The Last Night is Dead: Modernization and Representation of Rural in the Short Stories of Thailand and Malaysia during 1967-1977 CE

Abstract

This article aims to study and analyze the short story literatures of both Thai and Malaysian writers. It is to compare the self portraying of rural representative of both countries’ writers, how they are different from each other. This study found that the short stories of Thailand and Malaysia during 1967s-1977s interestingly had sharing ideological characteristics, i.e. the writers believed in the literatures as a tool to reflect or solve social problems. The portrayal of rural representatives created by writers of both countries was abandonment of countryside from development, lacking behind, scarcity and deficiency. The writers called for the right for equal development in the rural areas especially the economic and educational aspects, while they accepted the community’s changes resulting from the development as an inevitable outcome. The short stories on countryside of both Thai and Malaysian writers during this period were in “dilemma” of choosing between modernization or the old local traditional dignity. The literatures intended to solve social problems, as a result, could not find the real solutions for the society. This situation reflected sharing characteristics of Thailand and Malaysia in which they were in the same current of history.