Complication and challenge in the character of Rama: The case study of Kumbhakarna’s riddle in King Rama I’s Ramakien

Abstract

By studying the narrative presented in Kumbhakarna’s riddle episode from King Rama I’s Ramakien as a case study, this research paper aims to unveil the complications and challenges in the character of Rama, the protagonist of the dramatic composition. As a result, the riddle could be interpreted as arising out of the complication or the conflict between propriety and morality. This complication affected Rama’s thought and decision-making process, which can be seen from the depiction of a situation where Rama cannot answer the riddle. Such failure significantly shakes Rama’s image as an incarnation and affects the literary text in terms of character creation but provides a powerful literary device opening up a hermeneutical situation for readers and audiences to have more freedom in interpreting and reflecting on the complications in the character. Firstly, Kumbhakarna’s riddle, which Rama could not decipher, challenges Rama’s status as the incarnation of a god who possesses divine intelligence. After Kumbhakarna, Rama is instead a mere human being. Secondly, the riddle reveals a critical tension between the positive valuation of knowledge and morality, and the negative valuation represented by intellectual corruption and moral depravity, in which the Thai poet was keen on conveying the duality, at once appreciable and condemnable, in the characters.