The Coffin Is Too Big for the Hole

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Individual Displacement in Homogenised State Identity in The Coffin is Too Big for the Hole I was intrigued by how things are not what they seem in Kuo Pao Kun’s The Coffin is Too Big for the Hole. Although the main in this play is how the coffin is unable to fit into the grave, I felt that there is a lot of hidden meanings imposed in the dialogues and actions – it serves as a commentary on the state and its policies, or illuminates the anxieties of individuals. Hence, this essay proposes an allegorical reading for Kuo Pao Kun’s The Coffin is Too Big for the Hole. The coffin and grave symbolises individual and state identity respectively. Hence, the tensions in the play lends itself to the analysis of the citizens’ struggle with the government. These tensions result from the insistence of appropriating a standardised grave for everyone, signifying the government’s push for a homogenised nation identity. The play illuminates the displacement of individuals through the forceful removal of individuality, dysfunctions in the family, dramatic distancing, and most predominantly, the constant struggle to find a final resting place. Therefore, the various tensions played out in this narrative expose individuals’ heightened anxieties of displacement in lieu of the integration of selfhood into the homogenised state identity. Kuo Pao Kun’s The Coffin is Too Big for the Hole dramatizes a grandson’s struggle to lay his grandfather to rest in his stipulated grave. The coffin and grave can serve as metaphors for the individual identity and nation identity respectively. Hence, this simple premise gives way to a heavier undertone – it can be allegorically read as an individual’s struggle to assimilate his individual identity with the communal state identity. In Jacqueline Lo’s Staging Nation: English Language Theatre in Malaysia and Singapore, Lo expounds that “all Singaporean
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