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CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS
A. The Description of Suwen’s Characteristics in Lim’s
Fistful of Colours
Suwen is one of major characters in Lim’s Fistful of Colours. She has a great contribution to the storyline. Identifying the characteristics of the character in a
novel is necessary to get the information for the further analysis in literary study. In this subchapter, the writer applies the theory of character and characterization
which is conducted by Abrams and Murphy in identifying the characteristics of Suwen. The following parts show Suwen’s characteristics based on Lim’s Fistful of
Colours.
1. Artistic
Suwen is an artist, a painter with great potential. She has good skills in painting. It is also obviously seen that she is artistic through the way she looks and
thinks about something as an object of her painting project. The following parts show the conditions that represent the artistic trait of Suwen.
As an artist, Suwen possesses a great quality that every single artist must have, that is expressive. In painting, she can express anything she has in her mind.
When she is sitting in front of her canvas, Suwen can express anything she wants, her feelings, moods, and thoughts. Transferring the qualities of her feelings, moods,
and thoughts into colors, lines, and shapes on the canvas. Suwen feels free to
express what is in her mind through painting as what is stated in the following quotation.
More often than not, she would rather paint. Painting as she was feeling and feeling what she was painting, filling huge abstract spaces with colours.
Lifted by an inner music, impelled by a feverish restlessness, her hand had painted light and shadows, lines and shapes, colours and textures, her
strokes uneven and unplanned, her agitated spirit yearning for the fluidity of dispossession, rootlessness and loneliness. To be free to seek pure form.
Free to paint the canvas she was defining and to suffer the loneliness she was choosing Lim, 2003: 15.
When doing painting, Suwen can freely express her feelings. Based on the quotation above, it is obvious that she has bad feelings. She tries to express it into
the form of painting. The way she does her painting reflects the bad feelings that she has. The movements of the brush, which are restless and uneven, show that she
is in bad mood at that time. Her gestures, somehow, show her psychological aspects. In other words, psychological states can influence the artist way of working.
But in some rare moments of intense lucid creation when she was painting alone, her many dreams and desires had fused like colours shading into one
another, mixing and merging, so that for an instance, one whole uncomplicated and integrated individual, the artist, had painted in total
control, totally absorbed and complete in her artistic powers. Manipulating the brush as an extension of her hand; her hand as an extension of her will;
her will, the expression of her being-Suwen. Supreme and solitary she had stood in front of her canvas Lim, 2003: 15.
From the quotation above, it can be noticed that Suwen has qualities of a great artist. She can fuse her dreams and desires into a mixture of colors. By doing
painting, she transfers what she has in her mind through medium of art. She can use the brush she uses to paint as her own hands. She makes the brush be the instrument
that represents her will. Suwen can expressively transfer her emotional states through the brush that she uses on doing the painting.
Suwen can mix the colors, lines, and shapes to have her purposes expressed. In this case, she can totally transfer her feelings, moods, and thoughts into an artistic
form, which is painting. Her potential as an artist is proven by the moment when her painting is included at the art exhibition in Singapore.
“The wealth of a nation is in its economy, its people and the arts,” the guest- of-honour declared at the opening of the art exhibition.
Over the next few days, members of the public had crowded round her painting to gape and gawk Lim, 2003: 17.
In the art exhibition, Suwen’s painting gets various comments. Most of all
are destructive comments, the rest is constructive and supportive comment. Some of the critics irritate her because they criticize and interpret the painting as a kind
of pornography. Suwen paints a vulgar scene of human being. However, Suwen has done a beautiful and natural painting.
Suwen also can manage her mind and eyes to focus only on the object of her painting project. As what she does in one moment that is revealed by the
following quotation. She tried not to think or remember, keeping her mind and eyes busy and
focused upon the Gardens’ rich flora. A strong breeze was blowing among the angsana and acacias; her mind recorded this fact. Their wet yellow
blooms came cascading down in showers of gold and covered the footpath in front of her; her eyes recorded this fact too, like an inquisitive worm
hungry for visual details Lim, 2003: 196. Suwen’s sense of a great artist is shown here, when she is walking through
the garden in the mansion, searching for the best view to be the object of her painting project. She seeks and feels the view. Her mind and eyes can spontaneously
record what she feels and what she sees. This is the moment when she prepares the
object of her painting project. She can manage her mind and eyes to work effectively.
Suwen’s potential of a great artist is not over right here. In another case, Suwen wants to make her painting full of story. It means that with painting she
wants to tell a story. However, Suwen’s idea gets an objection from Nica. She feels that Suwen’s idea is impossible to be done. Nica says that storytelling and painting
are absolutely different things, as what is presented by the following quotation when Suwen is in a chit-chat with Nica, her close friend.
“What’re you going to do with this story and these photos in the biscuit tin?” “Don’t know. Maybe a collage or something. Or maybe paintings with
stories to tell.” “Paintings with stories? You mean marry the word with the image?”
“Why not? I read somewhere that picture-making is as primeval as word- making. Which came first? Our creation myths or the pictures in the caves
of early man? No one will ever know, right?” “Gosh What are you doing? Storytelling or painting? Which is which?”
Nica asked. “You know, I’ve been thinking too, that, that we tend to categorise all the
time in Singapore, I mean we like to put things into categories. Must we classify each medium so starkly? I mean why can’t I paint and tell the story
of the early pioneers at the same time?” Lim, 2003: 245-246. The quotation above shows Suwen’s point of view about an object. She sees
an object, a story, to have a possibility to be expressed in painting. Suwen wants to transfer the information about the story into a new form of painting. She feels she
can make a painting which can speak to the viewer through its medium, through lines, colors, and shapes. To ordinary people, even an artist like Nica, it is difficult
even impossible to get a story transferred into the form of painting. Painting and storytelling stand in different fields. Nica is arguing Suwen’s idea and questioning
her about her focus, whether she is working on storytelling or painting. But to
Suwen, doing storytelling and painting at the same time is possible because she feels she can make it with the skill of painting that she has.
From the information derived from the quotations above, it can be conclude that Suwen has an artistic trait. She is born to be a great artist considering on the
qualities of an artist that she has in herself.
2. Conservative
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