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ABSTRACT
Dalam penulisan skripsi ini, saya akan menganalisis karakter tokoh utama dari dua novel. Novel pertama berjudul Uncle Tom’s Cabin Or, Life Among The Lowy karya Harriet Beecher Stowe dan novel kedua berjudul The Confessions Of
Nat Turner karya William Styron. Kedua novel ini menceritakan kehidupan yang dialami oleh seorang budak pada jaman perbudakan di Amerika pada tahun 1830-1860an.
Harriet Beecher Stowe dan William Styron menggambarkan karakter tokoh utama tersebut dengan sikap/respon yang berbeda. Harriet Beecher Stowe menggambarkan Uncle Tom dengan karakteristik yang tetap. Ia bersifat peduli, berprinsip, tidak egois dan pemaaf. William Styron menggambarkan Nat Turner dengan karakteristik yang berubah. Awalnya, Nat Turner bersifat pintar, patuh, dan baik hati. Lalu ia berubah menjadi orang yang licik, pemberontak dan keras.
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CHAPTER TWO: DISCUSSION ON PORTRAYAL OF THE
PROTAGONIST IN UNCLE TOM’S CABIN OR LIFE AMONG
THE LOWLY...
CHAPTER THREE: DISCUSSION ON PORTRAYAL OF THE
PROTAGONIST OFTHE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER...
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
“Racism is the unfair treatment of people who belong to a different race;
violent behaviour towards them. The belief that some races of people are better
than others” (“Racism”). “Racism world-wide is manifested in every continent. In
Europe, extreme racist groups have gained more and more acceptability in countries like France, Germany, and Austria . . . . Many African countries have endured long-term civil wars, some beginning shortly after that nation’s freedom
from former colonial countries . . .” (“World Racism” par 4). In the United States,
racism existed in the form of slavery. “Slavery in the United States began soon after English colonists first settled Virginia and lasted until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. Racism in the United States was worse during this time at any period before or since”
(“Background on Racial Discrimination” par 7). Africans as slaves sufferred
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Two American writers who deal with slavery in their writings are Harriet Beecher Stowe and William Styron. Harriet Beecher Stowe, a 19th Century American author, wanted to help people in the North to understand better the realities of slavery (“Harriet Beecher Stowe Biography” par 6). She wants people
in the North know and understand how bad slavery is so that they will participate and help to abolish slavery. Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States in his 1863 meeting with Harriet Beecher Stowe, said, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war” (“Harriet Beecher Stowe
Biography” par 7 ). It is mostly true because her work Uncle Tom’s Cabin or, Life
among the Lowly is the first novel to criticize the institution of slavery and
becomes the bestselling anti-slavery novel. “She needed to tell the nation what it should have already known, that slavery was unjust, immoral, and evil. This was her mission when she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin” (“Harriet Beecher Stowe” par 3). Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp is her second anti-slavery novel.
William Styron is a 20th Century American novelist who became well known for his novel The Confessions of Nat Turner, a fictional recreation of the 1831 slave rebellion in Virginia led by Nat Turner (“William Styron” par 1). The Confessions of Nat Turner won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and also became one
of the most controversial novels (“Biography” par 2). It becomes controversial
because some critics say that William Styron cannot describe Nat Turner well enough since he is white.
I have chosen Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin or, Life among
the Lowly and William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner because both
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time. Both the protagonists are African-American slaves who experience inhumane treatment from their cruel masters. In the beginning, born as slaves, Uncle Tom and Nat Turner receive the promise of freedom from their masters. However, later they have to be separated from their families, friends, and their master’s families, due to their being sold to pay their masters’s debt. They
experience the cruelty of their new masters and in the end, they die as slaves. As the two novels deal with the struggle of the protagonists, the literary element I will analyze in this thesis is the portrayal of the protagonists. The meaning of protagonist is “the leading character or one of the major characters in a play, novel, film, etc” (“Protagonist,” def. 1). By reading the portrayal of the protagonists, the readers can understand their attitudes towards slavery.
Statement of the Problem
The problems I would like to discuss are: 1. How is the protagonist portrayed in each novel?
2. What is the purpose of each author in portraying such a protagonist?
Purpose of the Study
Based on the above problems, the purpose of the study are: 1. To show how the protagonist is portrayed in each novel.
2. To show the purpose of each author in portraying such a protagonist.
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The method of research that I use is library research. I begin the research
by reading Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin or, Life among the Lowly
and William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner. After that I analyze each
text by using some information and materials from the Internet that can support my analysis. Lastly, I draw some conclusions of what has been discussed.
Organization of the Thesis
This thesis consists of four chapters, preceded by the Acknowledgements, the Table of Contents, and the Abstract. Chapter One is the Introduction, which consists of the Background of the Study, the Statement of the Problem, the Purpose of the Study, the Method of Research, and the Organization of the Thesis. Chapter Two contains the analysis of the portrayal of the protagonist of Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin or, Life among the Lowly. Chapter Three comprises the
analysis of the portrayal of the protagonist of Styron’s The Confessions of Nat
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CHAPTER FOUR
CONCLUSION
In this chapter, I am going to draw some conclusion of my analysis on the portrayal of the protagonists in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or
Life among The Lowly and William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner. I
found several similarities and only one outstanding difference between the two protagonists in those two novels.
Both the protagonists are black American slaves. They witness and experience the cruelty of some white American masters and also the bitterness of a slave’s life. They have to be separated from their families because of being sold
to pay their master’s debt. They are treated as property, which means that their
lives are in the hands of their masters. Both of them actually receive the promise of freedom from their masters; however, the masters cannot fulfill it. In the end, they die as slaves.
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being caring to the others no matter who they are. He shows an act of love to everyone unconditionally whether they are good or bad. He is also a selfless person. He thinks more about the needs of other people rather than his own. It does not matter for him to face everything that happens in his life as long as the others are safe. He is also a principled person. He knows what is right or wrong and tries to do the right things. He will accept every consequence that he has to face in his life for doing the right things. From the beginning until the end of the story, Uncle Tom’s characteristics remain the same. He is a static character.
Different from Uncle Tom, Nat Turner, the protagonist of The Confessions of Nat Turner, is portrayed as a character whose characteristics change in the
course of the story. He is a dynamic character. At first, he is portrayed as a person with positive characteristics. He is an intelligent, obedient, and kind person. Later in the story, after he feels betrayed and hatred, his characteristics changes. He becomes a cunning, rebellious, and violent person. He tries to fight and change the conditions he has been through by acting rebelliously and violently.
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will understand more about the bad impact of slavery. A slave cannot do anything except to accept everything, whether it is good or bad, that will happen to him. In other words, his life is determined by the master.
William Styron has portrayed Nat Turner clearly even though he does not live in a slavery time just like Harriet Beecher Stowe. He wants to show a slave’s life based on a true story that happened in the past. The slave tried to fight for his rights, but in the end he still lost and had to face the penalty for what he had done. He could not do anything. Through the portrayal of Nat Turner, William Styron wants to show the bad impact of slavery on slaves’ lives. The bitterness that the slave experiences in slavery has changed his positive characteristics into negative ones, which later lead him to his death. Being the property of his master, a slave’s
life is in the hands of his master; however hard he tries, he has no power to change his fate.
In conclusion, it is clear that through the portrayal of Uncle Tom and Nat Turner, both Harriet Beecher Stowe and William Styron have the same purpose, that is, to show how bad the institution of slavery is. Being the masters’ property, a good slave like Uncle Tom or a rebellious one like Nat Turner, has to accept the fact that their fate is in the hands of their master. They do not have the rights as human beings.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Texts
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin or, Life among the Lowly. New York: Penguin Classics. 1986. Print.
Styron, William. The Confessions of Nat Turner. New York: Vintage Books. 1993. Print.
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