Step By Wicked Step: The Malaysian Context

 

 

 

 

 by Ellsee

Elsee writes about her take on the current Form 5 novel for KBSM Literature Component; Step By Wicked Step and she analyzes whether the book is suitable in comparative to the previously-used The Pearl.

To me, there is this defining feature about literature, which is that it is like a treasure chest.  In good and proper literature, there are always these little hints and clues hidden within the lines that the reader is supposed to catch in order to grasp a deeper dimension of the story, and which in turn forms the core of literary analysis.  Call them secrets between author and reader, if you will; things that the protagonists themselves are completely unaware of.  Step By Wicked Step had precious few of these moments for me.  If anything, it seemed to have swung to the other extreme. My reading of it came across as too shallow, transparent and linear, despite all the flashbacks.

Indeed, what makes the story (I can hardly call it a novel) so firmly wedged within the Preteen category – apart from the age of the protagonists themselves – is the tendency of fiction meant for younger audiences to give things away before the reader has come to that part of the story.  My guess is that writers feel younger readers would be too shocked at or be unable to catch certain plot developments if they were not gently “eased” into it right from the start.

Take for example, at the beginning of Richard Clayton Harwick’s narrative, he writes “He was dressed black as a bat, and (I’ll say fearlessly, now he has done his best to beat fear out of me) he was no more welcome…”  This being a story about step-parents, it is all too obvious that this “he” would become Richard’s stepfather before too long.  At least, it was very, very obvious to me, despite the fact that it shocked me, because he just (literally) shot out of nowhere, and the next moment I am being told as plain as day that Richard will suffer under him as a victimised stepson.

Before I move on, I would like to point out some other things that annoyed me about the story, though I may really be splitting hairs here because most of these complaints are simply common characteristics of preteen fiction.  First of all, there is the deliberate glossing over of Reverend Coldstone’s wickedness.  Believe me, it is mild.  Compare it with Charlotte Brontë’s description of Jane Eyre’s suffering under the Reed family and you will see what I mean.

Charlotte Brontë’s description of Jane Eyre’s suffering under the Reed family 

By the way, there is one discrepancy in the story that I cannot seem to reconcile.  Why was “Master Richard” living in a “small tower room” even before his real father died and Coldstone had had any control over the household?  Even if his room had not been camouflaged during his lifetime, it still does not make sense.

Then there is the unrealistically transparent names.

Mr Digby the (digging) gardener, Reverend Coldstone and the worst of the lot: Mordanger School (more danger?!).  These are value judgment names that decide for the reader ahead of time what something is or whether something is good or bad.  Again, this practice is most prevalent in children and preteen fiction.  A character is either an angel or a devil, unless some metamorphosis from good to bad or bad to good is the whole point of the story.

As Roald Dahl once said about writing for children, “if you want to do bad, do over-the-top bad” or something to that effect.  I am not questioning the need or decision to make things so morally black and white for children.  Maybe they need it for their own moral development, but anyone else reading it would find it just plain tacky.

So Step By Wicked Step is a preteen story and as such has many of the genre’s typical flaws, including coming across as rather preachy at times.  Is there a problem then?  Yes.  The problem is that this story is being read by every single Form Five student in the country as model literature.  In some ways, it is an appropriate choice, but in others, they could not have picked a worst book.

While not being outrightly supernatural, there are some supernatural elements, in keeping with Malaysian teens’ current obsession with Harry Potter and Twilight, so I assume they are trying to keep our youngsters’ interests in mind.  Also, the six-stories-in-one format is a suitable compromise for the majority of students who are (sadly) not used to reading novel-length books.  The issue of step-parents might even be becoming more and more relevant as divorce rates are on the rise.

On the other hand, do you think that students will not realise that the story is meant for kids?

Surely everyone knows that seventeen is an age where teens are very touchy about being treated any younger than they really are.  People might say that Malaysian students had little in common with Kino and Juana in The Pearl, but neither can they relate to American elementary grade school kids on much deeper a level.  These are kids who spend the whole night huddled on one bed telling stories without feeling the least bit uncomfortable that there are boys or girls around, and do not bat an eyelid about pregnant Flora not being married to Ralph’s father.  Both issues are not depicted negatively in any way whatsoever because that is probably the author’s own standpoint.  No weddings are mentioned, you notice.  It is kind of odd that the story got past the board, really.

Anyhow, the story points out all the difficulties of having chopped-up families clearly enough, but it is depicted as a way of life and something that you just have to accept, because this is from a kid’s point of view.  They are hardly in the position to question the morality of their parents’ actions or to wonder too much about the ‘why’.  So the story is not really tackling the issue of divorce; it is just offering comfort and guidance on how to live with it as a powerless victim.  But if they’re not going to directly address the issue, why have our students read it at all?

Besides, the story is couched in so many cultural references I am sure almost all students would not get.

I can almost imagine a student reading the second page and asking “What is ‘cripes’?” and feeling rather let down when they cannot find it in the dictionary.  Would they know that ‘munchkin’ is not just some disgusting lover’s nickname but the name of a group of people in The Wizard of Oz and that it is meant to conjure up the image of chubby innocence (yes, revolting)?

What was the author really trying to imply about Annabel’s talk about auras?

I understand that it is really hard to find good, solid, mainstream literature simple enough for our Malaysian students to understand and find interesting.  In most cases, either you take an original children’s story, or you abridge an adult’s story, in which case it loses all its flavor.

But the fact remains that our youth are not interested in literature, and offering a children’s book is not going to change that, even if you want to call it literature.  The problem stems much deeper than that.  Nonexistent reading habits, growing immaturity and the whole social atmosphere of our generation are sucking a slow death out of literature, both classic and modern.

All in all, I have to admit that Step By Wicked Step is a better choice than The Pearl, but only because The Pearl flew over the students’ heads when it should not have done so.  There are problems, and while I do not have the solutions, I know that this story is not meant for our Form Five students both age-wise and culture-wise.  If I am wrong and the students really do love it, all I can say is that it would be a very sad thing indeed.

Orwell and the Malaysian Student

 

 

 

 

by Ellsee

I recently read George Orwell’s classic Politics and the English Language essay, in which he discusses the condition of the English language and the ways in which he believes it has seriously deteriorated.  While I’m not fully inclined to agree with his rather extreme position, nor do I have much to comment about his specific criticisms against political writing, I find that his general diagnosis of what ails modern English can be applied rather aptly to essay-writing in the context of Malaysian students.

Basically, Orwell accuses modern users of English of having become so lazy that we often fall back on using whole chunks of ready-made phrases when we speak or write, so that instead of letting “the meaning choose the word”, it is often the other way about.  He argues that this is a very serious fault because such phrases “will construct your sentences for you – even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent – and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself”.  I leave you to contemplate the implications of that last assertion.

What’re more important is to understand the gist of the message

Skimming through the examples he gives of convenient so-called arbitrary gap fillers like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose and a consideration which we would do well to bear in mind, I am reminded of how pervasive such lengthy turns of phrases are in the generic essays we often write at school.  They become literal padding in the sense that the added length they give to our essays impress our teachers and peers alike.

Yet the irony of it all is, due to the horrendous level of English that now plagues Malaysian education, a decreasing minority of students possess even the basic knowledge of the language to know when and how to use such things.  So much so that, to be able “to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think” has now become a thing sought after instead of scorned and avoided. It comes to the point where teachers actually teach and encourage their students in such usage as something that would help set their essays apart from the rest.

Language barrier can be a boon

When it comes to Malay essays, the illness takes on a slightly different form.  The glut of having to compose essay after essay with such generic and boring themes as pemanasan global, pembentukan modal insan, amalan membaca and semangat patriotisme drives many of us to the phenomenon Orwell describes as “the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together”.

Consider the following paragraph:

Sebagai kesimpulan, pemanasan global merupakan suatu masalah yang mampu mendatangkan impak yang amat serius kepada alam sekitar di samping mewujudkan kekangan terhadap kesejahteraan and ketamadunan manusia sedunia.  Oleh yang demikian, semua pihak harus berganding bahu dalam melaksanakan pelbagai usaha untuk membanteras masalah ini dan seterusnya memelihara dan memulihara alam sekitar agar generasi masa depan akan dapat terus menikmati sebuah dunia yang indah dan selamat.           

 

There you are, sixty words of thoughtless fluff (we all know that penanda wacana‘s count as one word), and absolutely nothing that we haven’t read dozens of times before.  I can understand the time constraints and the mental strain that we might experience during exams, but at this point the question arises as to whether we are really writing ‘original’ essays at all instead of constantly recycling age-old junk we’ve accumulated at the back of our minds from years of so much essay-drilling that we’ve become “almost unconscious of what [we are] saying”.  I wouldn’t blame teachers for feeling that they should be happy as long as the sentences are ‘logical’ and grammatically correct. After all, so-called ‘impression marks’ constitute only three or four marks at best.  From the average student’s point of view, why bother?

And then there’s that somewhat farcical issue of peribahasa.  For many of us, it has become more or less like a ritual.  Even as we slog through our essay, our mind is scanning through our (woefully limited) vocabulary of peribahasa, trying to find one that would fit.  (Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why that precious peribahasa typically appears in the concluding paragraph, but that’s just me being cynical.) Over time, we fall snugly into our preselected sets of peribahasa and thereafter refuse to budge, so much so that the peribahasa to be used often snaps to mind even while we’re still studying the question. Unless you’re one of those few competitive valedictorians at the very top of the classroom hierarchy, one peribahasa is as good as any other, and berat sama dipikul, ringan sama dijinjing serves just as well as something obscure like hendaklah seperti tembikar, pecah satu pecah semuanya.  Again, why bother?

Catching up 

In the end, there can be no simple cure to such a complex malady that has its roots in deeper social and cultural issues that I shall not discuss here.  However, it would do well to heed Orwell’s warning that “in prose, the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender to them”.  What’s more, things have most likely deteriorated even further since his time (he died way back in 1950).  The least we can do is to try our best and catch ourselves whenever we find ourselves simply mechanically doling out phrases that look and sound good together, or in Orwell’s terms, “one can choose – not simply accept – the phrases that will best cover [our] meaning”.

How Can I Make The World A Better Place

 

 

 

By: Ellsee (not her real name)

Famine in Africa, desperate offshore asylum seekers, underground slavery, global warming and the crumbling world economy – such are the ominous sets of keywords that have been drilled into us from young as the ultimate hurdles to ‘making the world a better place’, so much so that chills of guilt and discomfort creep down our spine whenever we think of them.

Yet we can hardly be blamed. For most of us, such weighty issues are so far removed from our everyday lives that they exist as mere concepts in our minds, the actual details of which are fuzzy and indistinct.

Truly, when we think of trying to make a difference, we find that there is just so much to be done that it is mind-boggling to even contemplate on where to begin. This is the first stumbling block for many of us. We must first realize and accept that we as individuals can make a difference, because if we’re not part of the solution, then we’re part of the problem. Everyday there are tiny little ways in which we can contribute – those few cents we decided to save instead of spending on sweets, or that advertisement that we decided to keep as rough paper instead of throwing it away. Even one such person, when evaluated over the course of a lifetime, is no less an activist.

However, our sphere of influence is not limited to our own selves, as there are two main groups of people that we as young people can greatly affect. It is a well-known fact that parents will pull out all the stops when it comes to the comfort and happiness of their children. Hence, if we were to harness this incredible pester power and extend it beyond the purposes of personal benefit, we will be able to bring about even greater changes.

Compared to wheedling our parents into buying unnecessary things, surely it would be easier to persuade them to use the money for a noble cause instead.

The other group of people within our reach are our friends. We have all witnessed the potency of peer pressure when it comes to things like smoking and premarital sex, because we are at an age where we become preoccupied with making a good impression among our peers. As such, the volatile nature of what is ‘cool’ and ‘in’ among the country’s youth can be swayed towards the direction of diligence and thrifty spending, for instance, provided that enough of us advocate them by exemplifying what is good and frowning upon what is not.

With a little effort from everyone, we can transform our current social atmosphere from within and become a force to be reckoned with, even on a global scale.

At the end of the day, it does not take much to bring about positive changes in our immediate environment.

All it takes is a strong personal conviction and effective use of the 4 p’s mentioned above: pester power and peer pressure.

To chicken out in the face of daunting challenges, real or perceived, would only be doing ourselves an injustice. We deserve that much, and so does the wonderful world we live in.

The ‘Dark’ Side of Life

 

by Ellsee (nickname)

The Academy Award for Best Picture, the coveted award that is only given to the very best of films each year, has been the subject of increasing controversy. While the award is supposed to reflect the overall success of a movie (including its popularity), past winners like A Beautiful Mind (2001), No Country for Old Men (2007) and The Hurt Locker (2009) have baffled countless onlookers, so much so that various groups have begun to question the integrity and motives of the Academy itself because these films, while having received rave reviews from critics, admittedly did not do particularly well in the box office and were nowhere near the public’s favorite to win.

Russel Crowe starred in ‘A Beautiful Mind’ as a a young schizophrenic prodigy.

A deeper look at this extraordinary phenomenon reveals a telling trend that has been silently creeping into modern society. For decades, the differences of interest between the intellectuals and the lay-people have been widening and is continuing to widen.

To the film scholars and critics, the definition of a ‘good movie’ is one that places significant emphasis on the artistic aspect of the film, whereas the general public’s notion is that a ‘good movie’ should be one that is engaging and entertaining.

This ages-old debate between art and entertainment is not merely confined to the movie industry. Literature students the world over groan at having to plow through such morbid volumes as To Kill a Mockingbird and Brave New World, bitterly commenting to themselves that were it not for the sake of scholarly study, these books would have long been phased out of bookstore shelves.

One thought can fulfill immensity.

Indeed, today’s bestsellers consist of modern fiction that is easy-reading and not emotionally taxing, on par with the likes of the Twilight saga and chic-lit by Sophie Kinsella and Meg Cabot. All this hardly comes as a surprise, because in this modern and hectic world, people are simply too busy and burnt out to fork out the time and energy to digest any amount of deep, solid literature.

Because whether we like it or not, art by nature pokes and prods at our conscience in an attempt to make us a better person. Literature is in essence a social commentary meant to draw our attentions beyond our pitiful selves to the world at large and the issues that plague it. And for that, art requires the onlooker to be emotionally involved and above all, to think and understand. Yet, after a nerve-wrecking 8-hour day at work or school, the last thing people want when they finally get to stumble back home is to get entangled with a lengthy storybook not-very-subtly discussing the fate of humanity and the evils of colonialism.

What the modern person wants and needs the most is entertainment, something to get their mind off current troubles; an emotional catharsis that will make them feel good and not be left facing even deeper concerns than their own. Hence the huge successes of a slew of feel-good movies that inundate today’s movie industry (which is, aptly, slowly being referred to more and more as a part of the ‘entertainment industry’).

Are you looking for artistry or entertainment?

Incidentally, no word harbors greater promises of entertainment and fun than the word ‘swashbuckling’. When this word appears, one can be assured that the story up ahead will be filled with delightful romance, thrilling adventures, and exciting fight scenes, all coupled with a nice, happy fairy-tale ending to round it all up.

Such is pure entertainment, with a few family values and lessons on self-esteem and hard work thrown in for good measure in order to satisfy the minimal demands for upholding social morals and values. However, the repercussions of this unbalanced shift towards entertainment among the masses are, to say the least, worrying.

It is no coincidence that the newly unveiled syllabus for the KBSM Literature Component has experienced a significant degradation in terms of literary quality and pedigree. The last vestiges of mainstream classic literature have all but dissipated, indeed Shakespeare has completely vanished. PMR-level novels (so-called) are really adaptations into what can only be labeled as comics, with full-color illustrations and fun activities to do after each chapter. Yet it is hard to blame the Education Ministry for all this.

I know for a fact that less than 30% of my fellow students in the (top) class actually read and finished Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde back in Form 3, most of them with marked difficulties. Because literature is not just about the grammar and vocabulary, plot and themes. Most of them probably knew the story like the back of their hand, but it is an entirely different story to be able to understand and relate to it. “Yes, I know what’s going on. But I don’t get the point of the whole damn thing.” Why write an improbable story about some doctor who could turn himself into his evil alter ego, and most importantly, why on earth study it? For someone who has had zero exposure to the whole world of classic literature (with all its grand nuances, symbolisms, subtleties and complexities), and whose universe had previously revolved solely around rote study, entertainment and relationships, it is understandably perplexing.

The cold, hard truth is that people, especially the younger generation, are losing their ability to appreciate artistry and hence, their ability to ponder on issues that surpass their own private sphere of existence. It is a vicious cycle. The more we focus on entertainment instead of art, the less inclined we become to think intellectually and philosophically; and the less inclined we are to think deep thoughts, the more we shun artistic expression for simple entertainment.

That’s why many people’s lives come across as shallow.

That’s why it’s so hard to discuss theology or philosophy with the people around you.

That’s probably why there will be people who don’t get the title of this article.

That’s also probably why Fidzi finds it so hard to find people to write for his blog.

 

*Ellsee is an oddball in many ways.  She is an SPM Straight-A student who is studying for STPM as a private candidate and plans to major in Linguistics.  A self-described hermit, she spends most of her time at home, where she gleefully delves into her books, her stories, and of course, her studies