The Background of Analysis

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Background of Analysis

Literary writing is the imagination of the writer about something, about life, about everything they have felt or they thought in life. It could reflect the picture of the writer. Literature can be a picture of life in the past, now, and future. It can also embrace the whole world in just one simple writing because in literature we can learn about economy, law, psychology, detective, family, love, and so on that can widen our knowledge about life. Wellek and Warren in Theory of Literature 1977:94 state that: “…literature ‘represents’ ‘life’; and ‘life’ is, in large measure, a social reality, even though the natural world and the inner or subjective world of the individual have also been objects of literary ‘imitation’.” All God’s Chillun Got Wings is one of the greatest works of Eugene O’Neill, written in 1923. It is his most successful effort to depict a psychologically complex relationship between a man and a woman. All God’s Chillun Got Wings received attention as an early version of the tormented marriage of O’Neill’s parents, its central characters, Jim and Ella having the names of James and Ella O’Neill. The recent deaths of O’Neill’s mother and brother may have freed him to develop a family theme more fully than he at first intended, but other material was at hand. For example, O’Neill had been Universitas Sumatera Utara a reporter in 1912 when Etta Johnson, the white wife of the black boxer Jack Johnson, committed suicide, feeling rejected by white and black people alike. All God’s Chillun Got Wings is an absorbing story of man’s and woman’s struggle from the oppression of their social life where racial issue is rising. In this thesis I am interested to analyze the impact of racial issue to four characters Jim Harris, Ella Downey, Hattie Harris, and Joe although there are eight characters altogether, but the impact of the racial issue in the play affects them most. In this play, we can read how man and woman have to face racial issue as the consequence of prejudice, stereotype, and discrimination in society of black American. The racial issue affects the characters, especially the four characters Jim Harris, Ella Downey, Hattie Harris, and Joe. The racial issue affects their sense of self and it also influences their social behavior, psychology, health, and so on. Jim Harris destroys his innate, positive vitality by attempting to define himself through Ellas eyes, which are those of a corrupt society; Jim believes that freedom and selfhood may be acquired through the external trappings of status and success. Ella Downey cannot accept herself as a wife of a Blackman, Jim Harris the leading man character while she is a white skinned. It makes her be in loneliness, low self esteem, in fear, uncanny emotion, unsatisfactory relation with others, increasing anxiety and even madness. Hattie Harris becomes a tough girl and has an undefeated faith that someday there is a man who could struggle for Universitas Sumatera Utara their racial freedom. This issue also makes her hate the white-skinned. Joe becomes a weak man, give up to the condition. These are the background why I have chosen the topical heading of this thesis as “Analysis to the Impact of Racial Issue on the Characters in Eugene O’neill’s All God’s Chillun Got Wings”.

1.2 The Problems of Analysis