The Earth Of Mankind Summary

This report is based on an interview of Pramodeya Ananta Toer which explains the background thought processes of his four book series the “Buru Quartet” however the references taken shall be based solely on the first book of the quartet “This Earth of Mankind”. Pramodeya says that the idea for Minke the male protagonist of the quartet was based mostly on “Willem Wertheim” a Dutch scholar, this seems mostly ironic as one of the main antagonists in the novel happens to be the Dutch government and it is against Dutch colonialism that Minke stands up but as Toer says “He brought out the characters who had been erased from our history.

Not only this but also “I had students pore over newspaper stories from the period and wove episodes into the plot” thus it cannot be said that the lead character was based solely on one inspiration, however we do see that Minke happens to be more ambitious than his fellow countrymen and also has a more enlightened attitude which does have a European or in this case Dutch in nature and hence could explain Toer saying he was based on Willem.

We also notice the similarity of the book with the events at the time when Toer was writing the book such as the power of the ruling government to take over private businesses in order to run them ‘fairly” and act as caretakers as seen in the Dutch taking over the Nyai’s business, and we also see the apparent class system and high level of social segregation which was still present in Toer’s time, it also seems that Pramodeya did have a direct source to base Minke on in the form of the Philippine novelist ‘Jose Rizal’ who was executed by the Spanish in 1896 after three years of imprisonment and torture for championing freedom from colonial rule however he does not mention this.

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We also see that Minke’s main enemy other than the Dutch was Robert Surhoff a man so confused by his own birth that he develops a superiority complex in order to make himself appear better than his fellow countrymen as can be seen by his calling Minke Indo all the time considering the title ‘Bupati’ beneath him even though it was a position of power more than he could ever have this however was one of the numerous people suffering from similar Psychological problems due to the changing time. The idea as Toer says came from an Eurasian gang organized by the Dutch to terrorize the people of Jakarta and this is also pretty much what Robert Surhoff is also doing, another thing that is also most remarkable is the irony of the situation that the very people they try to imitate and please, by harming their own brethren in order to get their acceptance do not treat them with much respect and also consider them below their level. Which can be seen in the novel that the Dutch born first son of Mr.

Mellema is given preference to the property over Mellema’s half Dutch children this concept is a forerunner to the idea of 2nd class or 3rd class citizenship which is still another form of Racism left over from colonial rule. Pramodeya’s inspiration from other works such as John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” and the works of Gorky and Tolstoy are quite evident. Pramodeya integrated the running theme of “Try to understand each other” from ‘Of Mice and Men’ into his quartet as it seems the only way out of the problem that the colonials and the colonialists are facing is if the two groups try and understand each other and Pramodeya in a way is showing what happens when individuals and communities on a whole do not understand the other persons view point and try to assert that they are right or superior over the other.

Other concepts also evidently integrated in the novel taken from Steinbeck’s novel are dreams, loneliness, how man’s prosperity achieves cruelty, powerlessness, and uncertainty of the future — or fate. All seen in the life of Minke and how he progresses through out the first novel as not only his rise to fame gain him the enemity of his Rubert Surhoff and Mellema but also that of his brother to an extent and also that he dreams of changing not only his life but also the life of his fellow people however in the face of the unexpected events and ‘fate’ he was helpless/powerless. Also from Gorky’s work we see Pramodeya geting the idea of showing the social fabric of Indonesia in the novel and to show the distinctive charecterists of Indonesian people and to give a psychological aspect to the novel.