the structure of the narration. Furthermore, dealing with the function and character in
narration, Greimas, as followed by Frank Kermode, defines the genesis of narrative:
A function develops into a proper name; so it becomes a character, whose life and death have a narrative; and then the function is lost in the character.33
30 Greimas, A. –J., Structural Semantic, (London: University of Nebraska Press), 1983, p. 3.
31 Saussure’s linguistics study result is a synchronic interpretation of language, which does not depend
on the cultivation of time chronologically. Saussure intentionally does not scrutinize language evolution but rather the system of the language. See Algirdas-Julien Greimas: Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983) p: xxi.
32 Greimas, A. –J., Structural Semantic, (London: University of Nebraska Press), 1983, p.xl. 33 Kermode, Frank, The Genesis of Secrecy, via Greimas, A. –J., Structural Semantic, (London:
This is how each actant or character in narration has its role or function and
how the role or function builds the characterization of character and finally at the
same time, the actants’ roles structure the story. This is what Greimas calls “the
elementary structure of signification”.34 Such kind of structure is where the binary
opposition of actants lies, where the distinction of two aspects of an entity as
opposition and negation articulates and generates a story. Terence Hawkes has this to
says :
A narrative sequence embodies this mode by the employment of two actants whose relationship must be either oppositional or its reverse; and on the surface level this relationship will therefore generate fundamental actions of disjunction and conjunction, separation and union, struggle and reconciliation etc. The movement from one to the other, involving the transfer on the surface of some entity – a quality, an object – from one actant to the other, constitutes the essence of the narrative.35
This is also the reason why the important question of this approach is not what
the text means but rather how the text comes to mean something. By figuring out that
kind of structure, this analysis will find out how the relationship among actans
generates the meaning of the story.
This analysis operates in two steps. First, examining the parts of the text in
order to find the function of every part, using the analytical question: what will
happen if the detail does not exist? The second step is finding out the relationship
among that functions, using the analytical question: are they complementary?
34 Greimas, A.J., Sémantique Structurale, via Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics. London:
Methuen&Co, 1978 Ltd., p. 88
A.-J. Greimas sums up the explanation of descriptive level in his study about
the meaning of structure. It results in the three axis of the actancial relationship,
which is grounded on the signification base structure. Greimas stated that there will
be one signification if there is only one term object. The assumption of signification
is relationship so that the necessary condition for signification is the relationship
among the objects.36 The conditions of relationship are the differences and the
similarities. This relationship is the so-called binary relationship.
The further results of his study are the reduction of V. Propp’s 31 functions into
the six actans, which mark three axes of relationships as the so-called the semantic
investment. In the relationship between the subject and object, the semantic
investment is “desire”, in the relationship between the sender and the receiver is
“communication” that he later calls “knowledge”, and between the subject and the
circumstances is “power”. Greimas diagrams such kinds of those relationship this
way37:
SENDER OBJECT RECEIVER communication axis
Desire axis
ANTI-SUBJECT
SUPPORTER / SUBJECT OPPONENTS strength axis HELPER
In fact, Greimas extrapolates the above diagram – the actancial model from
syntactic categories as an attempt to situate semantics as a linguistic science.
According to Greimas, the six actins correspond to syntactic categories38:
Actants Syntactic Categories
Subject vs object Subject vs direct object
Sender vs receiver Subject vs indirect object
Helper vs opponent adverbial modifier
Based on that analogy, the purpose of such narrative analyses is to create the
logic of the relationships between the actans, a narrative grammar that charts the
recurrent regularities among the categories of “knowledge”, “power”, and “desire”.
Then, the explanation of this scheme is divided based on the axis, though it will be
seen also that the relationship across the axis is inevitable. Based on the axis, the
relationship among the actants can be explained as follows. First is Subject versus
Object which generates story of quest or desire. In terms of communication axis, it
consists of Sender, Object, and Receiver. It may say that the very first story begins
when the Sender has agreement and insinuates Subject to desire Object, which will be
given to Receiver. It means that communication axis is inseparable from desire axis.
While in desire axis, in accomplishing its desire, Subject must face the barrier
not only from Opponent, which is in strength axis, but also from anti-subject as
competitor who has competence to replace Subject’s position. It is clear that
although, both Opponent and Anti-Subject have the same role to Subject, as the
barrier, they have different competence. The first is not capable of replacing Subject’s
role in desiring Object whereas the latter’s role is the rival of subject who also desires
Object. And the last is strength axis, where, on one hand, Subject can obtain
assistance from Supporter/Helper as the additional strength in acquiring Object, but
on the other hand, Subject has to face the strength of Opponent as obstacle in
attempting to achieve Object.
After defining the actants and function, there are three tests which are necessary
to be done to determine whether actants, especially Subject, are suitable with the
function or not. The narrative includes three tests. The qualifying test, which demands
the proof of actant’s qualification in which the actant deserve to function as Subject
in desiring Object; the main/principal test which demands the proof of Subject’s
performance or endeavor to achieve Object; and the glorifying test which demands
proof of Subject’s failure of success in achieving Object or fulfilling desire.
From the above explanation, it can be concluded that the focus of the structure
is desire. Actually, it is desire and desire alone which mobilize the movement and the
role of all actants. In other words, it is about the desire of Subject to obtain Object
and the desire of Anti-Subject to compete with Subject in achieving Object. Finally,
such desire mobilizes Opponent and Supporter/Helper. Moreover, desire structures
the way of communication and the use of strength among actants. It means the pivotal
emphasis of Greimas’s structural analysis is desire. It can be concluded that this
analysis is an attempt to map the structure of how desire generates the plot of the
Anti-Subject) and the non-dominant (the rest actants). Moreover, the making use of this
kind of analysis is an effort to avoid arbitrariness.
Besides, this is also the pivotal effort of this study in this section of analysis,
mapping the structure of how desire generates the plot of Anak Bajang Menggiring
Angin and One Hundred Years of Solitude. In particular, this study assumes that in
these two novels, desire finally gives birth to the illusion of pride which has to face
authenticity. The explanation of the way with which pride has to face authenticity
will be done in Chapter III. Therefore, this analysis, which will be done in Chapter
III, is an effort to seek the answer to the first problem formulation by using Actancial
Structural Analysis. It will answer how the reading of these two novels represents
pride and authenticity.
After doing the Actancial Structural Analysis, the next task is the review of the
further theory of analysis, i.e. Triangular Desire Theory. This analysis is an attempt to
analyze – based on the findings of actancial structural analysis – the desire
mechanism behind the structure of the stories.
2. TRIANGULAR DESIRE THEORY
The further phase of this study is an ana lysis based on René Girard’s Triangular
Desire Theory39 as a tool to grasp the desire mechanism of the stories, or the deeper
reflection of the preceding analysis. Girard’s literary criticism is grounded on his
39 In grasping Girard’s theory, I owe Sindhunata’s recent book of Girard, Kambing Hitam. Theory
pivotal study of the literary works of five novelists40: Miguel de Cervantes, Marcel
Proust, Fyodor Dostojevsky, Stendhal, and Gustave Flaubert. After studying their
works, Girard discovered the human desire mechanism, which drives a character’s
behavior. He coined the idea that human desire mechanism takes shape in the form of
a triangle, which comprises Subject, Mediator, and Object. Subject is the one who
desires the object but he needs a Mediator to lead him to determine Object in which
he desires. The Mediator is a model, to whom Subject imitates in desiring Object. As
a result, the path of Subject toward Object is not in a straight line but triangular41.
This explains why Girard calls the relation Triangular Desire Theory. Besides, this
matter shows how desire, especially Subject’s desire, is not autonomous.
At a certain point, the dependency of Subject toward Mediator who functions as
the model for Subject to desire the object will make Subject realize that Mediator is
capable of threatening his existence. In other words, the eventuality will come when
Subject realizes that his existence depends on Mediator and Mediator’s function is
transformed to be Subject’s rival. Because of that, triangular desire produces a rivalry
chain because Mediator as the model is the most potential rival of Subject in gaining
Object.
In light of this synthesis, Girard coins the idea that this kind of mechanism is
the representation of human being’s desire mechanism itself. As explanation he says
40 Miguel de Cervantes (1547 – 1616): Don Quixote and “The Curious Impertinent”; Gustave Flaubert
(1821 – 1880): Madame Bovary; Stendhal (1783 – 1842): The Red and the Black, The Ancient Regime & the Revolution and Lamiel; Marcel Proust (1871 – 1922): Remembering of the Thing Past, The Past Recaptured; Fyodor Dostojevsky (1821 – 1922): The Raw Youth, The Eternal Husband, Notes from the Underground, The Possesed, The Brother Karamazov, Crime and Punishment
that the great novelists present this view of human desire as a mechanism that has
escaped a rigorous, objective scientific methodology. Albert Milet in his article
entitled “Rene Girard: His Thought” summed up Girard’s Triangular Desire Theory
as follows:
Human desire is never completely autonomous. On his own, man is incapable of desire; desire is always mediated. Human desire is triangular; it does not move in a straight line toward its object but detours along a path that reveals the object’s desirability. …
His [Girard] thesis of triangular or “mimetic” desire makes the claim that desire will be accompanied by violence because the desiring subject has a propensity to consider the mediator not only as a model for imitation but also as a rival who prevents the possession of the desired object. Mimetic desire is a part of being human; the universality of this desire is a source of violence, which menaces all humanity. 42
It might be useful to present Girard’s findings of the relationship of Subject –
Mediator – Object in reading Cervantes’ Don Quixote in brief as follows. Amadis de
Gaul is Don Quixote’s mediator who leads him to desire chivalry. As a mediator,
Amadis is his model of what kind of chivalry he should achieve. The following
shows how Don Quixote idolizes Amadis de Gaul:
“ … In the same way Amadis was the pole, the star, the sun for brave and amorous knights, and we others who fight under the banner of love and chilvalry should imitate him. Thus, my friend Sancho, I reckon that whoever imitates him best will come closest to perfect chivalry….”43
42 Albert Milet, “René Girard: His Thought”, Theology Digest 30 (1982): p. 47. Cfr. Sindhunata,
Kambing Hitam. Theory René Girard, p. 86.
43 René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, (London: The Johns Hopkins University Press), 1961,
It is clear by now that triangular desire always involves three elements: Subject,
who desires Object through Mediator as a model who leads the subject’s desire. And
when Mediation begets a second desire that is exactly the same as the Subject’s, then
Mediator could no longer act as Subject’s role model without also acting or appearing
to act as an obstacle44 toward Subject. Due to the relation between the subject and the
mediator, Girard coins two kinds of mediation, as he says in the following:
We shall speak of external mediation when the distance is sufficie nt to eliminate any contact between the two spheres of possibilities of which the mediator and the subject occupy the respective center. We shall speak of intern mediation when this same distance is sufficiently reduced to allow these two spheres to penetrate each other more or less profoundly45.
It means that the type of mediation – external mediation and intern mediation –
or the distance between Subject and Mediator, determines the penetration intensity of
each other or the effect of the rivalry. As such, the rivalry between Subject and
mediator becomes more lethal. In other words, the extern mediation is less lethal than
the intern mediation.
Further, the other side of the triangular desire is the relationship of Subject –
Object, which in fact is determined by the intensity of the relationship between
Mediator and Object or the kinds of mediation. This relation will reveal the
metaphysical side of the triangular desire that Subject’s desire of Object do not
depend on the physical value of Object but the metaphysical value of Object which
influenced by the relationship of Mediator and Object.
According to Girard, nothing is constant in the desire of a hero of a novel. Even
its intensity is varied and depends on the degree of metaphysical virtue possessed by
the object46. Dealing with the metaphysical value, Sindhunata has summarized that
the more intensive the metaphysical desire, the less is the physical value of the object.
Otherwise, the less the metaphysical desire, the more is the physical value of the
object bears.47 This means that to a certain degree, it could happen that the
metaphysical virtue defeats the physical value of the object, meaning that the object is
worthless but the desire is still overwhelming, or the object may keep on changing
but the desire still persists.
In conclusion, triangular desire is not a matter of the object but rather it is a
matter of the desire, which overwhelms Subject. Actually, Subject does not pay
attention to Object, but s/he wants to fulfill her/his desire and trying to imitate
Mediator. Subject is not autonomous in determining her/his own object of struggle.
Kirwan said that this is the influential contribution of Girard’s theory, revealing the
collapse of autonomous self48.
It is important to notice that Girard’s literary criticism is the first phase of his theory building. By building on his literary findings, Girard develops the Triangular Desire Theory or Mimesis theory into the scapegoat theory, which puts weight on sociology – anthropology. This theory reveals further effect, even the more lethal effect of the mimetic desire in the society. Employing this theory, Girard finally scrutinizes cultural institutions, especially Church which actually does not free itself from the triangular desire and the scapegoat mechanism.
46 René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, p. 83. 47 Sindhunata, Kambing Hitam. Teori René Girard, p. 57.
