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CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY
A. Object of the Study
The novel entitled Empire of the Sun was written by the British author named James Graham Ballard or well-known as J. G. Ballard. This novel was
published by Grafton Books in London in 1984. This novel has 351 pages long, containing forty two chapters. These chapters are divided into four parts.
Empire of the Sun reveals the struggle of a British boy named James “Jim”
Graham in the city of Shanghai, China during the Second World War in China as the inclusion of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
The main theme of this novel is the conditions in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The setting of this novel is Shanghai city, one of
the biggest port cities in China. The setting of this novel is manufactured setting because the setting is established from the designs of human beings,
like buildings. This novel is categorized into Semi auto-biographical novel. It is because this novel based on the experiences that were really encountered by
the author, with some fictional additions from the author‟s imaginations. The plot of Empire of the Sun is created in sequence and the structure
was formal. It is because the story of the novel follows the formal construction from exposition until resolution. The conflict occurs when the city of
Shanghai is invaded by Japanese troops. The narrator is the author himself. The point of view in this novel is third person omniscient. The author uses
neutral and denotation style to represent the story. He also structures this novel by using straight forward narrative; even in some story the author retell
the experiences of the main character in the past time. Empire of the Sun
gained Guardian First Book Award and James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1984. J. G. Ballard also gained an award as the
famous science fiction writer in 1960s until 1970s. The novel Empire of the Sun
was adapted into a motion picture with the same titled by Steven Spielberg in 1987. Besides the novel Empire of the Sun, Ballard also wrote
many other works such as novels, short stories, essays and book reviews. The novel Empire of the Sun tells about a 10 years-old British boy
named James “Jim” Graham or Jamie who lived in Shanghai around 1930s until 1940s. There are many things in this city, from the high class mall to the
broken small beggar‟s house, from the colonizer to the colonized, from the leader of government to the leader of liberation. As far as Jim lived in this
city, he felt the stratification that separated the citizen of Shanghai into certain classes, like the Westerners; the Japanese; and the Chinese as the native. This
stratification was created since a long time ago, even before Jim was born and these kinds of classes still continued in his era. Jim always enjoyed his life,
even though he lived in that terrible era. Jim‟s journey began after the Japanese invaded Shanghai in 1941. In
that chaos condition, Jim struggled to maintain his life. It was because he had to live by himself. He was separated from his parents because they were
caught and sent to a prisoner camp by the Japanese troops during their
invasion in Shanghai. Jim had to interact with the people around him to survive in this terrible condition. As the main character, Jim saw everything
based on his perspective as a child. He had a dream to join with Japan air force, better than joined the British Royal Air Force. As a child, he was naïve
and saw everything without any repression from any ideologies. Jim also felt the resistant war that was done by the Chinese army and supported by the
Allies faction versus the Japanese as the Axis faction. At the end of the story, Jim and all prisoners were set free from the
Japanese aggression after the atomic bombs were fell down in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan. The Empire of Japan surrendered to Allies forces and the
Second World War as the inclusion of the Second Sino-Japanese ended. Even though the Second World War had brought to an end, the war inside China
still continued and no doubt, Jim felt that the city of Shanghai had changed into a terrible city because there was no peace at all.
B. Approach of the Study
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