ABSTRACT
Di dalam tesis ini, penulis membahas tentang karakter orang kulit hitam dari dua novel yang berjudul And All Our Wounds Forgiven yang ditulis oleh Julius Lester dan Black Boy yang ditulis oleh Richard Wright. Kedua karakter yang dibahas di dalam tesis ini adalah karakter dari tokoh John Calvin Marshal dalam novel And All Our Wounds Forgiven dan tokoh Richard Wright dalam novel Black Boy. Keduanya adalah orang kulit hitam yang tinggal di negara Amerika Serikat.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT………...
TABLE OF CONTENTS ………
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study ……….………….…
Statement of the Problem ………...… Purpose of the Study ……….. Methods of Research ………...… Organization of the Thesis ……….
CHAPTER TWO: PORTRAYAL OF CHARACTER IN
Synopsis of And All Our Wounds Forgiven...….………
APPENDICES
Synopsis of And All Our Wounds Forgiven
John Calvin Marshall is a charismatic civil rights movement leader. He is a fresh graduate of Harvard and he accepts an offer to teach at Spelman College. However, when he realizes that his destiny is not in teaching, he refuses the offer and joins a civil rights movement.
As a black leader of the movement, he has a white assistant named Lisa Adam, who also becomes his mistress. His charm as a charismatic man not only attracts Lisa but also attracts important figures such as LBJ, JFK, and Malcolm X. He has harmonious relationships with many influential people. Such relations can be a good impact for his struggle to get legal recognition for his race.
Synopsis of Black Boy
Black Boy is an autobiographical novel of Richard Wright. The book tells about his childhood till the age of 26. Being a poor Southerner in 1960s makes his childhood miserable.
His father has left him and his uneducated mom is too busy to give enough attention to Richard. Feeling abandoned and deprived, Richard grows up to be a stubborn and rebellious boy. He experiences sporadic schooling due to the constant moving in order to avoid poverty. Being poor and abandoned does not keep him from being a critical boy. He starts and stops school often and soon realizes that he could teach himself through reading proper books.
Desperate about the harsh racial condition in the South, Richard makes a decision to move to the North. In Chicago, Richard continues to struggle with racism, segregation, and poverty.
Biography of Julius Lester
Julius Bernard Lester is an award winning American author of books for children and adults. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri on 27 January 1939. In 1960 he received his BA from Fisk University.
In the early 1960s, Lester became an activist in a civil rights movement as a folk singer. He also worked as a full timer in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. He has written 45 books for children and adults which deals with race relations. Some of his books are Look Out, Whitey! Black Powers Gon’ Get Your
Mama! and And All Our Wounds Forgiven.
Biography of Richard Wright
Wright was born in Roxie, Mississippi on 4 September 1908. He was the grandson of former slaves. Wright's family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. While in Memphis, his father, Nathaniel, a former sharecropper, abandoned them. Wright, his brother, and mother Ella, a schoolteacher, moved to Jackson, Mississippi, to live with relatives.
Wright first gained attention for Uncle Tom's Children. He followed with a novel, Native Son, the first Book of the Month Club recommendation by an African American author.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
I. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Racism is the subject of my thesis. I choose to discuss race relations in the United States and how African Americans struggle to gain social recognition and legal recognition. I will focus on the effect of racism on African Americans in the US between 1930-1960. This issue is very interesting to be analyzed because it has been and it still is a major issue in the United States. Racism is unfair treatment of people, or violence against them, because they belong to a race other than their own. In this thesis I will analyze the portrayal of the protagonists. The protagonists’ struggle in achieving their goal is very motivating because it reflects African Americans’
experience and struggle at that time.
new one: an exploration of naturalism using the American black as his subject (Black Boy by Richard Wright). One of the facts that his influence is very important is a memorial of Richard Wright in Natchez, Mississippi, where he grew up.
The second author is Julius Lester. He is an award winning American author of books for children and adults, and was a temporary professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He was active in the American civil rights movement, first as a folk singer at numerous civil rights activities and as part of the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project. From this fact, I can assume that he really knew the real situation at that time. Moreover, because my topic is about race relations in the US, he is indeed a suitable author.
I pick Black Boy by Richard Wright and And All Our Wounds Forgiven by Julius Lester for my thesis. Black Boy, by Richard Wright, was first published in 1945. This autobiographical novel was a best-seller, and it is an important 20th-century work of literature (The New York Times Company). Black Boy is perhaps his most poignant and artistically successful book. In it, the ethics of living in the Jim Crow South are analyzed to their limits; he exposes all the unresolved issues that still haunt black and white Americans (Black Boy by Richard Wright).
is now dead. This book was one of the finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
From the two novels above I found similarities and differences. The very important similarity is both protagonists are adult black males who experience discrimination in the South. Because of their strong will in achieving their goals, they become inspiring figures for other blacks. The two protagonists are portrayed as well-educated people who struggle hard for recognition. Yet, their focus on the struggle to achieve recognition is different. As a result of their different characteristics, the kind of struggle they have and the way they deal with their struggle are different, too. Because their actions are different, accordingly, the consequences of their struggle are different, too.
I will use the sociological approach to help me find what lies beneath the surface of both novels.
The two novels that I want to discuss are talking about racism in US. Racism is“the belief that different races of people have different characters and abilities, and that the qualities of one race are the best (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English). Through this definition, it is clear that racism is closely related with the relationship between races, which is a part of sociological study.
Related to the explanation above, the two novels that I choose both deal with the interaction of society members of different races and social behavior which happened in America in the 1960’s, when race was a harsh issue. I believe sociological approach is the best approach to use because in this thesis I will examine social groups, relationships and values which are manifested in And All Our Wounds Forgiven and Black Boy. On top of that, I will also discuss the nature and effect of the social forces that shape power relationships between African Americans and white Americans. All the problems which are experienced by the protagonists, who are African Americans, are caused by their Anglo-American society.
II. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
1. How do Julius Lester and Richard Wright portray the protagonist in both of the novels?
III. PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
1. To show how Julius Lester and Richard Wright portray the protagonist in both of the novels.
2. To show how the racism contributes to the portrayal of protagonist through sociological approach.
IV. METHODS OF RESEARCH
The method I use is library research. I begin with reading Julius Lester’s
And All Our Wounds Forgiven and Richard Wright’sBlack Boy. After that, I look for some references and materials from the Internet which can support the analysis. Finally, I draw some conclusions of what has been discussed.
V. ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Texts:
Lester, Julius. And All Our Wounds Forgiven. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1994.
Wright, Richard. Black Boy. New York: Perennial Classic, 1998. Internet Sources:
Amazon.com : Black Boy (The Restored Text Established by The Library of America) (Perennial Classics) (Paperback). Amazon.com, Inc. 8 March 2007 http://amazon.com/ Black Boy (The Restored Text Established by The Library of America) (Perennial Classics) (Paperback)
Bookrags.com: Black Boy by Richard Wright. Book Rags, Inc. 8 March 2007 <http://bookrags.com/Black Boy >
Essex.ac.uk : Approaches To Literary Criticism . 27 March 2007 <http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:CExzBNvKd9EJ:private
Microsoft with Encarta Premium 2008. Jesse Jackson. Race Relation. DVD ROM, 2008
Sparknotes.com: Black Boy. Spark Notes. LLC. 29 March 2007 <http://sparknotes.com/blackboy>
Stoehr, Taylor. “Black Boy” Board of Trustees of the University of
Massachusetts. - Changing Lives Through Literature 2003. An Official UMass Dartmouth Web Page/Publication 22 March 2007 <http://www. Changing Lives Through Literature.com/black boy.shtml>
Wikipedia.org: African American. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 March 2007 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ African American>
Wikipedia.org: African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968). Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 March 2007 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ African American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968) >
Wikipedia.org: Black Boy. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 March 2007 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Black Boy _(book)>
Wikipedia.org: Civil rights movement. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 March 2007 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Movement>
Wikipedia.org: Discrimination. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 March 2007 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Discrimination>
Wikipedia.org: Human Rights. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 March 2007 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Human Rights>
Wikipedia.org: Julius Lester. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 March 2007 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Lester_(author)>
Wikipedia.org: Richard Wright. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 March 2007 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wright_(author)>
