Tan, Soe's childhood friend, had always deeply admired Soe's prudence and courage but lacked that fighter's spirit himself. Many interest groups sought Soe to support their campaigns, while many enemies of Soe jump at any opportunity to intimidate him. This attracted much sympathy as well as opposition. Soe also abhorred the fact that too many students appeared to others as advocates of positive change, who in fact were just taking advantage of the political situation to make personal gain.
Soe was well aware of the social inequality, power abuse, and corruption under the government of Sukarno, and courageously spoke out against it in discussion groups, student unions, and wrote sharp criticisms in the media. Soe and his friends insisted that they were politically neutral and as much as Soe has respect for Sukarno as Indonesia's founding father, Soe detested Sukarno's dictatorship which caused the poor and the oppressed to suffer. Soe's teen and college years was spent under the regime of Indonesia's founding father Sukarno, which was characterised with conflict between the military and the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). Soe's motto, as written on the movie poster, is translated as "It is better to be singled out than to surrender to hypocrisy".
Even Soe's best friends, Tan Tjin Han and Herman Lantang posed the question "What is all this fighting for?" which Soe would calmly respond with his awareness that freedom has a price tag that must be paid. This passion was frequently misunderstood by others. Combined with a fighter's passion, faithfulness to friends, and a heart filled with genuine care for others and for his country, young Gie grew to become intolerant with injustice, and dreamt of an Indonesia that is truly founded on justice, equality, and righteousness. In his early teens, young Gie had developed a fascination in concepts and idealisms advocated by world class intellectuals. Soe Hok Gie grew up in a lower-middle class Chinese Indonesian family in Jakarta.
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