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CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY
A. Object of the Study
Possessing the Secret of Joy is the fifth novel by Alice Walker, published in 1992. Previously, Walker has made several novels, among others are The Third
Life of Grange Copeland 1970, Meridian 1976, The Color Purple 1982, The Temple of My Familiar 1989 Britannica.com, 2016.
According to Walker‟s bibliography page in Possessing the Secret of Joy,
Walker was the first African- American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, which she won in 1983 for her novel The Color Purple, also a
National Book Award winner 2011: 157.
In Walker‟s Possessing the Secret of Joy, she wrote multiple narrators. It means that she wrote her novel by telling it uses different point of view from each
character involved in the story. By providing multiple narrators, the readers are able to see the story from each character‟s point of view. In this novel, she uses
back and forth plot and vice versa. It might confusing the reader for a while when they read the novel, but when they use close reading, they can get the point of
what Walker wants to share. This novel tells about Tashi. She lives in Olinka tribe in Africa. Then, she
moves to America and lives there with Adam. Once she has a trauma related to the death of her sister who dies because of the female circumcision tradition. In
her adult age, she has a decision to undergo a female circumcision. It makes she comes back to Africa. The action of undergoing female circumcision is an action
of realizing her identity as the Olinkan people. Then, she is married to Adam, the son of missionaries. Because of undergoing the female circumcision, her
characteristics change. She has a grudge to her circumciser. Her trauma returns to her. The change reaches its peak when she kills her circumciser which results in
her being given sentenced to death by the court.
B. Approach of the Study
This research uses the postcolonial approach. Since this research focuses on the tradition and identity crisis in the story, this approach is preference. According
to Barry, “postcolonial criticism draws attention to issues of cultural difference in literary texts,”so that this theory is appropriate to the issue in this research Barry,
2002: 198. Postcolonialism is used to analyse the effect of colonialism during and after
the colonialism era, so that it can be used in this research. In the novel of Possessing the Secret of Joy, colonization still happens in Africa through people
cultures and mind. As some American missionaries go to some villages in Africa, they colonize the native people using their value. The native people are oppressed
indirectly by the American missionaries.Tashi, the main character, mingles with the missionaries even she is married to their son, Adam. From this point, Tashi
experiences what people called as hybridity. It makes this approach is relevant to analyse the hybridity condition in Africa.
In addition, Barry in his Beginning Theory mentions four characteristics of postcolonial criticism.
There are “an awareness of representations of the non- European as exotic or immoral „Other‟”, language, hibridity, and „cross-cultural‟
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