Pramoedya Ananta Toer "Footsteps"
mbah sghriwo
mbah sghriwo
What's the difference between New Order (Suharto regime) and the Dutch East Indies colonial government in the various fragments of Pramoedya's Footsteps? There are similarities that are not accidental but the special abilities that Pramoedya can predicted into the future history of the archipelago.
Siti Sundari activists who aligned with Semaoen, and Mas Marcokartodikromo (special assistant to Minke the Editor Medan Prijaji) all have spread the opinion of inciting the masses to oppose the domination of the Dutch East Indies colonial rule. Mas Marco never once write headlines that make inconsequential so angry colonial government -- the time it was official Minke outside.
"Guoooooob .....!" Minke cried with pale to read the header field Medan Prijaji.
In the New Order mass occurs very exactly like that with the emergence of male and female activists who oppose the New Order in the same style. Is there a strategy inspired Footsteps against the ruler or his method could also just taken it to be a movement.
Footsteps circulated around 1985, the manuscript was written during Pramoedya's Buru Island prison camp in 1969-1979. This means that the contents of Footsteps on the basis of pure imagination than the author himself, and not the result of deepening of the situation actually happened. But that's what happened in the New Order. Atmosphere of repression and the struggle of the youth movement similar to the fragment mass Siti Sundari, who gather in the building puppets of people and turns the speakers one by one orderly take turns delivering his speech that all alone against the Dutch colonial government with the aim of getting out of bed length make the nation's children who lulled into a dream in the structure of colonial administration that seemed forever.
Siti Sundari virgin who was old enough to marry and settle down-stairs was the son of a Wedana-ranking government officials in Central Java. Dutch subtle than the New Order through the extension arm trying to influence the father so that his position is at stake in their ability as parents to control the activities of his daughter who preceded his time.
Other Semaoen again because he's a full-blooded Dutch foster child. So it is not easy to control the activities that has reached the leading railroad transportation workers. In the new order of young fighters in the New Order power uproot collect and affect the mass of factory workers. It is a private factory workers proletarian power as in the theories of Marxism as a mass of laborers who must seize the means of production. They never tried to seize the factory itself but fussy to ask for a raise or strike with the demands of self improvement.
Such sectors it's known railway workers during the new order is very difficult to be organized than the factory worker who is a symbol of the proletariat. Also to hold an open meeting during the New Order's even harder than in the Dutch power that can be considered quite civilized. New Order's intelligence apparatus so sophisticated reach out to remote villages, like the cruel Japanese intelligence structure Kenpeitai. In the end it can be concluded that the Dutch colonial government more open to reform than the Japanese occupation government and the New Order government. Naturally, the Netherlands capable of ruling for three half-centuries in the archipelago. Dutch colonialists must surrender its sovereignty to Japan because it involved the war while the New Order still remained upright until this moment only to change his nickname to Reform Order which is the same character. The difference is now people are talking freely and write freely as long as it would be responsible for their own deeds and writings. And because it is free to speak and write it as the original character of the archipelago is not willing to accept other people's opinions continue to consider themselves insist aka the most correct. That weakness Natives are just learning to savor the freedom blow off steam and fill his head.
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