Portrayal of Protagonists in Julius Lester's 'And All Our Wounds Forgiven' and Richard Wright's 'Black Boy'.

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ABSTRACT

Di dalam tesis ini, penulis membahas tentang karakter orang kulit hitam dari dua novel yang berjudul And All Our Wounds Forgiven yang ditulis oleh Julius Lester dan Black Boy yang ditulis oleh Richard Wright. Kedua karakter yang dibahas di dalam tesis ini adalah karakter dari tokoh John Calvin Marshal dalam novel And All Our Wounds Forgiven dan tokoh Richard Wright dalam novel Black Boy. Keduanya adalah orang kulit hitam yang tinggal di negara Amerika Serikat.

Setelah penulis menganalisis kedua novel ini, penulis menyimpulkan bahwa kedua karakter didalam kedua novel ini sangat menarik untuk dibahas. Kedua novel ini bercerita tentang kehidupan orang kulit hitam yang harus bejuang mendapatkan keadilan dan cara mereka bertahan di lingkungan yang radikal akan perbedaan warna kulit. Setiap orang kulit hitam memiliki karakter yang berbeda yang membuat perbedaan dalam cara mereka menghadapi permasalahan-permasalahan sebagai kaum korban rasis. Hal ini yang menarik minat penulis untuk mengangkat kedua karya ini sebagai pembahasan di dalam tesis ini dan penulis berpendapat bahwa baik And All Our Wounds Forgiven dan Black Boy merupakan karya yang sangat menarik untuk dibaca dan dibahas.

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ABSTRACT………...

TABLE OF CONTENTS ………

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study ……….………….…

Statement of the Problem ………...… Purpose of the Study ……….. Methods of Research ………...… Organization of the Thesis ……….

CHAPTER TWO: PORTRAYAL OF CHARACTER IN

AND ALL OUR WOUNDS FORGIVEN………

CHAPTER THREE: PORTRAYAL OF CHARACTER IN

BLACK BOY………

CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY ………...……….…

APPENDICES:

Synopsis of And All Our Wounds Forgiven...….………

Synopsisof Black Boy………...…

Biography of Julius Lester………...….…. Biography of Richard Wright....………

i ii iii 1 4 4 5 5 7 21 34 39 41 41 42 43 43

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APPENDICES

Synopsis of And All Our Wounds Forgiven

John Calvin Marshall is a charismatic civil rights movement leader. He is a fresh graduate of Harvard and he accepts an offer to teach at Spelman College. However, when he realizes that his destiny is not in teaching, he refuses the offer and joins a civil rights movement.

As a black leader of the movement, he has a white assistant named Lisa Adam, who also becomes his mistress. His charm as a charismatic man not only attracts Lisa but also attracts important figures such as LBJ, JFK, and Malcolm X. He has harmonious relationships with many influential people. Such relations can be a good impact for his struggle to get legal recognition for his race.

He realizes that to be free, black people need legal recognition to prove that their position is equal to white people. That is why he concentrates on getting legal equality. Even though he is killed in the middle of his struggle and he has not achieved his goal he gets social recognition. He is recognised as an influential black man by having his picture on postage stamps and a national holiday to commemorate him.

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Synopsis of Black Boy

Black Boy is an autobiographical novel of Richard Wright. The book tells about his childhood till the age of 26. Being a poor Southerner in 1960s makes his childhood miserable.

His father has left him and his uneducated mom is too busy to give enough attention to Richard. Feeling abandoned and deprived, Richard grows up to be a stubborn and rebellious boy. He experiences sporadic schooling due to the constant moving in order to avoid poverty. Being poor and abandoned does not keep him from being a critical boy. He starts and stops school often and soon realizes that he could teach himself through reading proper books.

Desperate about the harsh racial condition in the South, Richard makes a decision to move to the North. In Chicago, Richard continues to struggle with racism, segregation, and poverty.

His move to the North opens his eyes, and he starts to be concerned about humanity. He realizes that he is not the only one who suffers. He and many other blacks suffer because of discrimination. This is his turning point in life. He decides to use his writing skill to make people aware about his race’s suffering. Through writing, he tries to get social recognition for blacks. He successfully obtains his social recognition by the publication, purchase, and banning of his book.

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Biography of Julius Lester

Julius Bernard Lester is an award winning American author of books for children and adults. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri on 27 January 1939. In 1960 he received his BA from Fisk University.

In the early 1960s, Lester became an activist in a civil rights movement as a folk singer. He also worked as a full timer in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. He has written 45 books for children and adults which deals with race relations. Some of his books are Look Out, Whitey! Black Powers Gon’ Get Your

Mama! and And All Our Wounds Forgiven.

Biography of Richard Wright

Wright was born in Roxie, Mississippi on 4 September 1908. He was the grandson of former slaves. Wright's family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. While in Memphis, his father, Nathaniel, a former sharecropper, abandoned them. Wright, his brother, and mother Ella, a schoolteacher, moved to Jackson, Mississippi, to live with relatives.

Feeling depressed about racial conditions, he moved to Chicago, where he began to write and became active in the John Reed Clubs. In 1939 he met Ellen Poplar, a white Polish-Jewish Communist Party member, who became his first wife. He moved to New York City to become the Harlem editor of the Daily Worker, a communist newspaper, also contributing to the New Masses magazine.

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Wright first gained attention for Uncle Tom's Children. He followed with a novel, Native Son, the first Book of the Month Club recommendation by an African American author.

Wright is also renowned for the autobiographical Black Boy (1945), which describes his early life from Roxie through his move to Chicago, his difficulties with white employers and racial condition. He died in Paris in November 1960.

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

I. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Racism is the subject of my thesis. I choose to discuss race relations in the United States and how African Americans struggle to gain social recognition and legal recognition. I will focus on the effect of racism on African Americans in the US between 1930-1960. This issue is very interesting to be analyzed because it has been and it still is a major issue in the United States. Racism is unfair treatment of people, or violence against them, because they belong to a race other than their own. In this thesis I will analyze the portrayal of the protagonists. The protagonists’ struggle in achieving their goal is very motivating because it reflects African Americans’

experience and struggle at that time.

As for the authors, I choose two authors whom I think are compatible to be compared. The first author is Richard Wright. I choose him because although he passed away in 1960, his influence on present black American literature is still powerful. He fathered one tradition—the black protest novel—and helped establish a

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new one: an exploration of naturalism using the American black as his subject (Black Boy by Richard Wright). One of the facts that his influence is very important is a memorial of Richard Wright in Natchez, Mississippi, where he grew up.

The second author is Julius Lester. He is an award winning American author of books for children and adults, and was a temporary professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He was active in the American civil rights movement, first as a folk singer at numerous civil rights activities and as part of the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project. From this fact, I can assume that he really knew the real situation at that time. Moreover, because my topic is about race relations in the US, he is indeed a suitable author.

I pick Black Boy by Richard Wright and And All Our Wounds Forgiven by Julius Lester for my thesis. Black Boy, by Richard Wright, was first published in 1945. This autobiographical novel was a best-seller, and it is an important 20th-century work of literature (The New York Times Company). Black Boy is perhaps his most poignant and artistically successful book. In it, the ethics of living in the Jim Crow South are analyzed to their limits; he exposes all the unresolved issues that still haunt black and white Americans (Black Boy by Richard Wright).

The second book is And All Our Wounds Forgiven by Julius Lester. It is a novel about the civil rights movement told from the points of view of the white lover of a civil rights leader, his dying widow, his colleague and the voice of himself who

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is now dead. This book was one of the finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

From the two novels above I found similarities and differences. The very important similarity is both protagonists are adult black males who experience discrimination in the South. Because of their strong will in achieving their goals, they become inspiring figures for other blacks. The two protagonists are portrayed as well-educated people who struggle hard for recognition. Yet, their focus on the struggle to achieve recognition is different. As a result of their different characteristics, the kind of struggle they have and the way they deal with their struggle are different, too. Because their actions are different, accordingly, the consequences of their struggle are different, too.

I will use the sociological approach to help me find what lies beneath the surface of both novels.

Sociological criticism is an approach to literature that examines social groups, relationships, and values as they are manifested in literature. Sociological approaches emphasize the nature and effect of the social forces that shape power relationships between groups or classes of people. Such readings treat literature as either a document reflecting social conditions or a product of those conditions. (Approaches To Literary Criticism)

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The two novels that I want to discuss are talking about racism in US. Racism is“the belief that different races of people have different characters and abilities, and that the qualities of one race are the best (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English). Through this definition, it is clear that racism is closely related with the relationship between races, which is a part of sociological study.

Related to the explanation above, the two novels that I choose both deal with the interaction of society members of different races and social behavior which happened in America in the 1960’s, when race was a harsh issue. I believe sociological approach is the best approach to use because in this thesis I will examine social groups, relationships and values which are manifested in And All Our Wounds Forgiven and Black Boy. On top of that, I will also discuss the nature and effect of the social forces that shape power relationships between African Americans and white Americans. All the problems which are experienced by the protagonists, who are African Americans, are caused by their Anglo-American society.

II. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

1. How do Julius Lester and Richard Wright portray the protagonist in both of the novels?

2. How does the racism contribute to the portrayal of protagonist through sociological approach?

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III. PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

1. To show how Julius Lester and Richard Wright portray the protagonist in both of the novels.

2. To show how the racism contributes to the portrayal of protagonist through sociological approach.

IV. METHODS OF RESEARCH

The method I use is library research. I begin with reading Julius Lester’s

And All Our Wounds Forgiven and Richard Wright’sBlack Boy. After that, I look for some references and materials from the Internet which can support the analysis. Finally, I draw some conclusions of what has been discussed.

V. ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS

I divide the thesis into four chapters. In Chapter One, I present the Introduction, which contains the Background of the Study, the Statement of the Problem, the Purpose of the Study, the Method of Research, and the Organization of the Thesis. In the second chapter, I analyze the portrayal of the protagonist in Julius Lester’sAnd All Our Wounds Forgiven and in the third chapter I analyze the

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portrayal of the protagonist in Richard Wright’s Black Boy. In the last chapter, I draw the Conclusion of the analysis. The thesis ends with the Bibliography and the Appendices.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Texts:

Lester, Julius. And All Our Wounds Forgiven. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1994.

Wright, Richard. Black Boy. New York: Perennial Classic, 1998. Internet Sources:

Amazon.com : Black Boy (The Restored Text Established by The Library of America) (Perennial Classics) (Paperback). Amazon.com, Inc. 8 March 2007 http://amazon.com/ Black Boy (The Restored Text Established by The Library of America) (Perennial Classics) (Paperback)

Bookrags.com: Black Boy by Richard Wright. Book Rags, Inc. 8 March 2007 <http://bookrags.com/Black Boy >

Essex.ac.uk : Approaches To Literary Criticism . 27 March 2007 <http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:CExzBNvKd9EJ:private www.essex.ac.uk/~dfnehr/SC203%2520Lecture%25202%2520

2007-2008%2520Theory%2520and%2520Research.ppt+the+definitio n+of+sociological+approach+in+literature&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd =100&client=opera>

Microsoft with Encarta Premium 2008. Jesse Jackson. Race Relation. DVD ROM, 2008

Samuel, Wilfred D. “And All Our Wounds Forgiven. - book reviews” Find Articles 2007. Look Smart, Ltd. 22 March 2007 <

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Sparknotes.com: Black Boy. Spark Notes. LLC. 29 March 2007 <http://sparknotes.com/blackboy>

Stoehr, Taylor. “Black Boy” Board of Trustees of the University of

Massachusetts. - Changing Lives Through Literature 2003. An Official UMass Dartmouth Web Page/Publication 22 March 2007 <http://www. Changing Lives Through Literature.com/black boy.shtml>

Wikipedia.org: African American. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 March 2007 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ African American>

Wikipedia.org: African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968). Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 March 2007 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ African American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968) >

Wikipedia.org: Black Boy. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 March 2007 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Black Boy _(book)>

Wikipedia.org: Civil rights movement. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 March 2007 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Movement>

Wikipedia.org: Discrimination. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 March 2007 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Discrimination>

Wikipedia.org: Human Rights. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 March 2007 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Human Rights>

Wikipedia.org: Julius Lester. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 March 2007 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Lester_(author)>

Wikipedia.org: Richard Wright. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 March 2007 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wright_(author)>

Wikipedia.org: Social Equality. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 30 March 2007 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Equality)>

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