Ronggeng-Ronggeng is a short story written by Lee Kok Liang, who lives on the island of Penang and his family has been domiciled for four generations. Besides being active in writing, Lee was also engaged in politics. As a well-known writer, many of his writings have been published in magazines and anthologies. For example, his first collection of short stories is ‘The Mutes in the Sun and the Other Stories’ in 1964 then, his novel, ‘Flowers in the Sky’ came out in 1981. After that, a second collection of his short stories, ‘Death is a Ceremony and Other Stories’, was published in 1992, before his death. His novel, ‘London Does Not Belong to Me’ is due in 2003. Although Lee was educated in Chinese and English, his literary works still reflect his identity as a truly Malaysian in many of his short stories such as, ‘Return to Malaya’. Lee proves that one’s language background will not affect his/her identity. This work of his does contribute to the Malaysian Literature in English as it reveals the importance of identity and attachment of one’s root.
Ronggeng-Ronggeng presents the story with rural and semi-urban backgrounds-villages and town areas. All events in the story are in realistic tradition presenting the identity of Malaysian such as cultural shows Ronggeng, Bangsawan, Hokkien Opera, and Westerns. The significant of the story can be seen through their lifestyle including the way they dressed.
Our reading of this short story gives us a strong feeling that the writer is trying to present the importance of not forgetting ones origin and to achieve that, Lee Kok Liang has created a protagonist named Che Siti, who represents a very Malay character through the story and she has to sacrifice a lot to earn a life. She has to work as a dancer at Ronggeng-Ronggeng in order to feed her mother and younger brothers. She had gotten married once but, unfortunately her man left her for a richer woman. Pity on her but, there is one man named Mat had taught her the rhythm and steps of the ronggeng. Furthermore, she still had her beauty by the time. This package helps her to get a lot of customers during the ronggeng. Here is where the issue of women exploitation comes up. It can be seen clearly in this story when women had been use as an ‘entertainment’ for men. Women have to do the ‘Ronggeng’ to get the money even though, deep inside Che Siti’s heart, she doesn’t want to work like that.
Therefore, in order to achieve the outcome of making the story to stand out as a prominent figure as well as to make the central theme speaks for itself, the narrator has chosen to present the story from an omniscient point of view. Through the utilization of this perspective, the narrator is able to give us the highlights the inner feelings of the characters. Consequently, this leads the readers to obtain a deep understanding of the characters’ feelings, without having the narrator to intrude much because the narrator has the freedom to move in and out of the characters’ minds. In other words, readers are then allowed to have access to the perceptions and thoughts of all the characters in the story. Other than that, the narrator uses him omniscience to trek deeper into a character that we otherwise do not really come close to understanding. For example, there are plenty of inner monologues throughout the story, especially the main character of the story, Che Siti . Here are some examples:
~ She loved gold- a beautiful anklet on her foot would bring out the texture of her skin. And how the other girls would be so jealous. And the men would look at her foot instead of her breasts.
~ Siti looked at the men closely and saw that he was young. And he was not bad-looking at all, despite the gold tooth. He had a high nose, unlike most Chinese and very kind eyes. They said the Chinese worked hard and saved a lot of money. Was this one rich?
~ As he lifted his arms, blond hairs stuck out like coconut fibers from his armpits, and he smelt. Are white women like that too? But how could they? They had looked so pretty in the pictures and in their pretty shoes, with such slim straps and very sharp heels, just the stems of flowers.
Apart from that, the writer utilized the sacrificed of a woman by explaining about what is the hardship that Che Siti had to go through. For example, every night, her feet hurt and her legs ache because of the dancing. In fact, according to Mat, she was the most serious girl of the lot and saved most of her earnings. She had the idea that if she tapped lightly her shoes would last twice as long. It is then strengthen again by Che Aminah, who is Che Siti’s friend when Che Aminah asks her to get a new shoes but she refused and said, she still can use it instead of buying a new expensive one. In this part, it is very clear about the physical restriction according to the gender. As in this story, women have to wear high heels to look beautiful in the eyes of men even they have no money and ‘ronggeng’ women have to wear tight and short kebaya to make the men glanced at them during the dance. The issue of sexual harassment also appeared while Che Siti dancing with the drunken white soldier, Johnnie.
The value of having identity is portrayed throughout this story. Lee nativizes the text by including the local slang and the national language in the story to create a sense of origin that still slightly remains in the protagonist and other characters in this story such as “-lah”, “ronggeng”, “sarong”, “kebaya”, “songkok”, “pondok”, and “bangsawan”.
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