The Metaphors of Quests, Labyrinths and the Dance of Kali in Christopher Koch’s The Year of Living Dangerously

Abstract

Ovid’s myth of the Cretan labyrinth, constructed by Daedalus to hide the Minotaur, the monster that is a result of Pasiphae’s lust, and Dante’s labyrinth of Hell, in The Inferno, are literary allusions that conjure images of imprisonment and moral dilemma. In this paper, I explore the metaphor of the labyrinth in The Year of Living Dangerously (YLD) and the way in which Koch integrates this metaphor with Christian, Hindu and Buddhist myths so as to engage with the cultural divide that continues to influence Christian and non-Christian worldviews. The labyrinth metaphor emerges through the imagery of the novel which focuses on caves, shadows, circuitous paths, entrapment, and moral choices. In the novel, the metaphor of the labyrinth is conveyed through the underworld imagery of Indonesian society and through the Wayang Bar, the citadel of the journalists trapped in a world of political intrigue and of good and evil. Metaphorically evoking the medieval concept of the world as a perilous maze, Koch uses the labyrinth as a way of imaging the search for the sacred in contemporary society.

Keywords

• metaphor
• labyrinth
• the year of living dangerously
• christian myth
• hindu myth
• buddhist myth
• cultural divide
• novel
• underworld
• journalists
• political intrigue
• quest