For the character, there is two parts of them. For the first part there are characters from the time of old time and there a few a characters that are from the modern time. For the old time the first character is Dato’ Maharaja Lela.
He is the Upriver Chief of the Pasir Salak. He is the head that was in charge to collect all the taxes. He has a traditional thinking and he is a typical old Malay leader. During the time of colonization by British,He was one of the most well known fighter that famous with his anti-colonization. More than that he is Mastura’s father and he is a strict father because he always wants Mastura to adhere to what he wants for Mastura.
Secondly,Dato Sagor.Dato Sagor is the good friend of Dato’ Maharaja Lela and he is one of Dato’ Maharaja Lela follower that against the British colonization. Compare to Dato’ Maharaja Lela, he is more mean and selfish. By looking the ways he treat his slaves, Kuntum we can say that he is mean and selfish. He willing to do anything as long it fulfills his needs. Moreover, from the reading, we can simply say that he is a manipulative type because at the end he is the one that manipulate Kuntum’s husband, Si Puntum to kill Birch. For all what that happened, we believe that Datuk Sagor against the British because he afraid that he will lose power to his people.
The other character is Birch. Birch is the Perak’s British Resident, J.W.W Birch. He is the one who brought the ideology that the slavery culture should be abolished. In other part, we can say that he rude and do not respect our Malay culture because he never respects the power of Sultan. Worse, he always insults the Sultan by challenging and disobeys of the Sultan’s order.
The other character that we should take point is Tan. Tan is Tan Kim Cheng, Leader of Chinese people that was together in meeting at the Pangkor in 1874. In this play, Kee Thuan Chye try to describe that Tan is a Clever but also a selfish leader. All he does is just for the best of him and his people only. Moreover, the writer tries to describe that he is very good in manipulating the situation to get away from troubles and make profits to himself and his children.
Kuntum and Mastura are the small characters that have been created up by the Kee Thuan Chye in his play. In this play,she was the Datuk Sagor’s slave. Kuntum is the Si Puntum’s wife. She is a loyal wife and loves her husband very well. While Mastura is the daughter of Dato’ Maharaja Lela. She has a modern thinking and she always argues with her father about the role of women. She is seen as a fully-functioning part of the male world, governed by rational thought and a strong sense of ethics.
Other character is Si Puntum. Si Puntum is Kuntum’s husband and he loves his wife. He is willing to make sacrifice for her wife. He is willing to kill Birch even though he knows that it is not the right way just because he thinks that Birch had made his wife as his slave and treat her very bad. More than that, he is easily being manipulated by Datuk Sagor to kill Birch.
For the modern time, Kee Thuan Chye had put in a few characters that used for the reader to make different with the old time character. Those character are Ashburn,where if we translate in Malay it will be Abu Bakar,a typical Malay name. Others are Chee Yoon and Sal. They were described as a more modern person and seem like lost their roots however they are not. They still live with Tempoyak, a kind of Malay food. Other character is Sofea. Sofea seems like she lost her roots very well after being abroad for a long time. She also smokes even though she is a girl which is against the culture.
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