"Am I a stranger to the land of my birth forever, off the ground I never want to move?"
— The main character
Oeroeg is a 1948 novel by Dutch author Hella Haasse, set during the era in which Indonesia was colonised by the Netherlands. The book studies the friendship between the son of Dutch colonists, named "Johan" in the film adaptation but remaining nameless in the book, and an Indonesian boy, Oeroeg.
It is the most standard work used for School Study Media in the Netherlands. Virtually every student in higher education is forced to read it at some point. It has also had a theatrical film adaptation in 1993, titled Going Home. The entire film is up for watching here
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This novel contains examples of:
- Disappeared Dad: Oeroeg's father dies. His mother soon can't take care of herself anymore after it happens.
- Downer Ending: Oeroeg and Johan meet again after several years, as hostile enemies during Indonesian protests. Johan tries to reconcile, but Oeroeg tells him to go since he does not belong in Indonesia.
- Forbidden Friendship: While Johan's family never outright forbids him from hanging out with Indonesian kids, his dad at one point gets really mad that he is so focused on Oeroeg and asks him why he can't play with white kids.
- Genius Bruiser: Oeroeg. He gets through a lot of schooling and good education, completely against Johan's family's expectations.
- Heel Realization: Oeroeg tries to induce one on Johan by introducing him to the White Man's Burden. It doesn't work. He succesfully converts Lida, though, who learns to speak Indonesian and starts working at a local hospital as a nurse, giving up her lavish home and white luxury.
- Hired Help as Family: The book is about the friendship between the child of a wealthy Dutch family in Indonesia and the son of two of their indigenous servants. Their relationship grows increasingly strained throughout the book due to the political situation in Indonesia.
- I Choose to Stay: The main character grew up in Indonesia and considers it his home. He does go to study in the Netherlands, where his parents are from, for some time and he becomes horribly confused when he returns to Indonesia and is told that he "doesn't belong here" by someone who may or may not be Oeroeg.
- The Mentor: Gerard, the caretaker and huntsman, who teaches the boys a lot when they're kids.
- Parental Abandonment: Johan's mother strikes up an affair with Johan's personal teacher, divorces his father and takes off to Holland, leaving her son behind without remorse.
- A Real Man Is a Killer: What Johan's dad tries to force upon him.
- Token Black Friend: While Oeroeg and Johan are on equal terms to each other, to their respective communities it comes off as this, and they are mocked for it, too - Oeroeg espcially, who is forced to change schools.
- We Used to Be Friends: When Johan returns to Indonesia as an adult after spending years in the Netherlands, he comes employed as a police officer and assists against Indonesian protestors who want their country back. He then meets a guy he thinks is Oeroeg at a lake near his former house.Johan: Oeroeg.
Oeroeg: Go away. Or I'll shoot.
Johan: Listen—
Oeroeg: Leave. You have no business here. - What Happened to the Mouse?: So Johan leaves his father because his bitchy new wife sends Johan away—and his parents are never mentioned again from that point on.
- You Killed My Father: Johan truly fears that Oeroeg blames him for the death of Oeroeg's father, who drowned trying to save Johan after the latter fell into a lake in the middle of the night. In the end, though, Oeroeg does end up hating Johan, but only because of Oeroeg's hatred of colonialism and Europeans. It had nothing to do with his dad.
The film adaptation contains examples of:
- Adaptation Expansion: Johan's in the military in the film and spends a good deal of the film being in an actual war instead of just fondly remembering his childhood and teenage years.
- Death by Adaptation: Johan's father is killed by Indonesian rebels.
