The seven stories in this short story collection are told from the narrator's point of view. We know not his name; he's just mentioned as 'young man', an Indonesian student lives in Bloomington in the 1970s.
In this first story, titled "Laki-Laki Tua Tanpa Nama" (The Anonymous Old Man), the narrator rented an upstair room from an old widow Mrs. McMillan, in a lonesome street called Fess, with only two other houses along the street, owned by two other widows. These women prefer to live seclusively; always minding their own businesses. That's their way of living peacefully.
A strange old man, veteran of World War 2, rented the upstair room nextdoor (Mrs. Nolan's). He's always carrying and pointing a gun, and, sometimes, threatening to shoot people. On the other hand, his landlady, Mrs. Nolan, owns also a gun, with which she often shoots birds or other small animals that annoys her.
The narrator, whose habit seems to be curiously watching his neighbors, is a little concerned with the old veteran's alarming behaviours. However, his neighbors take it all easy. One day, the mounting tension finally broke, and something bad happened.
🔫 The center theme of this story is, first, that appearance can be deceiving. When the incident occurred, who was an easy blame? An nervous old war veteran and a total stranger, or a respectable widow whom everyone knows? Then there's the second theme - the psychological background. Whoever pulled the trigger, he/she could have had a dark secret no one knows. It's easy to judge a person as mean, but we never know that person deep down, beyond his/her appearance and our own perception of him/her - which is often very far from the truth.
🔫 Privacy or indifference?
Being born and live in Asia, one of my biggest pet peeves is curious people who like to know private things about you (shamelessly asking your age or marital status, while you never know them before, jeez!). Maybe that's why I chose to live in an apartment. At least I can get various neighbors all the time without really knowing intimately each other, and just having enough courtesy to share polite nods when we pass each other at the lobby or in the lift.
So I can relate to and quite agree with the three widows' policy to not interfering with other people's business. But I think there's a certain limit between privacy and indifference. We can still maintain privacy while at the same time being warm and friendly to others. We just need to set a certain barrier between things we can afford to share with others and things that we want to keep to ourselves (or family). Living alone is often the best choice - especially for introverted people like me - but that doesn't mean we should stop being a kind and loving human being that God has intended us to be.
Will the remain six stories be as intriguing as this? Let's hope so. So far, I'm quite enjoying it.
an interesting view! the first story gave me a lot of thoughts, too! and your view of it here represents some of it. the anonymous old man is indeed an interesting character, who can unconsciously mislead people into thinking that he's a bad guy simply because he wields a gun and plays with it everywhere, disturbing people's peace sometimes. but the nameless narrator is also intriguing. he's that one person that we'd call "kepo" in Indonesian LOL, but his curiosity drives the entire narrative here.
ReplyDeleteah, I'm gonna read the fourth story now :).
And his 'kepo-ness' continues on to next stories, LOL.
DeleteOh, Orez is the most heartbreaking of all so far :(
Good luck, Ratih...