Atheis (English: Atheist) is a 1949 Indonesian novel written by Achdiat Karta Mihardja and published by Balai Pustaka. The novel, using three narrative voices, details the rise and fall of Hasan, a young Muslim who is raised to be religious but winds up doubting his faith after dealings with his Marxist–Leninist childhood friend and an anarcho-nihilist writer.
Mihardja, a journalist-cum-literary editor who associated with the eccentric poet Chairil Anwar and the Socialist Party of Indonesia, wrote Atheis from May 1948 to February 1949. The Indonesian used in the novel was influenced by Sundanese and harkens back to earlier works by Minang writers, as opposed to Mihardja's contemporaries who attempted to distance themselves from the earlier style. Dealing mainly with faith, the novel also touches on the interactions between modernity and traditionalism. Although the writer insisted that the work was meant to be realistic, symbolic representations from subjective meanings to the novel being an allegory have been advanced.
After the novel was published, it caused considerable discussion. Religious thinkers, Marxist-Leninists, and anarchists decried the novel for not explaining their ideologies in more detail, but literary figures and many in the general public praised it; this positive reception may have been influenced by the nascent government's need to promote literature for nation-building. Atheis was translated into Malay before 1970 and into English in 1972; it was also adapted into a film with the same title in 1974. The novel, which received an award from the Indonesian government in 1969, is one of the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works.
Plot The plot of Atheis is non-linear. A. Teeuw, a Dutch scholar of Indonesian literature, models it as below, with A representing the time frame covered in Hasan's manuscript (from his youth until splitting with Kartini), B representing the time frame in which the narrator meets with Hasan and receives his manuscript, and C representing the events around Hasan's death.
The following plot summary is presented chronologically.
Hasan, born to a religious Naqshbandi family in Panyeredan, is a student who lives with his family and adopted sister, Fatimah. After finishing his schooling, Hasan attempts to propose marriage to his classmate, Rukmini. However, Rukmini, who is from a higher social class than him, is set to marry a rich man from Batavia (modern day Jakarta). Instead, his parents ask him to marry Fatimah. Hasan refuses, then devotes himself to studying Islam with his father. In the early 1940s he moves to Bandung to work as a civil servant.
In Bandung, Hasan works for the Japanese occupation government and lives an ascetic lifestyle, often fasting for days on end and dunking himself into a river to refresh his body between evening and morning prayers. While there, he meets his childhood friend Rusli, who introduces Hasan to his friend Kartini. Seeing that Rusli and Kartini are atheistic Marxist-Leninists, Hasan considers it his duty to return them to Islam. However, he finds himself unable to address Rusli's arguments against religion and begins doubting his faith. Soon Hasan becomes increasingly divorced from his religious upbringing, at one time skipping the mandatory maghrib prayer to watch a movie with Kartini. Through Rusli, Hasan is introduced to people from different ideologies, including the anarcho-nihilist playboy Anwar; he also begins courting Kartini.
One day, he returns to Panyeredan to visit his family with Anwar. While there, Anwar sees some night watchmen quivering in fear near a cemetery. When told that they had seen a ghost, Anwar enters the cemetery with Hasan to disprove its existence. However, Hasan thinks he sees a ghost and runs away frightened. When ridiculed for this by Anwar, Hasan's faith is broken. This leads him to have a large fight with his family about their Islamic faith, which results in Hasan's family disowning him. Upon his return to Bandung, Hasan marries Kartini.
Three years later, Hasan's relationship with Kartini is souring; both are suspicious that the other is unfaithful. Eventually, Hasan sees Kartini and Anwar leaving a hotel near the train station and incorrectly assumes that she had been cheating on him. He immediately divorces her and moves out, but soon contracts tuberculosis. After several weeks, Hasan returns to Panyeredan after hearing that his father is ill to work out their issues. However, his father rejects him as a temptation from the devil. Dejected, Hasan returns to Bandung.
As his health continues to degrade, Hasan approaches a local journalist with a manuscript that details his life; the journalist agrees to publish it should something happen to Hasan. Not long afterwards, Hasan goes out into the night after curfew and is shot in the chest by Japanese patrols, dying after torture at the station with the Islamic creed "Allahu Akbar" on his lips. Later, Rusli and a tearful Kartini claim his body.
Characters
Hasan Hasan is the protagonist of the novel. Raised a devout Muslim, he becomes confused over his beliefs due to influences from his childhood friend and other acquaintances in Bandung. He is further confused by his feelings towards Kartini, who physically resembles his first love Rukmini. Eventually, after being disowned by his family and seemingly abandoned by his friends, Hasan is shot and subsequently tortured to death by Japanese police. According to the literary critics Maman S. Mahayana, Oyon Sofyan, and Achmad Dian, Hasan's psychological struggles reflect Sigmund Freud's theories on psychoanalysis. Teeuw notes that Hasan comes across as being disappointed that his traditional religious upbringing is not enough to overcome the temptations of the modern world. Poet and critic of Indonesian literature Muhammad Balfas writes that Hasan's conflict arises from being torn intellectually between the teachings of his ultra-religious father and the Marxist Rusli, while at the same time being emotionally victimised by the ever self-confident Anwar. Balfas notes that three versions of Hasan are made apparent to the reader: Hasan's view of himself, the narrator's view of Hasan, and the narrator's reconstruction of Hasan.
Rusli Rusli is Hasan's childhood friend who approaches him in Bandung. A Marxist-Leninist, he is highly educated and eloquent, which he often uses to win debates on the benefits of different ideologies. Through Rusli, Hasan is introduced to several other characters with Western educations and ideologies, including Hasan's future wife Kartini. During Hasan's time in Bandung, Rusli provides emotional support to him and Kartini. Rusli accompanies Kartini to the police station to identify Hasan's body. According to literary scholar Boen S. Oemarjati, Rusli was inspired by one of Mihardja's friends in Bandung. Hendrik Maier, professor of southeast Asian literature at the University of California, Riverside, characterizes Rusli as the most balanced of the main protagonists.
Kartini Kartini is a young Marxist-Leninist who Rusli introduces to Hasan. As Kartini resembles Hasan's first love, Hasan falls deeply in love with her. However, after they marry Hasan becomes increasingly jealous and questions her relationship with Anwar, who often flirts with Kartini. When Anwar picks her up at the train station after she visits her aunt, he attempts to force himself on her. After fighting him off, Kartini leaves the hotel, followed by Anwar. After Hasan divorces her based on his perception of the events, Kartini lives alone. She cries over Hasan's body when asked to identify him for the police.
Anwar Anwar is a young anarcho-nihilist who considers himself his own god. He is known for being a crude womanizer who has no qualms with using others to get what he wants. Through his actions, Anwar is responsible for both events which devastate Hasan's life: Anwar's ridicule leads Hasan to strife with his family, and Anwar's womanizing and incessant flirting, including unwanted sexual advances against Kartini, lead to Hasan's divorce. Maier describes him as a "destructive, egotistic and vain man who in daily life does not live up to the ideals with which he tries to impress [Hasan]". Anwar is thought to have been based on the poet Chairil Anwar, an individualistic anarchist known for being abrasive, having kleptomania, and womanizing. The poet's friend Nasjah Djamin notes that the characterization captured the real-life Anwar's nonchalance, impoliteness, and arrogance.
Narrator The narrator, who only appears in parts of the novel which he narrates, is referred to throughout the novel only as "saya" (a respectful term for "I" or "me"). Little is known about his personal life other than that he is a journalist. According to Indonesian writer and literary critic Subagio Sastrowardoyo, the narrator appears to be representative of Mihardja and is used to teach moral lessons to the reader through his suggestions to Hasan.
Writing and influences Mihardja, who was born and raised in Garut, West Java, was trained as a journalist before moving to Batavia in 1941 to work for the state publisher of the Dutch East Indies, Balai Pustaka. While in Batavia, in 1945 he began associating with Chairil Anwar's literary group Republika. After the Proclamation of Indonesian Independence and the start of the Indonesian National Revolution, he fled to West Java and participated in events led by the Socialist Party of Indonesia led by Sutan Sjahrir. He was not an atheist, although his association with the party led some to draw that conclusion. Mihardja drew upon this background while writing Atheis.
Atheis was Mihardja's first novel; what few literary works he had written beforehand were mostly short stories and dramas, both those intended for the radio and the stage. He never formally studied writing, instead learning how to write fiction from his experiences reading existing works, including those of André Gide, Leo Tolstoy, Vsevolod Ivanov, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. His writing style was heavily influenced by that of Gide, particularly as found in The Immoralist (1902). Malay, the language which forms the basis of modern Indonesian, was not Mihardja's native language; his earlier works had all been in Sundanese, and Mihardja had only begun regularly using Indonesian after the Japanese occupation (1942–1945), when he became a translator.
The inspiration for Atheis came, according to Oemarjati, sometime during the early 1940s. In Mihardja's observations, Marxism–Leninism and anarcho-nihilism were among the most common ideologies in Indonesia; this led him to depict Rusli and Anwar as holding those ideologies. Meanwhile, emerging writers such as Idrus, Asrul Sani, and Chairil Anwar were increasingly critical of the older generation of Indonesian authors, whom they decried as narrow-minded and provincial. Mihardja, who was older than many contemporary writers and wrote in a similar style to the older authors, disliked this comparison; according to Maier, this may have led him to represent Chairil Anwar as a much-flawed character. Mihardja formalised his concept throughout the early 1940s and completed the writing during a period of unemployment from May 1948 until February 1949.
Styles