Debunking Authority, Debunking Truth: Cha’s “Melpomene Tragedy”

What is objective reality? What is truth? Is there one definitive answer or is life, history and even personal, ethnic and national identity constructed by multiple interpretations? Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982) in her chapter “Melpomene Tragedy” from her famous novel Dictee (posthumously published in 1982) addresses these issues of definitive truth and authority in a postmodernistic fashion. Given the colonial context in which Cha grew up with relating to Korea (her place of birth) and the colonial education she has received, she has a lot to say about authority and the way history and life is represented to us. Cha, in a sense, wants to undermine representation and how reality isn’t so straightforward, hence placing the reader, and even herself, in a realm of displacement. And we can see that through the vague manner of not understanding who is exactly the narrator is (except being female).  

In a letter the narrator writes to her mother, which may symbolically represent her motherland (Korea), her language represents authoritarian and deterministic attitudes that she grew up with. But she feels that despite being part of another nation and adopting another language (which is hard not to be part of) the narrator longs to return home. She writes, “Nothing has changed, we are at a standstill. I speak in another tongue now, a second tongue a foreign tongue. All this time we have been away. But nothing has changed. A stand still” (p. 34).

For those who have come from one country and has moved to another, one finds themselves disorientated at first. But slowly but surely we can’t help to begin following that path of embracing a mainstream culture by following certain ideas and ways of life. The narrator sees herself wanting so badly to keep her heritage, her ethnic identity that she had once grew up with. And in her letter to her mother she finds ways to justify that she is staying on that path no matter who else tries to impose another identity on her otherwise. For example, how American culture imposes itself on others. (Given the fact that Cha immigrated to America at a young age from Korea and how America played a role in the Korean War and the splitting of North and South Korea itself during the Cold War in mid-twentieth century, Cha knows firsthand in what that means.)

Imposing a certain set of ideas of what is right and what is wrong through authority is setting us up, as human beings, for failure. We are only seeing one side of the picture. Because there isn’t a right or a wrong answer as some may want to believe, but there are multiple versions and variations of how life is perceived and how we interpret it. And perhaps that is what the narrator was trying to say of American identity being deceiving because they promote democracy (as they had done with South Korea) in everyone having free will and choice, but they are taking away and changing something more valuable and important: their identity.

I pass a second curve on the road. You soldiers appear in green. Always the green uniforms the patches of camouflage [referring to Americans]. Trees camouflage you green trucks you blend with nature the trees hide you you cannot be seen behind the guns no one sees you they have hidden you. You sit you recline on the earth next to the buses you wait hours days making visible your presence (p. 38).   

            … Arrest the machine that purports to employ democracy but rather causes the successive refraction of her none other than her own (p. 41).

We possibly don’t, nor mostly likely can’t, have the answer to the big questions in life, but simply have answers. There isn’t just one form of living, but multiple ways. In which case, living with uncertainty and a life full of possibilities is a choice that we can embrace. And living a determined life ordered by whatever authority is something we can do away with.