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

11.1. Introduction
The Masks of Doubles
Having centred attention in chapter 10 on the influence of the three gunas in concealing
the personality of men behind masks of illusion, the focus now turns to two special cases in
which Blanche d’Alpuget and Christopher J. Koch bring in the themes of the double
characters. Doubles are a familiar theme in Australian and other Western literature, but tend to
be treated as polarities, as in the Australian sense of self as a paradise or hell; as ambiguously
near to or far from the centre of civilisation; as land of innocents open to an impending
invasion of the yellow hoards or as that of the ‘Coming Man’ answering the call to rescue old
Mother England (which is an example of doubled doubles); as lying geo-socio-politically in
the East or in the West; as white or non-white; as a society of settlers introducing civilisation
or of invaders destroying civilisation; as founded on the sweat of free immigrants or of
transported convicts. The implication of such doubles is to direct concentration to conflicting
judgements and views, producing the good/bad, strong/weak, innocent/cunning, cultured/crude
views which culminate in the attitudes which underscore the stereotypal separation of ‘the self’
and the ‘Other’, and which typify the Orientalism which identifies Australia with the
imperial/Western ‘self’ and the colonialism which renders it an ‘Other’.
The Asian tradition deals with doubles, or multiples, however, more as composites, as
seen in the Great Goddess, who is primarily recognised in the three more powerful aspects as
Parvati, Durga, and Kali, and even in myriad other forms depending on the occasion (as
discussed in detail in chapter 9), and in the three Pandava brothers of the wayang kulit,
Judistira, Arjuna, and Bima, who together make up the complete man (as covered in chapter 7).
The results then—just the opposite of the Western trend—are namely to bind disparate parts,
formed from the illusion of natural entities, into the whole, which is the true, timeless,
spaceless, limitless and indescribable Self. C. J. Koch finds his affinities with these
metaphoric figures which cause the dissolution of the distinction between ‘self’ and ‘Other’,
and which in the Australian case of mixed races and cultures he calls ‘hybrids’. He presents
- 257 -