the Identity of biracial child in Getting Under My Skin by Don Terry

ABSTRACT

Siti Masyitoh, The Identity of Biracial Child in Getting Ullder My Skill By DOll
TeJ'ly. Thesis. Jakarta: English Letters Department, Letters and Humanities
Faculty, State Islamic University SyarifHidayatullah Jakarta, October 2009.
The aim of this research is to analyze the identity of Don, the main character of
the story, who is biracial from the short story Getting under My Skill. In the research,
the writer concerns her analysis to the concept of identity by Giles and Middleton in
analyzing the character's identity. The writer uses descriptive qualitative method as
the method of the analysis in order to find out the identity of the main character, Don,
who is a biracial child of a black father and a white mother.
According to the research, the writer found that Don, the main character of the
story faced identity-confusion in identiJYing his identity since he was a biracial child
of a black father and a white mother. He tried to put himself by being an integrated
man of both black and white, but since the society had only known black and white,
he could only be one of those races. In order to find out Don's identity, the writer
tried to analyze the society's treatment to Don as a biracial and Don's feeling as a
biracial. Finally, the writer analyzed the data using the concept of identity to figure
out his identity in his confusion of being black or white.
As a result, the writer found that the society had a very significant role in
forming his identity and how race mattered so much in the society where he lived.

The way how he was treated by the society had formed his identity as a black man.
Finally, he chose to own his blackness instead of his whiteness.