Prestige, Malu, and Adat: Reading Narrative Silence in Ismet Fanany’s Hadiah dari Rantau

Abstract

This study aims to examine how narrative silence functions as a culturally productive interpretive strategy in Ismet Fanany’s short story Hadiah dari Rantau. Drawing on reader-response theory, it explores how textual gaps invite readers to construct ethical meaning through culturally situated frameworks rather than explicit narration. This study employs a qualitative interpretive design using close textual analysis. It integrates Iser’s concept of textual gaps and Fish’s notion of interpretive communities, with interpretation grounded in Minangkabau cultural concepts of rantau, malu, and adat. The analysis identifies three interrelated silences: the moral ambiguity surrounding Samsir’s overseas success, Khadijah’s restrained response to moral threat as an enactment of malu, and the narrative resolution through Khadijah’s marriage to Basir, which restores ethical order through adat. The study demonstrates that ethical meaning in the story emerges through readerly engagement with silence, contributing to reader-response criticism and Indonesian literary studies