ABSTRACT
In the beginning of Taufik Ikram Jamil's short story Hadiah untuk Raja the main protagonist, a nameless king, receives a present. Having opened it, he becomes angry. It appears that one of his subjects has sent him both his ears and his eyes to please him. From its beginning in the 1920s, Indonesian literature has always been in close contact with the development of the nation and, later, the state of Indonesia. Modern Indonesian literature has, as Goenawan tells us, always wanted to play an active part in the creation of 'Indonesia'; it saw itself as a force alongside other forces that were obliged as well as able to shape the nation-state. Through education, as well as bureaucratization, the national language has been deprived of its nuances and shades of meaning and turned into a bland, one-dimensional tool for consensus: 'a symbol of one centre, one movement, one meaning'.
