Through the Eyes of a Child: The Child Metaphor and German Colonial Fantasies in Sabine Kuegler’s NovelDschungelkind
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21066/carcl.libri.15.1.4Keywords:
child metaphor, children’s adventures, colonial fantasies, Dschungelkind, German-Indonesian relations, postcolonialAbstract
The child metaphor can carry positive and negative connotations. The positive connotation suggests hope, imagination, and an idealised nostalgia, whereas the negative one is often used to characterise marginalised or underprivileged groups (the colonised or disabled). This study investigates the use of the child metaphor in Sabine Kuegler’s Dschungelkind, which features as narrator a German child who grows up among the Fayu tribe in the Papuan jungle. The study shows that the text’s use of childhood metaphors to depict the Fayu defies categorisation as entirely positive or negative. From the narrator’s perspective, the metaphors she associates with the tribe are favourable. Analysis using Susanne Zantop’s concept of German colonial fantasy, however, shows that the narrative portrays the German family as “father” figures to the indigenous people (“children”) whom they educate. The Fayu are thus portrayed like other colonised societies, as children who need guiding to a civilised way of life.
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