GO EAST!

1. By Karim Raslan GO EAST!

2. INTRODUCTION • ‘Go East’ is one of the short stories featured in Karim Raslan’s collection called Heroes : And Other Stories. • It is a story sets in a small town of Lahad Datu, Sabah and relates the experiences of a young protagonist, Mahmud, a West Malaysia, who is sent there to manage an oil-palm plantation.

3. STRUCTURAL ARRANGEMENT • In terms of structural arrangement, the story seems to offer a conventional structure that can be divided into four stages. • The first stage, the orientation, presents us with the protagonist relating, in first person narration, about his new place of work and its people. • Interestingly enough, unlike omniscient and omnipotent narration, the first person narration gives us a rare insight into the main character’s personality and worldview. • His descriptions, although to a certain degree, can be seen as racist and sexist, at least we know that he is honest and quite oblivious to the fact that what he is saying is politically incorrect and will never be acceptable in our racial politics grand scheme of things.

4. The fact that the main character is a Malay also seems to suggest that KarimRaslan is trying to mirror reality though this ‘fictitious’ piece of work. • Similarly, his other multi-cultural characters are also portrayed in dangerously politically incorrect manners. • Is this an attempt at mirroring racial and sexual stereotyping in real life Malaysia by KarimRaslan? • Is this an admission of the underlying ‘snafu’ (situation-normal-all-fouled-up) of contemporary Malaysian society?

5. The second stage starts when the complication sets in. Suriya is introduced to mark the initial complication stage. Then, the arrival of Anton and Mahmud’s feelings towards him mark the start of the emotional rollercoaster ride for the protagonist.

6. The third stage, the resolution, seemingly points to the direction that the complication has been resolved with Mahmud expressing his sheer relief that his problem has been solved at the end. The only problem is, technically, that little rendezvous with the underaged prostitute does not count because all the while during that sexual encounter he has been thinking of Anton.

7. Thus, this brings us to the theme of the story. I have decided to focus on the theme of identity, both social identity and sexual identity.

8. SOCIAL IDENTITY • Karl Marx once said that :“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary, their social being that determines thair consciousness” • It is quite obvious that in this story, the protagonist tries very hard to be different from the other ‘social outcasts’. • When Mahmud first arrived in Lahad Datu he realizes the difference between him and the others. He feels that ‘… most of them were here because they were useless … Not like me .. I’m different though’ (p. 103).

9. Indeed, he tries to be different in the beginning. Aware of the fact he may one day, if he is not careful, turn into one of those characters he befriends a Malay banker and gets close to his family. He attends prayers and reads Quran with the family. • However, this does not last long. Soon, he becomes tired of the routine which is in fact restricting him quite similar to the kind of routines that he despised when he was in the Peninsula.

10. After turning his back on the Malay family, he begins to realize that the pulling power of his environment created by the circle of friends that he is with makes it hard for him to be different. • This is evidently clear when he states that “… after a while even I end up thinking about sex, though I try not to. I try to be different’ (p. 107). • This phenomenon marks the beginning of his subconscious desire to be accepted by the society.

11. His acceptance and, to a certain extend, approval of the behaviour of this new society is when at the end of the story, while attending a party and witnessing a despicable act being perpetrated on one of the Filipino girls, he admits that ‘.. I too, kicked at her, releasing my fear as I did’ (p. 116). This act shows that finally, after trying so hard to be different from the others, he conforms to the norms of the society.

12. He becomes one of them by taking part in the ‘auction’ scene and submitting to the mob mentality that transpires there. Later, after his sexual tryst with the underaged prostitute he proclaims that ‘I felt fully at ease among them for the first time, knowing then that I had solved for myself the only question that had separated me from all of them’ (p. 118).

13. Althusser’s ISAs (Ideological State Apparatuses) theory seems to confirm Mahmud’s behavioural change in that it is ‘not directly or externally imposed forms of ideological coercian but arise from within the society’ (Webster : 61). • Safe in the belief that he has proven his manhood and that he is a perfectly normal, heterosexual man, just like the others, he embraces the new found social identity with relish oblivious to the fact that this is just a false sense of triumph.

14. SEXUAL IDENT ITY • At the beginning of the story, the author foreshadows Mahmud’s sexual identity crisis. This is when Mahmud tells us about his lecturer’s view on cocoa : “Cocoa’s also an interesting crop to work with : it’s so delicate and risk-prone that you spend most of your time trying to figure out ways to avoid next catastrophe. Once you’ve tried cocoa,… you’ll never want to go back to oil palm : it’s intellectually satisfying’ (p. 102).

15. It is interesting when the next time the word catastrophe appears again (p.111) is when Mahmud tries to avoid Anton by trying to keep their relationship formal. • Therefore, it can be assumed that to Mahmud homosexuality will bring catastrophe just like cocoa would.

16. It is also noticed that Mahmud’s fear of being a homosexual individual may also because of the possibility that he may actually like it. Thus making him ‘never want to go back to oil palm again’.

17. Box (1981) cited in Worsley (1991 : 485) says :“[A] normal person, when he discovers a deviance impulse in himself, is able to check that impulse by thinking of the manifold consequences acting on it would produce for him. He has staked too much on continuing to be normal to allow himself to be swayed by unconventional impulses”

18. From the quotation, we can see that our protagonist also has too much at stake to even think of embracing the homosexual urges in him. Clearly, the eastern societal and cultural values have been subconsciously internalized by Mahmud.

19. Perhaps, this is the meaning of going east of the title of the story. While more and more of our youths are aping the West and despising eastern values as old-fashioned and restrictive, what some of them do not seem to realize is that, the eastern way of life is actually alive and well inside them, waiting for the right moment to manifest itself. • Therefore, as we can see, Mahmud’s eastern consciousness, if we may call it, manifests itself when it comes to the crunch.

20. This is another example how man is controlled by society. It seems that it is easier to be a conformist than a non-conformist because to be the latter you really have to go against the stream and fight hard to find a place for yourself. In the end, Mahmud gives up and submits to the pressure from within and without.

21. In ”Oranges are not the only Fruit”, a novel by Jeanette Winterson (1985), the discovery of homosexual tendencies in the main character leads to a celebration of homosexuality. • It is embraced willingly by the character unlike Mahmud’s strong sense of denial, ‘I tried reading Farida’s old letters over and over again … I hope they would help, that they’d be some kind of talisman against the boy’ (p. 110).

22. However, at the end of the story we can see that he finds it hard to fight his feelings for Anton. “I tried so hard to want her. I willed a response so fiercely that something did happen. Closing my eyes and lying back on my bed, I imagined the hands were not hers but Anton’s. It was all Anton; his smell, his body and his cries. I dreamt so hard that even when she started moaning and pushed her tiny breasts in to my face, the charade continued in my mind.”

23. So, what is the verdict? Has he passed the test that he himself sets? He claims that he has done so and that he has ‘solved for myself the only question that had separated me from all of them’ (p. 118). • However, and this is when the third person narrative is crucial, as readers reading his thoughts we may realize that this is just a false sense of triumph. Anton is seen to be in his mind during all the time that he is with the girl.

24. CONCLUSION • Go East is a story that manages to expose us to the power of societal values that controls our lives with or without our consent. Mahmud’s search for an identity to call his own does not materialize as the pulling power of the rules, or lack of rules, and norms of his new community is too strong that he, in the end, submits to it.

25. He tries his best to be different but to no avail. His sexual identity crisis is also caused by the internalization of the eastern values in him that causes him to reject the homosexual urges in him. Instead of embracing and celebrating homosexuality, he fights hard to rid himself of these urges.

26. Go East, then, does not only refer to the geographical movement of the protagonist from West Malaysia to East Malaysia, it also marks the manifestation of eastern values and culture in Mahmud who at the beginning of the story despises the very idea of being a Malay as he sees this as being old-fashioned and restrictive.