CHAPTER II THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

4 CHAPTER II THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK An analys will be supported by some theories related to the topic chosen. In this chapter, the elaboration of elements of poetry and the postcolonialism theory by using Edward Said s orientalism, especially binarism theory will be explained. 2.1. Poetry According to Kennedy and Gioia (2005, p.698), poetry is a rhythmical composition of words expressing an attitude, designed to surprise and delight, and to arouse an emotional response. Based on the citation, it can be concluded that poetry contain the emotional expression and has implicit meaning for each word that the poet share to the reader. 2.2. Elements of Poetry In analyzing poetry, it is important to use its elements such as denotationconnotation, imagery, figurative language, rythm, tone, and theme in order to find the deeper meaning of the poem. Those elements will be further explained in this section. 2.2.1. Denotation and Connotation theory Denotation and Connotation is the element to get to know more about what is the deeper meaning inside the poem. Literally, it is used to seek further meaning of the poem. As it is stated by Arp (2005), denotation is the meaning that people can find in dictionary. Meanwhile beyond its denotations, a word may also have

5 connotations, he also mentioned that connotations are beyond what it expresses; overtone of meaning (p.41) 2.2.2. Imagery The poet may have experienced that leads them in showing their feelings and thought and it can be figured out by imagery. It represents an image in the reader s imagination as stated by Arp (2005) through sense experience. He also describes imagery in seven types. The first is visual imagery. It represents the image by the eye of the reader s imagination, for example moon and sun. The third is auditory imagery which related to the sound that heard, for example loud scream. The next is olfactory imagery for what it smells. The fourth is gustatory imagery for how something tastes like, in other words it related to tongue. The fifth is tactile imagery for touch such as hardness or softness, heat or cold. The sixth is organic imagery for an internal sensation such as thirst, fatigue, or nausea. The last is kinesthetic imagery for movement or tension (p.5). 2.2.3. Figurative Language The term figurative language exists because this is how the poem exactly implying the meaning beyond its words. Kennedy and Gioia (2005, p.814), have stated that in broadest definition, a figure of speech may be said different from the usual denotations of words. To conclude the statement of Kennedy and Gioia, figurative language contains figures of speech that is used to define the feeling and deeper message that the poets deliver. There are also several types of figurative language. Kennedy and Gioia (2005) categorized figurative language into six types of figures of speech, they are

6 metaphor and simile, personification, overstatement (hyperbole), metonymy, paradox, and pun (p.817-827). Meanwhile, there are eleven types of figurative language according to Arp (2005, p.69-134) as explained below : Arp divided figures of speech into eleven types, those are: simile, metaphor, personification, apostrophe, and metonymy as figurative language 1; symbol and allegory as figurative language 2; paradox, overstatement, understatement, and irony as the figurative language 3 (cited in Yoan Kristianti, 2011, p.10) Based on the citation, Arp (2005) mentions the kinds of figures of speech in eleven types. They are simile, metaphor, personification, apostrophe, metonymy, symbol, allegory, paradox, overstatement, understatement, and irony. However, in this research there are only five figures of speech that will be used to analyze the poems.they are paradox, personification, symbol, metaphor, and simile. The figurative language that will be discussed is paradox. A paradox is a contradiction that is nevertheless somehow true. It may be either a situation or a statement (Arp, 2005, p.112). The example of paradox can be seen in the statement alone among the crowd. The figurative meaning is somebody who feels lonely because he or she feels about something or someone beyond his or her imagination until it makes him or her feels lonely. The next figurative language is personification. Kennedy and Gioia (2005, p.824) and Arp (2005, p.74) agree that personification is giving human abilities to objects or animals. For instance, in the statement even moon smiled at me, the word smiled is an attitude done by human, meanwhile moon is a universe thing that unavailable to do something. The third figurative language is symbol. It may be roughly defined as something that means more than what it is. The symbol is the richest and at the same time the most difficult of the poetic figures. The symbol is a rich one, the poem suggests other meanings too. It affirms a belief in the possibility of choice and says

7 something about the nature of choice. Symbols vary in the degree of identification and definition is given by their poets (Arp, 2005, p.91). For example in Robert Frost s The Road Not Taken; two roads diverged in a yellow wood, the two roads symbolize two choices of life. The last figurative languages are simile and metaphor. According to Arp, simile and metaphoor are both used as means of comparing things that are essentially unlike. The only distinction between them is that in simile the comparison is expressed by using the preposition as or like. For instance, as blue as the sky. While in metaphor the comparison does not use as or like as in simile, for example in the statement I am a rainbow. 2.2.4. Sound According to Arp (2005) sound produce the music of poetry (p.221). It appears to give more intensive meaning of expression that the poet tries to deliver. Patterns of sound are devided into four parts. They are rhyme, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia, and rhyme (Barnet, et. al, 2005, p.500-1). However, not all patterns will be used in this research. The patterns of sound that will be used in this research is rhyme. 2.2.4.1. Rhyme Kennedy and Gioia (2005), mentions that rhyme occurs when two or more words or phrases contain an identical or similar vowel-sound, usually accented, and the consonant sound (if any) that follow the vowel-sound (p.869). For example, hay and sleigh, prairie schooner and piano turner. These examples show the conclusion

8 that rhyme depends not on spelling but on sound. By the statements, it can be concluded that rhyme is used to determine the repetition of the same vowel-sound. 2.2.5. Tone Beside the textual aesthehtic, the poem also has voice of the poets that they try to convey. The reader of the poems may hear the voice of the poet. The tone implied in the poem is abstraction what the reader makes. It is also particular choices of words and sentence pattern, of imagery and figurative language, (DiYanni, 2001, p.413). Also when the readers hear the voice of the poet, they can find the deeper meaning of the poem. 2.2.6. Theme The word theme is used to name the particular subject matter of the poem in relation to the reader's previous observation of the life about him and within him. Theme, then, refers to broad generalization and high-order abstraction which each person develops in dealing with the common experience of life. DiYanni (2001, p.482) defines it as below : an idea or intellectually apprehensive meaning inherent and implicit in a work., moreover, he also mentioned that an abstraction and generalization drawn from details of literary works (include poems) (cited in Yoan, 2011, p.17) Therefore, it can be concluded by the citation that theme is finally revealed after the reader has analyzed the poem. The theme comes out after the reader has understood the deeper meaning and details of the poem. 2.3. Postcolonialism Theory According to Nayar (2008, p. 17), postcolonialism is the theoretical wing of postcoloniality. It refers to a mode of reading, political analysis, and cultural

9 resistance or intervention that deals with the history of colonialism and present neocolonial structures. It invokes ideas such as social justice, emancipation, and democracy in order to oppose oppresive structures of racism, discrimination, and exploitation. Therefore, in a short meaning that postcolonialism seeks to understand how oppression, resistance, and adaptation occured during colonial rule. 2.3.1. Orientalism by Edward Said According to Edward Said, orientalism was ultimately a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar (Europe, West, us ) and the strange (the Orient, the East, them ). By the quotation, it can be concluded that there is a gap between two sides of community from some influencing institutions such as the army, the police, the central bureaucracy which dominated by superior and causing significant differentiation to the inferior. There are several stereotypes that orientalist discourse assign to superior cultures and peoples. The first is despotic when placed in positions of power; sly and obsequious when in subservient positions. The second is capable of sophisticated abstractions, but not of concrete, practical organization. The third stereotype is untrustworthy and clannish. The last stereotype is gender and sexual identities and roles ( oriental men are sexually continent, meanwhile oriental women are sexually charged and locked up behind bars). Postcolonial theory has been influenced by postructuralist approaches, including deconstruction. In particular, deconstruction s challenge to hierarchical, binary oppositions provided postcolonial theory with conceptual strategies for undermining the ostensible difference between center and margins, between the colonizing culture and the colonized (Murfin and Ray: 2008, p.396)

10 2.3.2. Binarism as the part of Postcolonialism Theory Contemporary post-structuralist and feminist theories have dominated the extent to which such binaries entail a violent hierarchy, in which one term of the opposition is always dominant such as man over woman, white over black. The binary logic of imperialism is a development of that tendency of Western thought in general to see the world in terms of binary oppositions that establish a relation dominance. A simple distinction between colonizer versus colonized, center versus margin represents very efficiently the violent hierarchy in which imperialism is based and which it activately perpetuates. Binary oppositions are structurally related to one another, and in colonial discourse there may be a variation of the uderlying binary such as colonizer versus colonized that becomes rearticulated in any particular text, for example white versus black (Ashcroft, et al, 2008, p.19) 2.3.3. Postcolonial Feminism According to Weedon (2002), postcolonial feminism often refers to the third world feminism. The ideology of this theory is about the women facing racism, colonialism, and gender differentiation in the postcolonial setting. Meanwhile according to Narayan (2000), the central idea of this theory is to put the term women as a universal group. It is defined by gender and not social classes or ethnics identities. 2.3.3.1. The relation of Maya Angelou with postcolonial feminism Maya Angelou is an African-American feminist. She was raised where the invasion of the white people toward black people occured in America. Her poems are

11 written around a logical split. She promotes individual integrity and separateness and devalues the personal and communal interdependency. She presents her own experiences of life as foregrounding to show inherently unpredictable, everchanging, split and divided character of human personality. Her poetry shows the combination of individual agency and power of woman together. Her typical feminine poems resist and expose this combination and unity of the self, subjectivity at social and psychological level, intertwined. This reflects woman s subordinate position within society and culture which always compel them to shrink themselves to be a romantic individual with their exotic and sensual pleasures. According to Ghani & Naz (n.d.), the concept of woman in her poetry provides an entity that binds together all women in the face of racial, national and other differences. Angelou gives a vivid description of woman s position within a culture where she is treated as a goddess, a commodity or an object of suppression. She feels the things around her intensely and expresses them with wide magnitude and depth. Nevertheless, she is conscious of the fact that there are restraints on her experiences and there is lot of contempt for her gender specification. 2.4. Historical Background The great depression influenced America in 1930s, especially in South America. A large majority of the white men in the South believed that blacks have limits in education. Discrimination toward the black people also occured on the streets and railroads. There were barriers to the black people from public parks, public libraries, and public entertainment of all kinds. During the depression of the 1930 s, there was clash between black and white people. The depression on top of

12 horrible race relations made the suffering of African Americans much worse. The economic disasters made the black people more dependent upon white people and government officials. The Southern Blacks felt the worst of this economic despair, as seen by the grand migration of blacks to the north and west (Briggs, 2004). Because large segments of the populace particularly African-Americans, women, and men without property have not always been accorded full citizenship rights in the American Republic, civil rights movements, or "freedom struggles," have been a frequent feature of the nation's history. In particular, movements to obtain civil rights for black Americans have had special historical significance. Such movements have not only secured citizenship rights for blacks but have also redefined prevailing conceptions of the nature of civil rights and the role of government in protecting these rights (Foner & Garraty, 1990).