The Black Lake (Oeroeg) by Hella S. Haasse (1948) #WITMonth

🖤 The Black Lake was first published anonymously in 1948 as Oeroeg. It was the Dutch author Hella Haasse's first novel, and was translated to English by Ina Rilke. Set in Indonesia during Dutch colonialism in 1940s, Oeroeg is a story about childhood friendship gone sour over political and ideological differences.

🖤 The narrator (his name was never revealed) is a white boy, son of a Dutch Indies plantation manager in Sukabumi, West Java. He was born in Indonesia, and being an only child, his only playmate is Oeroeg. Oeroeg is a native boy, the same age as the narrator's. He's the son of the plantation's mandor (leader of the workers). Despite of their totally different backgrounds, the two boys spent their childhood together and were quite inseparable.

🖤 Then an accident happened, triggered by the drunken and irresponsible white men led by the narrator's father, whose reckless amusement on board of a inadequate raft on the Black Lake, caused the raft fell apart. Oeroeg's father died while saving the narrator's life from drowning. Because of that, the narrator's father sent Oeroeg to the same school and boarding house as his son. The seeds of disruption began at this point.

🖤 Oeroeg began to realize his inferiority from other students. He began to try imitating the white's style and seemed to be ashamed to be a native. Despite all that, the two students still studied and hang around together, though not as closely as before. The consciousness of the gap laid between them has finally dawn upon these adolescents.

🖤 Graduated from secondary school, the narrator was sent by his father to study in Dutch. This was the last straw of their friendship. While he's away, huge things happened. Indonesian youths began their resistance movement against Dutch colonialism; the narrator joined the army during World War II; and Oeroeg joined the Indonesian nationalist to fight for the nation's independence. When the narrator happened to return with the Dutch army to Sukabumi, everything has changed so drastically. He no longer found it the home he used to be rooted to, and most of all, he lost his best friend Oeroeg....

🖤 I found this novella quite thought-provoking. Growing up often means restricting our heart to so many rules and ideologies, that we often forget the human being underneath these thoughts. My heart ached over Oeroeg and the narrator's last scene. I understand Oeroeg's hatred towards the nation that had caused sorrows to his people. But how could he forget the one friend that at one time had shared his happiness?

🖤 I'm also wondering the roots of Indonesians' inferiority complex towards Western people. Is it a characteristic that is attached to our people? And made us so easy to be colonized by the European for centuries? Or is this character the result of centuries of colonialism? After more than 70 years of our independence, Oeroeg's behaviors still reflect on our modern people - trying to be identified as European, but also hating the Western.

🖤 All in all, this is an intriguing bildungsroman of friendship and identity searching, set in a turmoil era of colonialism, and loosely based on the author's experience of growing up in West Java during the same era.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Women in Translation Month #WITMonth
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