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The suspicious feeling of being the part of religion-converting effort and mixed feelings of excitement, denial and rejection of religious beliefs color this
young couple’s life. The Third and Final Continent tells about an Indian man who leaves his
homeland and seeks for better life in Europe, then in America. He begins his life in the New Land and tries to adapt with his new surroundings. He rents a room in
a house belonging to an old woman named Mrs. Croft. Even in their first encounter the old woman demands he comments about the America’s great leap
into space: the first moon landing by Apollo 11. The women bellowed, “A flag on the moon, boy I heard it on the radio
Isn’t that splendid?” “Yes, madame.”
But she was not satisfied with my reply. Instead she commanded, “Say, ‘splendid’”…I said nothing.
“Say splendid” the woman bellowed once again. “Splendid,” I murmured. I had to repeat the word a second time at the top
of my lungs, so she could hear 179-180. The attempts to survive in three continents while does not forget the roots
of cultural identity become the main problems in this short story.
B. Approach of the Study
This study utilizes a postcolonial approach to analyze the experience in exile of the main characters in the three short stories, Mrs. Sen’s, This Blessed
House and The Third and Final Continent. The postcolonial approach is relatively new approach to literary theory
emerging as a distinct literary discourse in 1990s and is therefore not mentioned
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in several contemporary literary theory books. According to Peter Barry in Beginning Theory, postcolonial criticism problematizes the claim by liberal
humanists that “great” literature has a timeless and universal significance regardless of cultural, social, regional and national differences. This universalism
is rejected by postcolonial criticism 193. Therefore, to find the answer to the research problems, the writer identifies
three stages in postcolonial literature, Adopt, Adapt and Adept, and combines these stages with the theory of place and displacement, to ascertain the
fundamental characteristics for analyzing postcolonial literature.
C. Procedure
The primary source which is used in this study is three short stories, Mrs. Sen’s, This Blessed House and The Third and Final Continent. In addition to these
primary sources, there are several secondary sources that are important to this research. These include writings by theorists who have addressed Postcolonial
Literatures, theory of Place and Displacement, theories of Cultural Identity and Postcolonial Criticism.
Since this study is not a field study, library study becomes the method to gather the data. The writer goes to the library to find some relevant books, and
browse some sources from the internet. In undertaking this study, there are several steps used by the writer. First,
the writer read the short stories several times to get a deeper understanding of the themes and ideas addressed within the primary texts. Second, the writer
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determines the research problems based on the three short stories. Third, the writer finds references related in this study by searching for scholarly articles,
books and other materials in the library that shed further light on the primary data. Fourth, the writer reads broadly within the field of postcolonial discourse to refine
my approach to this particular study. Fifth, the writer synthesizes this study by relating the theories in Chapter II to the writer’s central hypothesis regarding the
impact of the dislocation of the postcolonial condition on modern literature. Sixth, the writer concludes this study based on this analysis.
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CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS
