THE CHARACTER ANALYSIS IN PEARL S. BUCK’ S THE ENEMY
on
THE CHARACTER ANALYSIS IN
PEARL S. BUCK’ S THE ENEMY
By
I PUTU ORA ADENOIS CORRY
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT FACULTY OF LETTERS AND CULTURE UDAYANA UNIVERSITY
2014
Abstrak
Sebuah karya sastra yang dibuat berdasarkan imajinasi penulis dan umumnya mencerminkan kondisi sosial, yang menggunakan lingkungan sosial di sekitarnya sebagai dasar. Wellek dan Warren (1973:39) menyatakan bahwa karya sastra itu sendiri membenarkan semua kepentingan kita dalam kehidupan seorang penulis, dalam lingkungan sosial dan seluruh proses sastra.
Untuk menganalisis sebuah karya sastra diperlukan identifikasi bagian-bagian terpisah untuk menentukan hubungan antara bagian-bagiannya untuk menemukan hubungan bagian tersebut dengan karya sastranya (Kenney, 1966:5). Novel adalah salah satu contoh prosa fiksi yang menggambarkan karakter dan memperkenalkan lebih dari satu kesan, efek atau emosi digambarkan sebagai cerita lama untuk menulis dalam sebuah buku. Karakter merupakan salah satu aspek penting, ia membawa berita dari penulis yang dapat membawa berbagai nilai dalam kehidupan manusia seperti moralitas, pendidikan dan banyak lainnya.
Dalam studi ini, cerita berjudul The Enemy dipilih untuk dianalisis. Dalam kisah The Enemy Dr. Sadao dibesarkan dalam budaya khas Jepang. Ayahnya adalah seorang patriot besar. Dalam cerita ini, seorang tahanan Amerika yang terdampar di depan rumah Sadao setelah melarikan diri. Dokter dan istrinya terpecah antara pertanyaan kemanusiaan dan patriotisme. Mereka ragu apakah mereka harus menyelamatkan manusia ini atau menyerahkan pada pemerintah Jepang. Sadao adalah ahli bedah penting bagi negara sehingga tidak dikirim ke medan perang. Kemudian Sadao mengungkapkan tentang tahanan tersebut kepada sang Jenderal dan Jenderal itu setuju untuk membantu dia dengan mengirim pembunuh untuk membunuh orang Amerika itu. Pada akhirnya kemanusiaan mendominasi patriotisme dan tahanan dibiarkan bebas.
Kata kunci: Etnik, kemanusiaan, patriotisme
Literary work cannot be separated from human life. The expression of literary form is language. Literature is an act of language, it is inseparable from life because it presents and describes the events that can happen in real life in society. Through literary work, which usually reflects our life, we can experience through our imagination and also we learn about human being.
A literary work is created based on the imagination of the writer and it generally reflects the social condition, which uses the social surrounding as the foundation. Wellek and Warren ( 1973:39 ) state that the works of literature themselves justify all our interests in the life of an author, in this social environment and the whole process of literature.
To analyse a literary work is to identify the separate parts that make it up, to determine the relationship among the parts, and to discover the relation of the parts to the whole (Kenney, 1966:5). Novel is one of the examples of fictional prose that describes character and introduces more than one impression, effect or emotion described as a long story to write in a book. Character is one of important aspects, it carries the author's massage that can bring various values in human life such as morality, education and many others.
An American-trained Japanese surgeon working in Japan during World War II, pulls a wounded American sailor, presumably an escaped POW, from the surf behind his home. Against the advice of his wife, he hides the sailor, operates on him, and preserves his life temporarily.
Becoming fearful for his family, he reports what he has done to his patient, an official in the Japanese military. The officer says he will arrange to have the American assassinated in order to spare possible retribution against Sadao, the surgeon, and his family. It doesn’t happen, and Sadao is left with determining how to rid himself of this hazard he has brought into his home and healed. He makes a series of decisions that lend themselves to widely varying interpretations in terms of his motivation.
Based on the background mentioned above, the focus of this study is limited to the study of character. The problems then appear in this story are:
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1. Why does Sadao the Japanese surgeon help the enemy?
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2. What message does the writer want to show to the readers?
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3. Aims of the Study
This study is intended to fulfil three aims: the general, specific, and academic aims.
The general aim of this writing is to apply theories related to short story in order to get better understanding of Pearl S Buck’s short story entitled The Enemy.
Meanwhile the specific aim of this writing is to find out what message the writer actually wants to say.
The last is an academic aim that is to apply the theory of literature studied in the English Department to write a scientific work which gives contribution to this department, so this writing can be used as a reference in literary analysis.
There are three aspects of the research of the study; they are; data source, data collection and data analysis.
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4.1. Data Source
The data were collected from the story entitled The Enemy Pearl S. Buck (cited in http://tlc.cet.ac.il/ShowItem.aspx?ItemID=36ccb108-d73c-4db3-ad15-4112881f0c74&lang=EN Inc).
The data were collected through reading the story intensively and making notes all the information relevant to the narrator and his father as the focus of being
discussed and then the data were identified in accordance with their types then descriptively presented. They are several types of collecting data :
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1. Reading the story carefully, selecting and taking note of the selected items based on the related topic.
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2. Find out the moral decision of the Japanese surgery to help the enemy in The Enemy and what message the writer wants to convey to the readers?
The analysis correlates to the problems that are formulated. The method for analyzing the data is descriptive. The data were collected from the data source and through the data collection, and were analyzed using the theory of William Kenney. 1978. How to Analyze Fiction, theory of Warren and Wellek. 1962. Theory of Literature, and other supporting theory of Knicbocker and Reninger. 1963. Interpreting Literature.
An American-trained Japanese surgeon working in Japan during World War II, pulls a wounded American sailor, presumably an escaped POW, from the surf behind his home. Against the advice of his wife, he hides the sailor, operates on him, and preserves his life temporarily.
Becoming fearful for his family, he reports what he has done to his patient, an official in the Japanese military. The officer says he will arrange to have the American assassinated in order to spare possible retribution against Sadao, the surgeon, and his family.
This story raises the high-level moral questions about ethics in the time of war. Does one’s obligation to country supersede obligation to family? When is an enemy to be treated as threat? How are ethical principles prioritized when they are in conflict of this nature? And, in terms of the story itself, how does one examine
the motives that drive Sadao to make his decisions? Are they virtue-based? Based in his culture as Japanese or his culture as surgeon?
Sadao had taken this into his mind as he did everything his father said, his father who never joked or played with him but who spent infinite pains upon him who was his only son. Sadao knew that his education was his father’s chief concern. For this reason he had been sent at twenty-two to America to learn all that could be learned of surgery and medicine. He had come back at thirty, and before his father died he had seen Sadao become famous not only as a surgeon but as a scientist.
Sadao knew, that there was some danger that the American soldier might need an operation for a condition for which he was now being treated medically. Now Sadao remembered the wound, and with his expert fingers he began to search for it. Blood flowed freshly at his touch. On the right side of his lower back Sadao saw that a gun wound had been reopened. The flesh was blackened with powder. Sometimes, not many days ago, the man had been shot and had not been tended. It was bad chance that a rock had struck the wound.
But he did not answer. At this moment he felt the tip of his instrument strike against something hard, dangerously near the kidney. All thought left him. He felt only the purest pleasure. He probed with his fingers, delicately, familiar with every atom of this human body. His old American professor of anatomy had seen to that knowledge. “Ignorance of the human body is the surgeon’s cardinal sin, sirs!” he had thundered at his classes year after year. “To operate without as complete knowledge of the body as if you had made it – anything less than that is murder.”
“This man,” he thought, “there is no reason under heaven why he should live.” Unconsciously this thought made him ruthless and he proceeded swiftly. In his dream the man moaned, but Sadao paid no heed except to mutter at him.
“Groan,” he muttered, “groan if you like. I am not doing this for my own pleasure. In fact, I do not know why I am doing it.” The man sank again into silence so profound that Sadao took up his wrist, hating the touch of it. Yes, there
was still a pulse so faint, so feeble, but enough, if he wanted the man to live, to give hope.
He turned as swiftly as though he had never paused and he took the man’s wrist again. The pulse under his finger fluttered once or twice and then grew stronger.
The young man woke, so weak, his blue eyes so terrified when he perceived where he was.
When Sadao came in the third day after the operation, he found the young man sitting up, his face bloodless with the effort.
“Lie down,” Sadao cried. “Do you want to die?”
He forced the man down gently and strongly and examined the wound. “You may kill yourself if you do this sort of thing,” he scolded.
“What are you going to do with me?” the boy muttered. He looked just now barely seventeen. “Are you going to hand me over?”
For a moment Sadao did not answer. He finished his examination and then pulled the silk quilt over the man.
“I do not know myself what I shall do with you,” he said. “I ought of course to give you to the police. You are a prisoner of war – no, do not tell me anything.” He put up his hand as he saw the young man about to speak. “Do not even tell me your name unless I ask it.” They looked at each other for a moment, and then the young man closed his eyes and turned his face to the wall.
He stood for a moment on the veranda, gazing out to the sea from where the young man had come that other night. And into his mind, although without reason, there came other white faces he had known – the professor. He remembered his old teacher of anatomy, who had been so insistent on mercy with the knife, and then he remembered the face of his fat landlady. He had had great difficulty in finding a place to live in America because he was a Japanese. The Americans were full of prejudice, and it had been bitter to live in it, knowing himself their superior. But then, white people were repulsive, of course. It was a relief to be openly at war with them at last. Now he remembered the youthful, haggard face of his prisoner – white and repulsive.
“Strange,” he thought, “I wonder why I could not kill him?”
In the story The Enemy, Dr. Sadao had been brought up in a typical Japanese culture. His father was a great patriot. It is the time of the world war. An American prisoner is washed ashore in front of Sadao's house after escaping. The doctor and his wife are torn between the question of humanity and patriotism. They were in doubt whether they should save this man or hand him over. Sadao being an important surgeon to the general of the country is not sent for the war. Later, Sadao reveals about the prisoner. The general agrees to help him by promising him that he would send assassins to kill the American.
Again they confront an opportunity to save him; the doctor gives him a boat, clothing, and food so that he may escape to a neighboring island and wait for a fishing boat. Days later, the doctor confesses to the general that the American has somehow escaped, and in a strange reversal, the general realizes with considerable anxiety that he has forgotten his promise to the doctor. The general then begs the doctor not to reveal their secret to the authorities, and the doctor willingly swears to the general’s loyalty before returning home. At the end humanity dominates over patriotism and the prisoner is left free.
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