Object of The Study

CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY

A. Object of The Study

The object of this study is a fiction novel called The Other Hand written by Chris Cleave. As it is stated in the previous chapter, this novel can be also found under the name of Little Bee in different countries depending in which it is published in. This novel was first published in the United Kingdom on August 7 th 2008 and sold 3,000 copies in its first year and raised a number up to 100,000 in its second. Lack of advertising which Cleave did purposely was done to try his “word-of-mouth-success” strategy that actually succeeded increased the selling to 300,000 copies. This 374 paged book reached number 13 on the 2009 Sunday Times best seller list and topped the New York Times Best Seller list for paperback trade fiction in 2010. It was also nominated at the 2008 Costa Book Awards and also the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize as best book originating from Europe and South Africa. Cleave who loves writing his novels about people at both extremes of the human experience: refugees, the bereaved, the elite, and the embattled clearly made this book about two women from two different backgrounds very approachable. One is an asylum seeker named Little Bee who is always running to find peace, and the other is a successful magazine editor who finds herself very troubled because of the things happening in her life. 22 This book explains the life of Little Bee who went to England illegally due to oil wars in Nigeria. Little Bee gets treated with disgrace in England for the first 2 years being held in a detention Centre for illegal immigrants. She was finally let out with 3 other girls from the detention Centre, none having papers with them explaining who they were and where they had come from. Little Bee had only one destination and that was to go to the house of someone from the past. She only held an ID of a man named Andrew O’Rourke complete with his address that she was heading for. As she turns up in the house of Andrew O’Rourke who had just died, there was Sarah O’Rourke who couldn’t believe her eyes who she saw. The two had met each other in Nigeria where Sarah was taking a vacation with her husband to refresh their minds from their complicated relationship they were having. They had seen Little Bee and her sister Nkiruka in the hands of “The Men” who were going to kill them. Sarah and Andrew had told them to back away from the sisters, but the men were not going to unless Andrew had cut the middle finger of his left finger off for “The Men” to keep. Andrew failed to do so as Sarah grabbed the knife herself and cut her own finger off. Luckily Little Bee was saved due to Sarah’s finger but unfortunately the finger had cost for one living soul only. Andrew had died only days before Little Bee arrived at her door step. Sarah was left with a 5 year old son who was just growing to ask so many questions about the world. Sarah had to deal with her affair with Lawrence who she had truly loved more than she did with Andrew. She was also left with the reason why she had cut her finger off in front of her face. As the story goes, Sarah learns that having Little Bee besides her was the company she truly needed. Little Bee helped Sarah when she was troubled with Charlie her son and Sarah wanted to help Little Bee receive legal papers and also spread out the news on the oil wars that no one knew about in Nigeria. For the first time Little Bee had felt warmth in her heart and Sarah had finally felt that this was the effort she was meant to be doing to make peace for herself and others.

B. Approach of the Study