Stages of Culture Shock

24 Murphy are personal description, speech, past life, conversation of others, reaction, direct comment, thought, and mannerism. The other methods of characterization come from Card include motive, the past, reputation, stereotype, network, habits and patterns, talents and abilities, tastes and preferences, and body. The researcher includes the methods because those are appropriate to analyze the major character ’ characteristics as seen and described in the novel. Those kinds of methods can be used to indicate the responses from the main character in dealing with culture shock experiences. It can show how Kai Ting ’s characteristics are seen and described in the novel. Besides, the critical approach is included as a reference since in analyzing the novel, the study employs psychological and sociocultural-historical approaches, which is the part of the five approaches by Rohrberger and Wood. Both approaches are in this study to avoid the subjectivity. The theory of psychology includes theory of conflict which consists of the types of conflict and the conflict resolution. Those theories aims to help reveal the conflicts that the major character experiences in dealing with culture shock. Besides, the theory of culture is used to widen the understanding about two different cultures; America and China. Since this study aims to find the influences of culture to conflict, the socio-cultural historical approach is applied. Therefore, it leads to the discussion of culture shock conflict experiences based on those related theories and specifically using psychological and sociocultural-historical approaches. 25

CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY

This chapter consists of three sections, namely the object of the study, the approach of the study, and the method of the study. The object of the study tells about the information of the novel. The approach of the study tells about the approaches used to analyze the novel. The method of the study provides the procedures taken in this study.

A. Object of the Study

The object of this study is a novel entitled China Boy written by Gus Lee. It was the first novel published in 1991. Lee described his life in this best-selling autobiographical fiction. He also wrote some other novels after the year of 1991 such as Honor and Duty 1994, Tigers Tail 1996, and Chasing Hepburn 2004. China boy is a fiction, which is rendered to the experience of family relationship, the perils of growing up in America of sharp differences and sharp humanity, and culture shock. It tells about Kai Ting, the only American-born son of an aristocratic Mandarin family that flees China to America in the wake of Mao’s revolution. Living and growing in Panhandle, he is caught between two different cultures, Chinese and American way of life. After the death of his mother, he suddenly takes into American culture by his stepmother, a Philadelphia society woman who tries to erase every vestige of China. It also tells about the situation of his being plunged into different ways of life in a different society.