Since the Morgan family has most of Ruby assets, they use their power to discriminate other family. Moreover, they break the law.
B. Approach
In conducting this study, the writer used the socio-historical approach as proposed by Rohrberger and Woods. Paradise tells a story of an Afro-American
community in a small town named Ruby. Ruby is an Afro-American community that is built in isolation since they are free from slavery but still get discrimination
against white people. Paradise portrays the life events of an Afro-American community in 1960s. Therefore, sociocultural historical approach is used to get a
clear picture of an Afro-American life at that time. Selecting this approach will enable the writer to get a deeper understanding of the structure of Afro-American
community that lead this community fall into the same problem of discrimination. The other reason why I use Socio-cultural-historical approach is that because the
understanding of social, culture, and history of Afro-American community in America are important to reveal the life events developed in the novel. Rohrberger
and Wood say that this approach can lead to an ethical judgement concerning the truth of an author’s statements. Then, what we read on the novel is proven with
the events that happened in the real life at that moment.
C. Method of the Study
The method used in this study is library study. I used both primary and secondary sources in this study. I used the novel of Paradise as the primary
source. The secondary sources consisted of several books which describe the theory of approaches, class, discrimination, and history of Afro-American
community. The books are: An American Dilemma; American Civilization; Discrimination; Class, Status, and Power: Social Stratification in Comparative
Perspective; Black Americans; Black Protest Thought in the Twentieth Century; Class; and Reading and Writing about Literature.
I did some steps in conducting this study. First, I selected the literary work I want to analyse. After reviewing some literary works, I chose Toni Morri
son’s Paradise as the primary data of my study. The secondary data were taken from
books that were related to the topic. The next step that I did, was reading the novel several times to gain deeper
understanding about the story. I also took notes, and highlighted some important information which was done while reading. In taking notes, I wrote some
important things that can support this study. It helped me easily analyzing the novel and avoided confusion for my self.
After that, I started to think about the topic that I would discuss in my study. Since the first time I thought about the topic, I had an idea to write about
discrimination within Afro-American community that was depicted through the story. Finally, I got one topic that, I thought, was the best topic to be discussed.
The next step was collecting the references that were related to my study. The references were some books that were available in the library and also other
books outside the library. The references consisted of information about literature and the novel.
