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kulit puppets, he is ending his worship of the illusory shadows of the shadows which symbolise
reality on the wayang screen. At the same time, Hamilton grows emotionally capable of
recognising his own worship of his profession, thereby freeing himself to make a commitment
to Jill and to life which is personified in their child. Together Billy Kwan and Guy Hamilton
are freed from their frustrations and able to chose a course of action which upholds the sacred
order of dharma. ‘That man is free to make or mar his destiny is a fundamental conviction’ of
the poet of the Bhagavad Gita (Chaitanya, 16), and this, ultimately, is the central message
Koch is relaying in The Year of Living Desperately.
Billy Kwan must be seen in the light of a man in search of his eternal self, or else he
does, as many critics find, become an utterly pathetic character driven insane by his pain and
frustrations; Guy Hamilton must also be seen, considering his quest to escape his own
professional and emotional cemeteries, in this light, or he must be judged a man of little
substance, prone to fantasy and self-illusion, and driven by social conventions rather than
inspired by personal conviction. Failing to see Kwan and Hamilton as a heroic double would
also condemn the novel to being nothing beyond a sordid statement of the absurdity of human
aspirations in a futile and meaningless life, crassly and inaccurately labelling it an Orientalist,
neo-colonialist, and post-modernist gospel—or to put it as Billy Kwan might, literary
cornflakes.
11.5. Conclusion
This chapter has endeavoured to demonstrate two central elements in the development
of characters of d’Alpuget’s Monkeys in the Dark and Koch’s The Year of Living Dangerously
in order to identify their dependence on Eastern variations on the theme of doubles. Despite its
critical acceptance, The Year of Living Dangerously is not a popular novel of clever plot twists,
post-colonial historical events, and post-modern anti-heroes, but is a metaphor of the revelation
of self once the distinguishing, debilitating masks of personality are defrocked to display the
essential, non-individuating soul. Separately, Kwan and Hamilton are nearly everything the
other says he would not be; together they become more than either alone ever could have been,
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