Keep Silent to "Maintain Normalcy”: Voices, Symptoms, and Wounds of Marginal Characters in the Dystopian Short Stories of Samut Teetas

Abstract

This academic article aimed to investigate the behavioral characteristics of marginalized characters in the short stories ‘The Normal Situation’. Presented through descriptive analysis, the study revealed that these stories possessed the characteristics of dystopian literature. By constructing a grotesque and repulsive imaginary world, these stories exposed the societal perspective through the eyes of marginalized individuals who had been stripped of their identities. These characters were therefore forced to struggle against being redefined by state power. Moreover, the state's methods for maintaining order were illustrated through the imposition of hunger to enforce populace obedience, the cultivation of paranoia to instill fear, the infliction of pain as punishment for defiance, and the eradication of dissidents' identities from the urban landscape. The shared imagery among the city’s inhabitants was that of a yearning for a society capable of escaping the distortion, despair, and erasure of self found in the “ordinary city,” the setting of every short story. This longing, however, served to underscore the fact that the society the characters yearned for had never truly existed, and that their suffering would remain as the city's "silence"—a silence that preserved the illusion of normalcy indefinitely. Eventually, this paper encouraged readers to question the various "narratives" within the short stories, aimed to foster awareness of society's true problems rather than simply seeking "moral satisfaction" from the stories.