Pramoedya Ananta Toer's Voice for Humanity Values vs. Javanese Tradition in The Girl from the Coast

Abstract

Pramoedya Ananta Toer, an Indonesian leading prose writer in 1940s to 1960s, deeply understands that authors have great role in creating good sense in society through their works. Pramoedya often reflects the struggle for raising, human dignity in his compositions. His critical attitude in expressing the social change often makes him in conflict with the state power. Consequently, Indonesian government banned his works for a long time, but international world welcomes them positively. He loads his works with messages of humanity values appreciation that mostly are not in line with local culture values in the works. Pramoedya often sets his stories in Javanese culture, which is believed to have practiced a number of world views related to the degradation of humanity values.The Girl from the Coast is one of Pramoedyas works containing contradiction between these two different sides of values. The Girl from the Coast loaded with a deeply personal source portrays a nameless Javanese teenage girl facing difficult problem in her life becoming a practice wife of a Javanese aristocrat (Bendoro) and becoming a commoner. It tells the story of Pramoedyas maternal grandmother and based on stories he had heard about her, her life as he had witnessed it while still a child and his imagination. The work contains some concepts that deteriorate the human kind values. These values encompass different position of woman and man nobility and commoner, and violence in maintaining the nobilitys worldview. By using content analysis, this paper attempts to reveal Pramoedyas effort in voicing his concept on humanity values, which are contradictive with the Javanese tradition in the earlier time.