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Netos poems tear down façade of civility and enlightenment to attack the violence and poverty underpinning western civilization and its colonial
projects Arana: 310.
Those studies on Neto‟s Antology The Sacred Hope above are mainly focus on how poets in oppressed nations use poetry as a vehicle or tool to fight against
colonialism. This study is not only focuses on the Timorese struggle during Portuguese rule and Suharto‟s military regime in which poetry can be an outlet for
speaking up in idea of freedom but poetry can be a way to portray concept of freedom. The main difference of this study on poetry from researchers Marques,
Amuta, Brass, and Victoria Ana is that poetry not only instrument of struggle but also can main as source to portray concept of freedom in political, social, and cultural.
Furthermore, the writer reveals poetry is a new form of expression, and a new frontier for individual and nations for liberty.
B. Review of Related Theories
This undergraduate thesis has three things as turning points: the struggle of the Timorese, the concept of freedom and postcolonial. Therefore, the undergraduate
thesis needs theories on the three fields in order to answer the problem formulations.
1. Theory of Tone
Tone define as the writer‟s or the speaker‟s attitude toward his subject, his audience, or himself. It is the emotional meaning or emotional colouring of the poem.
In his book, Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry, Laurence Perrine
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1963:389 states that poetry can be understood through its tone and if the readers miss its tone, then they may miss its meaning.
Obviously tone is an important part of meaning. It may even be the most important part of meaning. In communication with pet animals or babies, the
tone of voice we use is far more important than the words we use. In interpreting literature the reader who understands the literal content of a poem
but who mistakes its tone may be much further from understanding the poem than the reader who makes mistakes about its literal content but who
understands the tone.
The tone‟s function in poetry is to help the readers understand the author‟s emotional feelings toward his poem. Tone allows poets to control the way in which a
poem is read or the attitude that the speaker in the poem takes toward the subject of the poem. The poets are able to establish a particular mood for a poem and express
the mood without actually telling the reader to feel that way by manipulating tone in poetry. The way in which a poet controls tone is through word choice and imagery.
Tone is important for poets to communicate with the readers by giving the poets a way to emphasize emotional feeling towards his poem. Tone is an integral part of
communication and an effective communication can also be determined by the tone of speaker. Therefore in this thesis the writer may reveal the struggle of the Timorese
and the concept of freedom using the element of the tone.
2. Theory of Imagery
Prior to understand the struggle of the Timorese and the concept of freedom in the poems, this theory is needed as background knowledge about the elements of the
struggle and the concept of freedom in the poems.
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In his book, An Introduction to Poetry, Perrine 1965: 54 explains that the use of imagery is to see the images that the authors create in a work of literature to
help the readers imagine the real conditions. Therefore, in a work of literature, imagery provides mental pictures for its readers. It conveys a complete human
experience in a very few words: The word “image” most often suggests a mental picture; something seen in
the mind‟s eye-and visual imagery is the most frequently occurring kind of imagery in poetry. An image may also represent a sound; a smell; a tactile experience, such as
hardness, wetness, or cold; an internal sensation, such as hunger, thirst, or nausea; or movement or in the muscle or joints.
Imagery in poetry is put into words originated from human experience emotionally, intellectually, and concretely in any given moment. The moment
becomes frozen in words, allowing the reader to dwell in and re-experience it every time he or she reads the poem.
3. Postcolonial Theory
In order to understand colonial hegemony in third world countries during and after colonialism, postcolonial theory is used to define the struggle or anti-movement
of oppressed nation against the West. The postcolonial theory focuses on the power, economics, politics, religion,
and culture, so that how these components work in relation to colonial hegemony can be identified. From the point of view of colonized people, the otherness imposed by
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the colonizer plays an important role in the anti-colonial struggle for liberation and their identity. Post-colonial theory allows the third world writers to look at their own
history and put across their own perspective on how to reclaim their past and to erode the colonialist ideology by which the past had been devalued. Post-colonial theory
also expresses the Eurocentric universalism in taking for granted both the superiority of what the European or the Western is and the inferiority of what is not. In the case
of Timorese independence, the postcolonial theory is to reveal what elements in Xanana‟s poems that reflect Timorese in search of freedom.
a. Search for Identity
Frantz Fanon in Barry, 1961: 193 argues that colonized people have to regain what has been devalued by colonizer to them in the past and to erode
colonialist ideology in order to be free and reclaim their identity. Fanon 1967 says that colonized peoples were made to feel inferior and
alienated from their culture because the history, culture, customs and belief of the colonizers were promoted universal, normative and superior. In order to achieve their
independence, colonized people need to reclaim and reconstruct their own history of the negative or non-existent versions of it as produced by the colonizers. Hence,
Edward Said in Bressler, 1999: 267 states that he or she or „colonized people‟ must question their existence in order to understand one‟s identity:
An author must ask himself or herself three questions: who am I? How did I develop into the person that I am? To what country or countries or to what
cultures am I forever linked? In asking the first question, a colonized author is connecting himself or herself to historical roots. By asking the second
