Gauging The Enemy in the Blanket Through the Paradigm of Malayness

Abstract

Anthony Burgess (1917 - 1993) has written a trilogy of novels on the Malay World, namely The Malayan Trilogy (1964). It has been suggested that the trilogy, which consists of the novels Time for a Tiger (1956), The Enemy in the Blanket (1958) and Beds in the East (1959), depicts the Islamic practices through its Muslim Malay characters, displaying their hypocrisy and their wayward Islamic practices as stated by Zawiyah Yahya (2003). In contrast, the trilogy has rarely been studied based on elements of the paradigm of Malayness in literature, consisting of six elements, namely the Malay language, Islam, the Malay rulers, adat/culture, ethnicity, and identity. Therefore, we aim to analyse one of the novels in the trilogy, The Enemy in the Blanket, in light of Islam as one of the elements under the paradigm of Malayness in literature as stated by Ida as our primary conceptual framework in this study. To achieve these objectives, we employ a close textual reading on the novel by analysing the Muslim Malay characters in The Enemy in the Blanket. The findings show that the Muslim Malay characters in The Enemy in the Blanket could be considered as wayward Muslims in their practices and beliefs. Therefore, we would like to reconfirm that the paradigm of Malayness in in fact, an everyday- defined social reality, as experienced by the people in the course of their everyday life as opposed to it as an authority-defined social reality, as defined by people of the dominant power structure. It is hoped that this study will contribute to the on-going discourse on Islam as the paradigm of Malayness as well as English literature on the Malay World.