Different Voices: The Singaporean/Malaysian Novel

12. SHADOW THEATRE (2002)

258 SHADOW THEATRE (2002) Fiona Cheong’s second novel Shadow Theatre (2002) was published in New York. Her first novel, The Scent of the Gods (1991), about a young girl growing up in Singapore, was likewise published in New York. The narrative structure of the novel Shadow Theatre grows out of its title, which is derived from the Malay words, wayang kulit. In the performance of this traditional theatre, wayang kulit, the shadows of the highly decorated leather puppets, mounted on strips of light wood, appear on a screen to play a part in a narrative and disappear into the darkness. This is made possible by the light behind the screen as the puppeteer manipulates the wooden strips while narrating the story in order to animate the figures. Fiona Cheong combines the modern convention of multiple narrators and the traditional pre-Islamic Malay way of dramatizing the story. Each narrator appears and disappears like shadows on a traditional screen to give their perspective of an incident that occurred sometime in the past. It has the CHAPTER XII 12 SMNovel.indd 258 10/5/09 2:24:45 PM Shadow Theatre (2002) 259 characteristic fluidity of discourse found in oral cultures, in which an ever-changing narrative is continuously altered by successive contributors. The theme of child abuse is slowly unravelled as these narrators recount what they heard and saw. As there are eight narrators, the writer uses subtitles to show the connections and link between them and the main character Shakilah who is in the main victim of child abuse in the narrative. In Cheong’s narrative strategy, the emphasis in the narration is on the individual consciousness and sensibility of each narrator. In the representation of the dominant speaking voice of Helena Sim, one of the narrators whom the reader hears more than any other, Cheong uses stylization. The writer exploits Helena’s Singapore-English, which grows out of her historical past, to highlight her personality. As a Peranakan, she is a Malay-speaking Chinese. Although she has an English secondary school education, unintentional code-mixing in her spoken language takes place. For instance, the Malay word bukan appears like a question tag consistently in her narration: “still fresh for me, bukan?” (p. 112), “the fellow just died, bukan?” (p. 113), “We grew up around here, bukan?” (p. 120), and “Don’t tempt fate, bukan?” (p. 121). Malay phrases like, bodohbodoh (p. 98), betul-betul appear more than once in her narration. Although there are contextual explanations, the writer provides a glossary. The word lah is tagged on to her words like a particle: “why-lah”, “penance-lah”, “elselah ”, “died-lah”, “funny-lah”, “surprising-lah”, “ya-lah”, “luckily-lah”, “wait-lah”, “crash-lah”, “hallucinating-lah”, and “see-lah”. It functions as an “intensifying particle, as a marker of informal style and as a signal of intimacy” (Tongue 1974, p. 114). The writer exploits this particular use of lah to delineate the narrator’s personality. Her 12 SMNovel.indd 259 10/5/09 2:24:45 PM 260 Different Voices peculiar use of “also” and “only” not only captures the local flavour, but also her individuality. Examples of these are: “married a few days only” (p. 113), “for her benefit only” (p. 113), “to certain limit only” (p. 116), “he heard about it only” (p. 123), “coming to kachau only” (p. 116), and “always wants to stay home only” (p. 98). Phrases such as “easy to blame heat also” (p. 100) and “I asked her about him also” (p. 123), together with the code-mixing, make Helena Sim’s voice distinct, as it stands in contrast to the other voices in the novel. The writer stylizes the narrator’s speech further with the use of the word “okay”. This word appears consistently at regular intervals in her narration, like a question tag which gives her speech an individualized colouring. Although Helena’s individualized speech does not reflect the actual speech of the Peranakans, it does capture some of the essence of their speech repertoire. More importantly, a distinct personality emerges through the writer’s artistic organization of the narrator’s speech. The effectiveness of this individualized speech rests in the contrast created by the Standard English used by Rose Sim, her daughter. In fact, Standard English is used by all the other narrators except Rohanna Aziz, since they have had English education. Even Lulu Mendez, the...