Analysis of Theme Through The Portrayal and Actions of The Protagonists in Jamaica Kinaid's 'Lucy' and Sandra Cisneros' 'The House on Mango Street'.

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ABSTRACT

Dalam penulisan skripsi ini, saya bermaksud membahas tema dari sebuah

novel karya Jamaica Kincaid yang berjudul Lucy dan sebuah novel karya Sandra

Cisneros yang berjudul The House on Mango Street. Saya membahas tema melalui

penggambaran dan tindakan tokoh utama yang terdapat dalam kedua novel tersebut.

Tema tersebut berhubungan erat dengan karakteristik dan tindakan tokoh utama

dalam melakukan pencarian jati diri dalam hidupnya sebagai bagian dari

perkembangan seorang remaja menuju kedewasaan.

Tokoh utama dalam kedua novel tersebut adalah gadis remaja yang sedang

mencari jati dirinya. Saya melihat bahwa karakter kedua gadis tersebut banyak

dipengaruhi oleh lingkungan sekitarnya dan tempat di mana mereka tumbuh. Kedua

gadis remaja tersebut, yaitu Lucy dan Esperanza, tumbuh dalam sebuah keluarga

miskin dan lingkungan yang buruk. Hal tersebut tidak hanya membuat mereka rendah

diri, namun juga membuat mereka terpacu untuk memperbaiki nasibnya.

Lucy, tokoh utama dalam novel Lucy, melihat ketidakberuntungan dalam

hidupnya dengan pandangan negatif. Ia menyikapi kesulitan-kesulitan dalam

hidupnya dengan kemarahan, kekecewaan, ketakutan akan gagal, dan sikap menutup

diri terhadap perubahan. Hal tersebut menyebabkan dia selalu merasa dirinya dalam

kekurangan. Karena selalu melihat segala hal dari sisi negatif, maka Lucy tidak dapat

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Sementara Esperanza, tokoh utama dalam novel The House on Mango Street,

melihat ketidakberuntungan dalam hidupnya dari sisi positif. Ia melihat kemiskinan

dan kesulitan-kesulitan hidup sebagai pelajaran yang harus diambil maknanya. Hal

tersebut membuat dia terus-menerus belajar dari kesalahan orang-orang di sekitarnya,

yang menyebabkannya dapat berhasil menemukan apa yang diinginkannya dalam

hidup.

Setelah menganalisis kedua novel tersebut, saya menarik kesimpulan bahwa

bila kita menyikapi ketidakberuntungan dalam hidup kita dengan pandangan yang

negatif, maka kita tidak akan dapat menemukan kepribadian kita yang sesungguhnya;

hal tersebut juga akan menghambat kita dalam menerima diri kita apa adanya. Kita

akan selalu merasa tidak beruntung, tidak puas dengan diri kita sendiri, dan merasa

hidup kita hampa. Sedangkan bila kita menerima ketidakberuntungan dalam hidup

dengan pandangan yang positif, maka kita tidak hanya akan menemukan jati diri kita

yang sesungguhnya, tetapi juga membuat kita mensyukuri semua yang telah kita

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APPENDICES

Synopsis of Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy

Lucy Josephine Potter is a 19-year-old girl from a small island in the West

Indies who has a strong desire to leave her life in her homeland in order to form her

own self-identity. She does not think that her homeland is suitable for her since she

has her own opinion on how she should live the life. Besides, her mother becomes

one of the excuses for Lucy to leave her homeland because she assumes that her

mother only wants to dominate her life. Lucy sees her mother as a woman who does

not live her life as a woman should do. In Lucy’s point of view, her mother is a

woman who has been too devoted in serving her father, even though her father has

plenty of mistresses.

Lucy’s negative point of view in coping with an unpleasant situation that she

now faces, turns her into a girl with a strong determination to live as far as she can

from her family. Lucy makes North America as her dreamland that she thinks will

save “her small drowning soul”, herself and her soul that cannot find happiness in her

life because her past life in her homeland makes her feel uncomfortable. Her real

dreamland does not appear as everything that she has imagined all this time and the

new surroundings make her feel homesick. All of these cause her to assume that the

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the future. Her negative point of view leads her to think that she will have an

uncertain future and it is getting more and more uncertain every single day. And the

most surprising thing is the fact that she misses her homeland. Even so, her negative

attitude turns her into a person with a strong determination. She is determined not to

return to her homeland because she wants to keep a distance between her and her

family. Lucy thinks that family is “a millstone around your neck” that will put a

burden on her shoulders. Lucy’s negative point of view in coping the problem that

she deals with makes her keep a distance with her family, especially with her own

mother. She even refuses to read every single letter that her mother has sent her.

Lucy feels happy to have many relationships with many men without being

attached in a deeper relationship with all of them. In her relationship with some men,

Lucy seems to show that she is not a weak woman like her mother who has been too

devoted to her father, who has many mistresses. But in time, it turns out that Lucy

feels the emptiness in her life. The emptiness that she feels is caused by the fact that

up to this day she does not recognize her true self so she does not know what she

wants in her life.

The emptiness within her makes her finally realize that what she has done in her

life has tortured her. All this time, she tries hard not to become a woman like her

mother, but she realizes she has become the very same woman as her mother. Seeing

the reality that now she lives all by herself does not make her feel happy. On the other

hand, she feels ashamed of what she has done. Her negative point of view and

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Furthermore, she is unable to cope with her problems in a wise attitude because she

always looks at everything from the negative point of view. Therefore, she cannot

accept herself as just what it is and take a positive action to face her problems.

Synopsis of Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street

Esperanza Cordero is a teenager who comes from a poor family and

neighbourhood in the Latino section of Chicago. Her family moves a lot from one

place to another and all she wants is to have a steady house that she and her family

can live in. The house on Mango Street is a house that is finally owned by the

Esperanza family. Even so, the house is not what she and her family have dreamt

about. Mango Street is still a poor neighbourhood that makes Esperanza have a low

self-confidence because other people underestimate her. Esperanza wants a house in a

neighbourhood that can make her feel appreciated. But her wise attitude makes her

realize that for now, her family cannot afford to fulfil her dream.

At first, the poor neighbourhood of the Mango Street makes Esperanza try to

deny the fact that she comes from the neighbourhood and lives in the neighbourhood.

But through her own interaction and observation with the people in the

neighbourhood, she begins to understand her neighbourhood with her positive and

wise attitude. Through her interaction and observation with the people of Mango

Street, she begins to realize that there is a form of life that probably will come to her

someday as a grown - up woman. She sees that the majority of the women in Mango

street are women whose freedoms are trapped. Most of them are only housewives

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Knowing the reality that there are plenty of women who have to live their lives

with all their limitations and obstacles, Esperanza strongly desires that one day, she

can leave Mango Street so she can fulfil her dream to become a woman who can do a

lot of things for her own life and be appreciated by other people. Esperanza’s mother

always says to her not to become a woman like her mother who is only a housewife.

Although her mother is only a housewife, Esperanza always admires her mother and

she never underestimates her mother.

Although she formerly thought that Mango Street was not the right place for

her, her positive and wise attitude makes her accept the reality. Her wise attitude

makes her more open in dealing with all the facts of life in her neighbourhood. The

poor neighbourhood and the women’s life in the neighbourhood do not cause her to

deny that she actually comes from Mango Street. Through Mango Street, she learns

so much and begins to find her true self as a whole. She starts to know what she

should do for her future and what she does not want for her choice of life. To have a

positive attitude in coping with inconveniences in her life enables Esperanza to accept

herself as what it is and enables her to recognize herself more and also to determine

the actions that she needs to take for her life in the future.

Biography of Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid is one of the Carribean writers of the post-colonialism era

in literature. She was born as Elaine Potter Richardson on May 25, 1949 in Antigua, a

small island in the West Indies. She never met her biological father and lived with her

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After having graduated from her junior high-school during the time of

British colonization, she migrated to New York and had as an au pair. Later on, she

studied photography at the New York School for Social Research after leaving the

family for whom she worked, and also attended Franconia College in New

Hampshire for a year.

Her first writing experience involved a series of articles for Ingenue

magazine and her stories have appeared in the Paris Review, Rolling Stone and The

New Yorker. In 1973, she changed her name to Jamaica Kincaid because her family

disapproved of her writing. Her first book, At the Bottom of The River (1983), was

awarded the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award of the American Academy of Arts and

Letters and was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her second novel, Lucy,

was praised by the Wall Street Journal as "brilliant”; moreover, Plume as the

publisher of Lucy was also proud to have published it in 1991.

Besides that, Kincaid was a recipient of the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest

Fund's Annual Writer's Award in 1992 and Anisfield Wolf Book Award in the 1997,

which was established 60 years ago to recognize books that illuminate the rich

diversity of human cultures.

Kincaid later married Allen Shawn, a composer and a professor at the

Bennington College, and they now have two children and live in Vermont.

Biography of Sandra Cisneros

Sandra Cisneros was born on December 20, 1954 in Chicago as the third

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short-story writer, essayist and poet. She is considered as the first of

Hispanic-American writers who have achieved commercial success. Although Cisneros has

only a handful of poetry and short story collections, she has gained a wide critical

acclaim and a popular success. Having influenced by her childhood experiences and

ethnic heritage as the daughter of a Mexican father and Chicana mother, Cisneros

addresses poverty, cultural suppression, self-identity, and gender roles in her fiction

and poetry.

In 1976 Cisneros received her B.A. from Loyola University and her M.F.A

from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1978. She has been a guest

professor at California State University, University of California, Berkeley,

University of California, Irvine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and the

University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

Cisneros' other works include Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories

(1991), and the poetry collections Bad Boys and Loose Woman (1994). She has also

written a book for juveniles, Pelitos (1994). Cisneros has also contributed to

numerous periodicals, including Imagine, Contact II, Glamour, The New York

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Basically, individuals need to define themselves so they would recognize and

have self-knowledge of who they are, what they want to achieve in this life and how

they want other people to see them. By defining one’s self, one would be able to find

one’s true self or one’s self-identity.

I notice that the formation of identity itself is a part of one’s personality

development. Erik Erikson, in his theory of Eight Stages of Psychosocial

Development, classifies identity as ‘one stage in a complete process of human

development.’(http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-042620001-194845/unrestricted/chap2.pdf). On the other hand, I also find ‘the work on self and

identity has a special place in the study of human nature …Life goals develop and are

influenced by one’s view of what one is like, the way one would ideally like to be (or

would like to avoid being),…’(http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/15298868.asp).

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important thing since it becomes an integral part of one’s complete process of human

development.

Two novels that deal with the quest of self-identity are Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy

and Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street. I have decided to analyse them as

they have some things in common. I find that both novels portray a coming-of-age

girls’ quest to find their true self as they consider themselves to be incompatible with

the situation in their life. In Kincaid’s Lucy, the protagonist is a teenager from

Antigua who has come to America in order to find her true self. Her native

surrounding is the major excuse why she tries to find her true self. In Cisneros’ The

House on Mango Street, the protagonist is a Hispanic immigrant’s daughter who

finally finds her true self through her interaction with her surroundings, which she at

first does not like. However, both protagonists in these two novels come to different

results since they have different ways and thoughts in their process of finding their

true self.

Both Jamaica Kincaid and Sandra Cisneros are regarded as prolific

contemporary authors of this century. Some of Kincaid’s works have been awarded

and her first novel has been nominated for the PEN/ Faulkner Award. Cisneros’

works are also known for her reflection of her experience as a Latina woman in

America. According to Cynthia Tompkins of Arizona State University, Cisneros is

acclaimed as ‘the most visible Chicana in mainstream literary circles. The vividness

of her vignettes and the lyrical quality of her prose attest to her craft.’ (Rozakis,

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In this thesis, I would like to analyse the theme of the novels as it is the most

prominent aspect. Theme is ‘the total meaning discovered…by the reader in the

process of reading.’(Kenney,1966:94). I am of the opinion that the theme, which

deals with the effect of one’s attitude in finding self-identity is very significant. Both

protagonists in these two novels portray different attitudes and reactions towards the

incompatible situation in their life which in the end affects their thinking in the

process of finding their true self. Thus, I would like to analyse the theme through the

portrayal and actions of each protagonist in the novels.

Statement of the Problem

In analysing the theme of Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy and Sandra Cisneros’ The

House on Mango Street through portrayal and actions of the protagonists, I would

like to state the problem as follows:

1. What is the theme of Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy and Sandra Cisneros’ The House on

Mango Street?

2. How does the portrayal and actions of the protagonists help to reveal the theme in

each novel?

Purpose of the Study

Based on the statement of the problem above, I would like to state the purpose

of the study as follows:

1. To show the theme of Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy and Sandra Cisneros’ The House

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Method of Research

In writing my thesis, I do some library research and use Internet in order to find

some theories and references required. Firstly, I begin by reading Kincaid’s Lucy and

Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street. Secondly, I decide what topic to analyse.

Thirdly, I study some reference books which are relevant to the subject. Fourthly, I

collect some information from the Internet to support my analysis. Finally, I analyse

the topic and draw some conclusions.

Organization of the Thesis

This thesis consists of four chapters, preceded by the Preface and the Abstract.

Chapter One is the Introduction, which contains the Background of the Study,

Statement of the Problem, Purpose of the Study, Method of Research, and

Organization of the Thesis. Chapter Two presents the analysis of the theme in

Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy whereas Chapter Three presents the analysis of the theme in

Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street. Chapter Four contains the conclusion

of what has been analysed in the previous chapters. This thesis ends with the

Bibliography and the Appendices, which consist of the biography of the authors and

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CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

Having analysed Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy and Sandra Cisneros’ The House on

Mango Street, I would like to present my conclusion by comparing the two novels

and pointing out the similarities and differences in the two novels.

First of all, I would like to point out the similarities of the two novels. Both

novels have the same main theme that is, “One’s point of view affects one’s

understanding of one’s true self.” Both novels present a struggle of a young woman

to define her true self or self-identity while she is in the process of maturity.

Searching for self-identity is not easy, especially when our society gives many

influences. In Lucy, the protagonist, Lucy, wants to search for her true self apart from

her mother’s domination and influence. In The House on Mango Street, Esperanza

wants to search for her true self in order not to become like the woman in her

surroundings.

I also find that both protagonists in the novels have a similar background.

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with their surroundings. Lucy lives in poverty, in a small island of the West Indies.

Poverty has made her disappointed with her condition. In addition, Lucy also faces

many difficulties in her past life. Since her early age, she has faced many problems:

the problem with her mother, her dissatisfaction of the condition of her family and

her surroundings. Those problems have caused dissatisfaction in her life and have

made her determined to change her life. Lucy avoids the unpleasant situation in her

life by running away to North America.

Esperanza also lives in poverty. Her parents cannot give her a suitable place

to live because they cannot afford it. Poverty has made her determined to change her

life; yet, she can accept her condition as she understands her parents’ financial

condition. She does not run from her unpleasant condition; she accepts her condition

with a determination that one day she will get away from Mango Street.

In spite of the fact that both novels have an identical main theme, I find that

both novels also have a significant difference. The difference of the two novels lies in

the protagonists’ reaction in coping with the unpleasant condition in their lives. In

Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy, Lucy faces the unpleasant situation in her life through a

negative attitude and point of view whereas in Sandra Cisneros’ The House on

Mango Street, Esperanza faces the unpleasant situation in her life through a positive

point of view.

The authors reveal the theme through the portrayal and actions of the two

protagonists. In Lucy, Kincaid portrays Lucy as a person who has a negative point of

view. Lucy’s negative point of view is affected by her background which influences

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has a prejudice towards men, likes to run away from problems, is stubborn, cannot

accept other people’s advice and is full of denial.

In The House on Mango Street, Esperanza is portrayed as a person who has a

positive point of view in facing the unpleasant situation in her life. She never

confronts the unpleasant situation that happens around her; on the contrary, she

observes her surroundings and takes a lesson from other people’s lives. This

behaviour of her enables her to see what she wants in her life and what she wants to

be.

Esperanza is also critical in viewing her neighbourhood. She sees that there

are many submissive women in her neighbourhood. From their experience she learns

that a woman has to be independent, so that her life will not end up like them.

Esperanza’s positive point of view enables her to understand her true self

completely. Although Esperanza sees that her life is incompatible with her wish, she

accepts her condition. Her acceptance allows her to understand what she truly wants

in her life and what kind of person she wants to be.

Through Lucy’s and Esperanza’s characteristics and actions, I can learn a

lesson that one’s point of view affects one in understanding oneself. A negative point

of view will limit our perspective and makes us unable to understand what we want in

our life. Seeing the fact, I am of the opinion that we should see things from a positive

point of view to enable us to understand ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses.

I find that Jamaica Kincaid reveals the theme more clearly because she reveals

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protagonist’s characteristics. The novel fully describes Lucy’s feelings and thoughts

of the event that happens in her life so that I can recognize Lucy’s character that is

full of anger and regret towards her past and present life.

In The House on Mango Street I also find that Esperanza tells the story from

her perspective, which allows the reader to see things that happen around her and her

feelings towards the event. Yet, the author presents the story through the view of a

12-year-old girl. Through Esperanza’s point of view, the author presents the

difficulties in Esperanza’s life implicitly so that it is harder for me to perceive

Esperanza’s characteristics, her view of life and how she views herself. Still, I am of

the opinion that this novel is more interesting because Esperanza describes the

problems not in a gloomy way but with full of optimism so that in reading the novel,

the reader does not feel depressed.

Having analysed the two novels, I conclude that one should not see the

inconvenient condition in one’s life through a negative point of view as it will be an

obstacle in facing one’s future life. The inconvenient condition that we face should

trigger us to improve our lives. Thus, the theme of each novel is universal as it can

happen to anybody at any time. I am of the opinion that both novels are worth reading

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

References:

Kenney, William. How To Analyze Fiction. New York: Monarch Press, 1966.

Rozakis, Laurie.E. The Complete’s Idiot’s Guide to American Literature. New York:

Alpha Books, 1999.

Shaw, Harry. Dictionary of Literary Terms. The World Book Encyclopedia Volume 10.

Chicago: World Book, Inc., 1999.

Internet Sources:

Erikson Tutorial Home Page. 24 Juni 2005

(http://facultyweb.cortland.edu/-andersmd/erik/welcome.html)

Jamaica Kincaid. 25 May 2005

(http://www.learner.org/amerpass/unit14/author-activ-6.html)

Jamaica Kincaid. 25 May 2005

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Jeb’s File. 24 June 2005

(http:/www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/15298868.asp)

Review of Literature. 24 June 2005

(http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-04262001-

194845/unrestricted/chap2.pdf)

Sandra Cisneros. 25 May 2005

(http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/houseonmango/about.html)

Primary Texts:

Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. New York: Vintage Books, 1984.