Volltext - ub-dok: der Dokumentenserver der UB Trier - Universität ...

in her both through her ancestry and through her living there during the war’, and also by ‘her
maternity’, which ‘seems both mysterious and paradoxical’ to him and which offers some hope
to him for gaining the experience which will assuage the guilt of his, and by analogy
Australia’s, ignorance (Tiffin, 1982, 329). Thus on this single character Koch is bringing into
focus all of the themes which preoccupy him throughout his novels: of the dualities of
personality; of evil; of history; of Eastern and Western cultural and mythological inheritances;
of perceptions of self and of the ‘Other’; of the dangerous and/or enlightening ‘Otherworld’ to
which Asia can give access; of innocence and experience; of thought and action. Foremost,
however, is the difference in perspective which makes these issues so critical to O’Brien and,
as Tiffen points out, utter non-issues to Ilsa:
By retracing the ancestral steps to Europe, and by learning its old, dark secrets,
the vacancy of colonial innocence might be overcome. Characteristically such
experience, particularly the enormity of evil represented by the war itself, is
important only to O’Brien, and is quite incidental to Ilsa’s sense of herself and
of her background. (Tiffin, 1982, 329)
O’Brien and Ilsa decide to separate themselves from their friends for an adventure in
India, where ‘they begin to recognize themselves and each other as petty escapists, not heroic
adventurers; instead of satisfying their urge for freedom, travel reminds them of their
unfulfilled commitments and responsibilities’ (Huggan 1993, Tourist Gaze, 84). O’Brien has
imagined that Ilsa’s experience can be his door into the ‘Otherworld’, but hope turns to
‘frustration as he finds he is unable to grasp it or to nurture himself on it’ and that the woman
he worships remains ever beyond his grasp (Tiffin, 1982, 329). The conflicting dualities
inherent in India and Ilsa nearly kill O’Brien, who is just looking to find a complement to his
own, rather simple sense of self, but finds a whirlwind of love, contempt, exploitation,
colonialism, spirituality and poverty.
O’Brien survives by retreating into the mountains, where he is able to recompose
himself, unintentionally following the example of the god Shiva, the archetypal ascetic who
was so unnerved by the world that he withdrew to a mountaintop to meditate. The idealised
dream O’Brien held of the world failed him along with his health, but is replaced with Koch’s
- 121 -