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CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS
A. The Description of Major Character
According to Blair, the character is depiction of the figure in the story. The depiction includes the depiction of dialogue, thought and statement 1928: 52.
Murphy has nine ways to know the character‟s personality. The traits of the character can be seen by personal description, the other character, speech, past
life, conversation of others, reaction, direct comment, thought, and manner 1972: 161-173.
In this part of analysis, the major character is depicted. Florens as the major character has an important role in the novel. Florens is an African female
slave that grows up and enslaves in America. “Florens, she says, its 1690. Who
else these days has the hands of a slave and the feet of Portuguese lady?” 2009:
4. It takes in 1690. It describes that there are many white people in America that have a slave and have a wife from Portuguese.
“It was there I learned how I was not a person from my country, nor from my families. I was negrita. Everything. Language, dress, gods, dance, habits,
decoration, song- all of it cooked together in the color of my skin” 2009: 165. In
that quotation above, it is very clear that Florens was born from an African ‟s
mother. She is admitted as a „Negrita‟ or an African female slave who lives in
America. She is far from her family. She gets many bad treatments because she is a slave. Everything that she belongs such as: language, dress, gods and habits mix
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become one culture which is different from her identity of a Negrita. Her skin reveals that she is an African female slave. Current says that
The slaves found themselves almost completely under the control of their owners. Identifiable by their color, black slaves could not run away and
merge themselves with the mass of free humanity as white servants 1976: 16.
The white people who have slaves have an authority to control them. They
employ the slaves and indenture servants in their plantation. The slaves cannot escape to everywhere place because of the principle of white people, but they can
adapt their manners with white servant. “Lina entered the cowshed and glanced at
the broken sleigh where, in cold weather, she and Florens sleep” 2009: 63. As a slave and a white servant, Florens and Lina a native American woman, they
become roommate each other. Slavery existed in all the English colonies in North America. Yet our first
census, in 1790, showed that of seven hundred thousand slaves in the United States, North slaves were used chiefly as house servants. Their
labor was not profitable on the small Northern farms. Few of them were used in commerce and manufacturing because so many whites objected to
working side by side with persons of another race 1957: 265. Landing in America with European people, many slaves work as a house
servant in the north of United States because they are not profitable in a farm. Any of them work in a commerce and manufacturing. Many slaves work with white as
well. Several Florens
‟s characteristics are depicted in the novel A Mercy. The characteristics of Florens are kind, smart, naïve, unyielding, brave and
trustworthy. The writer analyzes these kinds of characteristics by her dialogue, conversation, thought, and action to the other character.
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