A Comment on Dee’s ‘Peluk’

© Paren Deka Putra
English Department

If someone asks me why do I read a literary work, it is to broaden and enrich my knowledge. In my opinion, the most important thing to make our life brighter and more meaningful for others is enriching our knowledge. Besides, I would like to know and understand this lovely world along with its complexity by embracing other people’s point of views.

I read the other day Rectoverso, one of Dewi Lestari’s literary works. It is a collection of short stories accompanied by a music album. In this book, Dee presents some eleven short stories.

One of the short stories mentioned above is entitled ‘Peluk’. Due to Mr. Setiawan instruction, I am trying to express my comment on the work as a short story. Yet the melody is touching, and it seems that reading the short story will be meaningless if we do not hear the music.

In the short story, Dee describes a situation where the character found that her heart was not flowing to the same way anymore. The protagonist found that she and her partner were not in love as much as before. Here was the problem began. The woman felt, realized, and understood the signs, but her partner didn’t.

That is why when she decided to finish the relationship her partner did not get it. Her partner asked why, but she could answer nothing but gave her a hug. And this lovely, memorable, and last hug and answered the entire question.

This story is told from a first person point of view. The character is an adult that has already understood how she feels and what she wants.

When I finished reading this story, I was amazed of how brilliant this literary work was. It consists of meaningful sentences composed with lovely and powerful words. Dee has a goal, and I think the goal is to make us realize and understand that there is a kind of personal world.

Dee draws us into a situation where we should understand other people by how and what they feel. She tells us that love is just like water flowing in a river. We have nothing to control it. So one day if we realize that it is not flowing to the same way, we have to stop for the sake of love itself. Besides, we have to do that for our own personal development. ***