CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY
A. Object of the Study
In this study the writer analyzes a drama by David Henry Hwang entitled Family Devotions. David Henry Hwang was born in Los Angeles, California in
1957. He is an American playwright who has risen to prominence as the preeminent Asian American dramatist in the U.S. He was educated at the Yale
School of Drama and Stanford University. His first play was produced at the Okada House dormitory at Stanford and he studied playwriting with Sam Shepard
and María Irene Fornés. Hwangs early plays concerned the role of the Chinese American and
Asian American in the modern day world. His first play, the Obie Award-winning FOB, depicts the contrasts and conflicts between established Asian Americans and
Fresh off the Boat newcomer immigrants. The play was developed by the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene ONeill Theater Center and
premiered in 1980 Off-Broadway at the Joseph Papp Public Theater. Papp went on to produce four more of Hwangs plays, including the Pulitzer Prize-nominated
drama “The Dance and the Railroad”, which tells the story of a former Chinese opera star working as a coolie laborer in the nineteenth century, and “Family
Devotions”, a darkly comic take on the effects of Western religion on a Chinese
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family. Those three plays added up to a Trilogy of Chinese America as the author described.
Hwang’s third drama Family Devotions was first published in 1989 by Penguin Books Canada Ltd, Canada. This book consists of 51 pages and built of 2
acts. The analysis of the study will be focused on the character development. The analysis searches for the message from the author so that the readers could grasp
the meaning of them. The summary of the study is given as follows. It is about the main characters Ama and Popo, Chinese women, who
emigrated to Philiphines, then to America, and their little brother Di-Gou who is a resident of the People’s Republic of China. The play is set in an idealized house
with an enclosed patio and tennis court, representing a shallow, materialistic American Dream. The extended families of Ama and Popo are waiting the arrival
of Di-Gou whom they have not seen for thirty years. They really want to hear Di- Gou’s testimony and confession of miracles done by evangelist See-goh-poo.
Unfortunately, when he arrives he disavows ever being Christian and it makes his sisters be dissapointed and furious. Hence, the conflict begins to appear in this
family. The reason of choosing this play as the object of the study because there
are some moral reason message that can be found inside. The writer decides to focus only on the main character’s description, by their act or attitudes, dialogue,
and the conflicts in order to reveal the message.
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