The Construction of the “Ungrateful Child” in Malin Kundang, Pulau Jelapi, Si Tanggang, and Nakhoda Manis

Transnational Geopolitics of Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Brunei Darussalam

The narrative construction of the “ungrateful child” can be found across different regions. Malin Kundang comes from West Sumatra, Indonesia; Pulau Jelapi from Thailand; Si Tanggang from Malaysia; and Nakhoda Manis from Brunei Darussalam. The four stories developed in different sociocultural and geopolitical settings, but they share a number of substantive similarities. Stories about the “ungrateful child” are living narratives that have developed in various parts of Southeast Asia. They have different local characteristics, yet they show related narrative patterns and cultural values. This study aims to examine the construction of the “ungrateful child” narrative through the four stories. From a comparative literature perspective, the study examines similarities, differences, transformations, and intertextual relations by placing the stories within their sociocultural and ideological contexts through a cultural studies approach. The construction of the “ungrateful child” is analyzed using Julia Kristeva’s theory of intertextuality, which states that a text never exists independently but is always related to other texts that came before it through quotation, absorption, transformation, development, or changes in meaning. The findings show that the four stories not only share similar motifs and narrative structures but also reveal processes of negotiation and reconstruction of values according to the social, cultural, and ideological contexts of each country. The movement of the narratives across geographical and national boundaries indicates cultural migration, a process through which stories, motifs, values, and collective memories move, adapt, and acquire new meanings in different cultural spaces. In this sense, the construction of the “ungrateful child” can be understood as a transnational construction that demonstrates the cultural interconnectedness of Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Brunei Darussalam, while also highlighting cultural acculturation, adaptation, and transformation in Southeast Asia.