2.3.2 Criticism on Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Novel The Girl From the
Coast
In this part, I would like to present some criticisms on Toer’s The Girl from the Coast.
Much of it is from websites. I also add some of my criticism on this book along with other reviewers. The aim of presenting them is to
understand Toer’s The Girl f rom the Coast. It explains some of the critical opinions about his writing, so that we can understand more his well-known
work. By reading the criticism, I got many informations related to Javanese culture and its’ treatment toward Mas Nganten.
A reader named Sarah Rachel Egelman http:www.bookreporter. comreviews0786868201.asp, accessed on September 7, 2006 says that she
loves this novel. For her, this novel is beautiful of its emotional tale. This emotional tale is deceptively simple. It contains the rich history and
landscape of Java surge against the economical use of words and the sparseness of the action. This novel is masterfully crafted, which is apparent
even in translation. It is often dark, often witty and always thought provoking. According to her, one reading of this novel is likely to inspire
many trips to the bookshelf to delve into other works by Toer and non- fiction about the island of Java.
The short- story writer Nell Freudenberger has noted in the New York Times Book Review that there are clichés in the translation. This is quite true
and does mark the work. She also implies that the novel lacks “the shading and dimension of lived experience.” She means, one supposes, that the
book’s action is imposed upon characters by the ideas of the writer. Her operative word for many of its situations is improbable. She echoes what
various critics of Pramoedya, often those hostile to his political views, have said before: politics stifles artistic beauty and insight. The “desire to
communicate and the urgency of his message,” she says, “have overwhelmed his art.” The girl herself displays the “banner of oppressed Indonesian
womanhood.” In my opinion, what is probable in fictional characters comes, first of
all, from the sociologically truthful. It may appear in spite of the writer’s conscious political beliefs, if he or she is an honest artist. In a successful
work of art, a character can be both individualized and universal, both a shy teenager exposed to abuse and the “banner of oppressed Indonesian
womanhood.” What Freudenberger and many other critics miss is the fact that Pramoedya’s theme is rooted in a century- long social process in
Indonesia, the struggle against imperialism and the mass striving, despite betrayals and setbacks, for an alternative to capitalism. On the whole, the
manner in which this novel portrays the emergence of a dissenting consciousness in an oppressed person feels authentic.
2.4 Theoretical Framework
Kategori