This Earth of Mankind

Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s settings are similar to those of a stage play, in which the events in each particular setting are consistent and further the author’s storyline. This is true of some lesser used settings in the narrative. For example, whenever Minke needs advice, he ends up in business partner Jean’s art studio. Whenever Minke rides on a train, he finds himself wrestling with uncertainty. Riding in carriages, however, creates moments of closeness.

Furthermore, Toer portrays Wonokromo, the plantation created and cultivated by Nyai, as a place of refuge and serenity. Minke discovers that all the workers at Wonokromo express an almost beatific joy. Inside the Mellemas’ house, everyone is received with hospitality (at least when Nyai is present). The house is a place for telling stories, healing, and making love. In turn, Wonokromo is a place that ejects troublemakers. When Herman confronts Minke for being a Native, Nyai scolds and banishes him. When Robert M. fails his mother and sister in a moment of need, and Nyai confronts his lying, he walks away and does not return. It is no surprise that the narrative’s greatest moment of joy, Minke and Annelies’s wedding, takes place in the accommodating house, where guests who stay too late are simply told to spend the night. When Toer wants to illustrate the callous, destructive force of colonialism, he sends a military force to disrupt the hospitality of Wonokromo and take its most delicate resident, Annelies, by force.

In contrast to Wonokromo, the happenings of H.B.S. prep school are never serene. Rather, these moments are rife with competition. Toer implies that Minke’s standing at school has deteriorated. Despite being supposedly accepted as the school’s only Native (bar Minke’s friend Jan Dapperste who keeps his heritage a secret), Minke is often spotlighted in negative ways: He is revealed as the author of a controversial article by classmate Robert Suurhof without his consent; he later walks past silent, staring students to the director’s office to be praised, then expelled; and he is greeted with muted applause upon receiving the second highest exam grades throughout the Indies. Scenes of Minke being singled out and challenged always take place at school.

A final setting Toer uses to deal with betrayal, illness, and death is Babah Ah Tjong’s brothel. While there are only a few scenes set here, they all involve decadence, deterioration, and ultimately death—including Robert M.’s seduction by a sex worker (Maiko) with a deadly disease and the grotesque discovery of Herman’s body. Toer uses each of his settings to establish a particular emotional tone.