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10.1. Introduction
The Masks of Personality
One of the central issues in these five novels is the sense of identity generated through
the donning, wearing, and shedding of masks of personality. Writing of C. J. Koch’s The Year
of Living Dangerously in an article which is fully applicable to his other novels and to Blanche
d’Alpuget’s as well, Marak Haltof says that removing the layers of masks—of both his Asian
and Australian characters—is Koch’s way of joining the ‘discourse on the nature of the post-
colonial state of mind, on the notion of Australian identity, and on the Australian perception of
its Asian neighbours’. The Year of Living Dangerously concerns itself with the motif of
‘otherness’, which is central to the Australian quest for a sense of identity, with the ‘Other’
being variously Australia itself, Asia, or simply other people (Haltof, 44). Koch picks up on
and advances the Asian sense of the ‘Other’ within oneself which Blanche d’Alpuget has so
well exploited in the internal psycho-spiritual struggles of her principle figures. They offer
characters whose ‘otherness’ lacks essential discriminating factors, so that the ‘distinction
between “us” and “them”, Indonesia and Australia, is not clear’ (Haltof, 46). Contact with the
‘Other’ weakens old prejudices and stereotypes, which allows them to realise that their search
for the ‘Other’ has brought them before a mirror. The ‘Other’ they are gazing at is themselves;
the ‘self’ which they believed themselves to be is recognized as a superstructure of masks
which the search has begun to dislodge.
For some, this is a shattering experience, leading to a loss of the sense of humanity as
their fear drives them into refuge from the ‘otherness’ in which they assuming new and more
protective masks. For others the attraction to the ‘Other’ is too strong, and they effectively
exchange one set of masks for another. There remain those, however, whose personalities are
recognised as manifestations of the illusory masks obscuring the unflawed essence of their
shared humanity. This self-discovery depends on a release from the conviction of an
antagonism between ‘self’ and ‘Other’, so that the ‘individual’ might defrock himself of his
illusory masks, and find his true being.
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