Havelaar is the assistant governor in Lebak, a district in the Javanese province of Bantam. With his slightly fiery temper and lively imagination, he is reminiscent of Don Quixote. He is sincere, compassionate and generous and does not tolerate injustice. Scarfman, who is actually Max Havelaar, is the protagonist and the exact opposite of Batavus Drystubble.
Stern becomes one of the narrators of the novel and the audience (the Rosemeyers family) are deeply impressed by the stories. But when he looks through the articles in “Scarfman’s parcel”, his commercial sense tells him that he could profit from the writings and so he gives the intern, Ernest Stern, the task of editing the manuscripts. When an impoverished old school friend who, lacking a coat, only has a scarf wrapped around him, hands him a parcel of manuscripts in the hope that Drystubble will help him to get them published (to make some money), Drystubble finds this inconvenient. His book is the bible but he has no qualms about using the word of God to his own advantage. He has an aversion to literature because stories are full of untruths, and poetic words can arouse unwanted emotions. Meijer discusses the author's tempestuous life and career, the controversy the novel aroused and its unusual narrative structure.The coffee-broker, Batavus Drystubble, is the embodiment of the devout hypocrite, a small-minded yet pompous bigot who prioritises his own profit over the welfare of his fellow man. Roy Edwards's vibrant translation conveys the satirical and innovative style of Multatuli's autobiographical polemic.
Sending shockwaves through the Dutch nation when it was published in 1860, this damning exposé of the terrible conditions in the colonies led to welfare reforms in Java and continues to inspire the fairtrade movement today. In Max Havelaar, Multatuli (the pseudonym for Eduard Douwes Dekker) vividly recreated his own experiences in Java and tellingly depicts the hypocrisy of those who gained from the corrupt coffee trade. Max is an inspirational figure, but he is also a flawed idealist whose vow to protect the Javanese from cruelty ends in his own downfall. Max Havelaar - a Dutch civil servant in Java - burns with an insatiable desire to end the ill treatment and oppression inflicted on the native peoples by the colonial administration.
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