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Koch maintains the distinction between alus/kasar and good/bad. While depicting his
various characters in wayang terms, it is only their actions that finally count. Wally, for all his
alus determinants, is disgraced for his kasar pederasty. Kumar, though stained with the ‘bad’
mark of a communist, turns out to be one of the most reasonable and caring alus figures of the
novel. Cookie is a rather uninteresting, passive character, but is rewarded for his courageous
action of saving Billy’s files by being promoted to the godlike dalang status of storyteller.
Hamilton starts the novel in the middle of the alus/kasar continuum, but grows through Billy’s
tutelage, and finally makes a series of ‘right’ choices—covering the people’s march in the
highlands while all the other journalists are sitting on their heels in Jakarta; committing himself
to Jill and their baby; showing the courage to cover the events of the coup—which lead him to
a degree of enlightenment beyond his early promise. And Billy Kwan, in spite of his grotesque
shape, his manic-depressive tendencies, his anger, fear, selfishness, finally masters himself and
acts righteously and without concern for himself, and so attains the spirituality which he could
earlier only nag and intellectualise about.
Since Judistira, the Just King, is so compassionate that he is unable to act; Bima, the
bold warrior, so committed to action that he is inflexible; and Ardjuna, so committed to
defending divine order and justice that he is cold, fickle and selfish; the wayang kulit calls on
Semar, the divine fool, to combine and resolve the virtues and imperfections of the others,
bringing them ‘an emotional detachment and an inner peace’ to the ‘struggle for order and
justice’ in a ‘world in flux’ (Geertz, 273). And Koch’s Semar is, of course, Billy Kwan, the
dwarf Buddha in a multi-coloured Hawaiian shirt.
Semar is, like Krishna, a god incarnated to serve human heroes. Cursed and punished,
he is transformed into a ‘ludicrous dwarf’, but ‘his status as a god of supernatural powers is
acknowledged by the Pandawas’ (Brandon, 16). For Koch’s purposes, Billy Kwan as Semar is
very appropriate indeed. In one play Semar ‘saves the kingdom of the gods from the fury of
the goddess Durga’, and in others ‘he and his sons become for a time kings’ (Brandon, 12).
Kwan’s heroic accomplishments and spiritual reward are mostly ignored by critics, though the
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