CHARACTERIZATION AND SYMBOLISM ANALYSIS IN SHORT STORY HANSA, GRETYL, AND PIECE OF SHIT

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NEELLS Proceedings

National English Education, Language, and Literature Seminar 2020

50

CHARACTERIZATION AND SYMBOLISM ANALYSIS IN SHORT STORY HANSA, GRETYL, AND PIECE OF SHIT

Rahmia Manda Putri, Tri Ayu Lestari, Ulya Aziza Fitriya Universitas Negeri Malang

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[email protected], [email protected].

Abstract: This paper aims to analyze the character and symbol in a short story entitled Hansa, Gretyl, and Piece of Shit by Rebecca Curtis. The research is qualitative. The technique used is formalist analysis, the data obtained from the words, phrases, and sentences in the story. In revealing the character and symbolism of the story, the researcher focuses on the underlying meaning beneath them.

The research result is the characters in this story have similarity with the famous fairy tale Hansel and Gretel. Curtis cleverly adapts the fairy tale to her story and makes it more relevant to the recent issue Keywords: Character, formalism, symbolism

INTRODUCTION

In this modern society, living a luxurious life is everyone’s dream. People tend to sacrifice anything to achieve the life they have been dreaming, including their son. They rely too much on their imagination of the future until they neglect the reality and the essential thing in the present life.

In the short story written by Rebecca Curtis entitled Hansa, Gretyl, and Piece of Shit, the researcher showed that sometimes a thing that seems impossible to happen in one’s life is possible in another. Curtis mixed her imagination and reality to tell a story about a girl who suffers from appendicitis. She creatively used the fairy tales Hansel and Gretel old versions and Pan’s Labyrinth elements in the way she built the plot and the characters in the story.The characters are complex and have fascinating issues in this story.

By using formalist analysis, the researcher focuses on the characters of the story. The researcher also focuses on symbolism. This paper is aiming to reveal the underlying meaning beneath them. Moreover, this story was published in The New Yorker Magazine on November 16th, 2020. There is no research analyzing this story yet.

According to Kennedy (1468), formalists pay special attention to the formal features of the text-the style, structure, imagery, tone and genre. In this case, formalism critical analysis excludes the external factors of the story: the author, background of the story, time, and place where the story was made.

Formalism critical analysis is expected to analyze the story itself deeply.

METHOD

The researcher used a descriptive qualitative method with formalism critical analysis approach.

The data obtained from the word, phrase, and sentence from the story ‘Hansa, Gretyl, and a Piece of Shit by Rebecca’ and also literature review from the comparison story, Hansel and Gretel Fairy Tale by the Brothers Grimm.

The data analysis technique used by researchers is formalism and content analysis. The researcher identified the story based on the words, clause, phrase, and sentence. In this case, the researcher identified two short stories, Hansa, Gretyl, and a Piece of Shit by Rebecca becoming the main research object and Hansel and Gretel Fairy Tale by the Brothers Grimm becoming the comparison research object. The researcher shorted the characters from the most important characters until the figurant character. All of them are analyzed using the formalism critical analysis.

Moreover, the researcher also finds out the relationship between the story by Rebecca and the story by The Brothers Grimm, considering the story by Rebecca is written inspired by the Brothers Grimm’s story. Several parts in Rebecca’s story have a special symbol that should be analyzed further.

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51 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

Findings Gretyl

Gretyl is the main character of this story; the narrator describes her as the youngest sister in her family.

The narrator also gives further description of her in this passage:

“She’s five-nine, slender. She has long white-blond hair, a sweet oval face, a Roman nose, and violet eyes. The girl, five-nine, weighs a hundred and ten. She enjoys solving problems, helping people, reading, doing math, playing Dungeons & Dragons, and talking with friends—about the Iraq War, capitalism, the Y2K apocalypse.”

However, Gretyl is also described as unpopular, a loser, lazy and unlikable. It was explained at the beginning of the story. But this statement is just like the antithesis of who she is.

“Gretyl wants to grow bigger, so she can leave this small Northern California town to study something useful so that she can do something useful.”

The existence of Gretyl is essential in the story. Since she is the main character and the protagonist in the story, she is having an essential role in building the plot. At first, the story told the reader that she had constant cramps in her abdomen, but she tried to ignore it. Then, he met the hunter several times helping him out of his trouble. Even though she got smacked by her mother for losing her scrunchie to help him, she keeps helping him signifying that she is a very kind and helpful girl.

Gretyl’s fourteen, but by the hunter’s moon, she’ll be fifteen. Yet she has this big dream already. However, the constant cramps that she suffered from becoming a disaster. Gretyl constant cramps made her weaker and weaker, yet she did not tell her parents about that. One night her sister Hansa called her, and she told her about her cramps and Hansa said that she had appendicitis. The plot keeps rising by the time Gretyl asks her parents to bring her to E.R., but they keep refusing it because they think it will cost lots of money.

As she felt the cramps, she started to hallucinate or imagine something that made herself fear, but the dream is just like the reality she faced that she is struggling to keep herself alive.

They finally took the girl to the clinic, and the doctor called Dr Blood, but the result was negative. Gretyl did not eat any food for nine days until she blew the whistle from the hunter man. He came and had a conversation with Gretyl, but she insisted that he should get out of the house before her parents got home.

Just when after the man said he was a God, Gretyl painted and when she woke up she already got surgery and had been in the hospital for thirty-three days. And finally, she got precise treatment for her cramps and could continue her life.

Gretyl’s Mother

The narrator described Gretyl’s mother as an ignorant mother for Gretyl. She is Grethilda who lived together with her husband and Gretyl. In the story, she tends to be ignorant whenever Gretyl complains about her stomach ache. The narrator also described Grethilda as follows

“Grethilda spends too much on groceries. The mother, five-three, weighs a hundred and fifty pounds. Two weeks ago, the man’s carburettor malfunctioned, and he asked Gretyl to lend him her scrunchie to jerry-rig it. That night, her mother smacked her for losing it.”

In the story, Grethilda did not like her daughter. She always mocked at her daughter. This is expressed in the passage below:

“The girl makes life difficult, she says. She’s thankless and rude. I do like canned tuna, Grethilda replies. I also like jumbo shrimp. I also like lobster. I want to dine out more, at nicer restaurants.

And I want to take a tropical vacation, without the girl. “She’s miserable, Grethilda repeats. She fakes gross illnesses to avoid school!”

Gretyl’s Father

The third character is Gretyl’s father. As a father of three sisters, he worked as a pilot. The narrator described him as follows:

“He doesn’t want adult time with his wife. He doesn’t want to banish his daughter. She’s overall, but he enjoys looking at her. Of his children, she’s disappointed him least. He is a caring and playful man who loves Gretyl the most, but he has deep hate feeling toward Hansa. Privately, Hans agrees that the girl’s awkward. She slouches, doesn’t play sports, seems morose. Sometimes observing her causes him pain. Sometimes he thinks, It’d be good if she were gone”.

In the story, he is straightforward disagreed with his wife’s decision being ignorant with Gretyl’s appendicitis problem but ended up succumbing to her decision in the end.

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52 Hansa

Hansa is one of Gretyl’s sisters. The narrator described her as a state congresswoman who partnered with an aerobic instructor. She is twenty-nine and stays in Boston to attend her college. Hansa and Gretyl are nice siblings. Although they have different hobbies and jobs, they still have a chemistry relationship. The narrator shows it in this passage:

“Hansa and Gretyl both read three fantasy novels a week. Hansa fears pain. Can’t tolerate the tiniest needle. Hansa plays tennis for hours. Hansa doesn’t understand remorse. But sometimes she senses things. Hansa is the oldest sister who worked as a state congresswoman in Boston.

Being a caring sister who happened to have appendicitis before, she is the first person who first noticed Gretyl’s appendix problem, and she kept persuading her parents to give Gretyl a proper medical treatment.”

Piece of Shit

The other Gretyl’s sister is Piece of Shit (name). In this story, Piece of Shit is the middle sister in the family.

The narrator described her as the passage below:

“She is ‘lazy, vain, solipsistic, and stupid’. Though she is not as concerned as her oldest sister, she cared about Gretyl’s situation and kept persuading her both parents she hated.”

According to the author, Rebecca Curtis herself (Newyorker.com), she stated that the story is more inspired by ‘Finette Cendron’ which has three children rather than two from Grimm Brothers’ revision. Thus this is how Piece of Shit exists in the story. She added the reason behind giving the middle sister a ridiculous name because it is a literary tradition giving a matching, funny name into a character who stands for the author.

Hunter

A mysterious person Gretyl met every time she walked to school. He has tilted black-brown eyes, olive skin, a large nose, and a bearlike black beard. He’s about thirty years old. He often broke his car and asked Gretyl for assistance. In the story, he is the first one who noticed Gretyl’s stomach ache problem and decided to give her a special whistle to summon him for help. He grins. He has a vast smile. If you need help, he says, blow it. Maybe we’ll come.

Discussion

In the original version of Hansel and Gretel by Grimm Brothers, one of the specific events where the kids entered the witch’s house, and Gretel outwitted her by throwing her into the oven is a symbol for Gretyl’s struggle in life or death situation. The presence of cottage and ogre which replaces the witch is an alternate world between life and death which is proved by the cat which could talk back to Gretyl. During the trip to the wood, Gretyl attempted to make a trail from her pearl necklace, which was a gift from her mother. One can agree with pearls worth various high prices and Gretyl left it with no hesitation. This act is a symbolization of willingness to leave something they loved, which in this story, Gretyl was ready to part away with her family if she died, since stepping into the cottage is as same as death. Ogre itself is a symbolization of the death Gretyl must confront and fight if she wanted to continue living.

Looking at the character which is mentioned in the story as the hunter, he is described as an Arab person who loves hunting. But, through deep understanding, there is one symbolism within Hunter. The man himself is just a normal person, but everything he had done to Gretyl is a symbolism of God itself. In short, Hunter and Gretyl’s interaction is much like a relation between people and their God.

“He leans forward. They won’t, he says softly, because they’re God-fearing people. And that means, he says, they fear me. Because today I’m God”.

At the very beginning of the story, Hunter, who kept asking Gretyl for assistance, looks similar to how God tests his people’s faith. It is made quite clear since Gretyl needs a process to believe him, which is implied by Gretyl’s refusal in getting in the car. The man kept roaming around Gretyl’s neighbourhood is similar to how God always watches his people in various beliefs. Hunter, who was first to find the queerness from Gretyl’s stomach ache problem, symbolizes how God knows everything. During Gretyl’s dying state, she blew the whistle given by the hunter, which symbolizes how people tend to pray to God only during their misery. It is made sure since the story mentions Gretyl does not believe in God’s existence, but she kept praying in the end.

CONCLUSIONS

In conclusion, the characters in this story have a similarity with the famous fairy tale Hansel and Gretel. Curtis cleverly adapts the fairy tale to her story and makes it more relevant to the recent issue. The characters in the story have their uniqueness and part in the story. Curtis made every character essential

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and had their role in building the plot of the story. Not only focus oriented on their role only, but the specific events in the story serve a symbolism that plays a vital part in story development. Curtis’s story is not merely parodying or mimicking the original version, but the original is more of symbolism for Gretyl’s struggle fighting her death

REFERENCES

Curtis, Rebecca. 2020. Hansa and Gretyl and Piece of Shit.The New Yorker Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/16/hansa-and-gretyl-and-piece-of-shit. Retrieved on November 17th, 2020

Davidson, Willing. 2020. Rebecca Curtis on Fantasy and Reality.The New Yorker Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/books/this-week-in-fiction/rebecca-curtis-11-16-20. Retrieved on November 17th.

Kennedy, X.J., and Gioia, Dana. 2011. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing.

Revised Edition for Burington County College.NY: Pearson.