The Judgment (1981) by Chart Korbjitti

The Judgment is Chart Korbjitti’s study of the complicity of communal opinion and traditional sense of normalcy in the destruction of an otherwise virtuous young man. The young man was Fak, who was rumored to take his mentally ill stepmother, Somsong, as wife after the death of his father Foo. Gossip directs the formation of extended narratives, and, interestingly, of actual lives: Fak became an alcoholic in a misguided attempt to avoid the people’s judgment. This led to his ultimate ruin.

Meanwhile the people who spread the rumors had their own lives to think about, and Fak’s scandal was only something in the periphery of their concerns, without realizing that the stories that only helped them pass time was the root of someone else’s tragedy.

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Korbjitti exposed religion’s central role in the formation of morality and its paradoxical difficulty in maintaining such morals for its own subjects. Fak’s childhood revolved around the temple and “was filled with the smell of incense, the sound of chanting and the sight of the heavens and hells of Buddhist mythology.” He was a model boy even before he became a novice. But when he disrobed to help his father with work, the abbot reminded him that “the world of man moves between extremes … and lacks the serenity of religious life.”

Fak would miss the insinuations that “teahouse” (as brothel) and “having rice soup for lunch” (as making love) suggest; it revealed how much he misunderstood the “world of man’s” play with signifiers, which was consequently detrimental to his attempts to build true relationship with people. He trusted the headmaster of the school where he served as janitor, only to be betrayed in the end; he initially doubted the sincerity of Khai the undertaker, only to realize later that the old man was the only real friend he had. Fak tried to make work the source of his happiness, but there was an ironic commentary on his further dehumanization whenever he did.

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There was also a critique on progress: while the village was being modernized (with the construction of road leading to the city, the arrival of electricity and various appliances with it), the people remained the same with their old beliefs and biases, except, of course, for Fak. In a narrative such as this, change seems a privilege exclusive to its hero. In the end Fak had to die, and his death only meant that he was no longer allowed knowledge of things and events in this world of man, for better or worse.