Main Issues in A Common Story

1. A search for ones identity

It was the poetry of the muddy earth that
yielded rice to the village folk, the poetry that
dumbly moulded him (page 22, line 11)


2. Poverty and hardship
For years he had sweated in rain and shine over the
few acres of sawah that they had, only because he saw
that some day neither he or his children would have to
continue living that way (page 19, line 14)

It was hard to see his father coming back from the
sawah, drenched with sweat and smelly and dirty.It
was hard to know that his mother worked under the
flickering light of the kerosene lamp till late into the
night (page 20,line 18)

3. Cultural shock

Back again among his rustic folk, he began to
recover from it that disease, or malaise, that
was too sickening to be trivial, yet too subtle
and elusive for words (page 18,line 1)