IMPORTANCE OF THE INDIVIDUAL: UNCOVERING ASPECTS OF MUHAMMAD HAJI SALLEH’S 70S PERSONA

This discussion provides a critical analysis in the reading of early poetry by Muhammad Haji Salleh entitled Time and its people (1978) to explore the nature of the persona. Initial hypothesis is based on a previous reading of the persona from the standpoint of the relational cultural continuum in which one pole of the continuum is referred to as the individual cultural orientation or ‘abstract’ and the other pole as communal cultural orientation or ‘concrete’ (Raihanah Mohd Mydin D’Cruz, 2003). The relational continuum is the principle of individual-based and communal-based cultural orientation by JV D’Cruz and William Steele (2000). This paper sets out to foreground the relational continuum by emphasizing the aspect of individual character in the persona. The results of this discussion show that the persona in the poems of Muhammad Haji Salleh demonstrates three aspects of the self; first, self-esteem, second, self-consciousness, and third, self agency. With this classification, it is clear that the early persona of Muhammad Haji Salleh is not only oriented towards individual-based culture, but more significantly, the self exhibits high levels of self-esteem, self consciousness and self agency.