Pan-Africanism As a Principle to Overcome Double Consciousness in African Diaspora Subjects: a Post-Colonial Reading of Gyasi’S Homegoing

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PAN-AFRICANISM AS A PRINCIPLE TO OVERCOME DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS IN AFRICAN DIASPORA SUBJECTS: A POST-COLONIAL READING OF GYASI’S HOMEGOING

AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters

By SIULIENDA WINATA Student Number: 164214027

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS FACULTY OF LETTERS UNIVERSITAS SANATA DHARMA YOGYAKARTA 2020

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PAN-AFRICANISM AS A PRINCIPLE TO OVERCOME DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS IN AFRICAN DIASPORA SUBJECTS: A POST-COLONIAL READING OF GYASI’S HOMEGOING

AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters

By SIULIENDA WINATA Student Number: 164214027

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS FACULTY OF LETTERS UNIVERSITAS SANATA DHARMA YOGYAKARTA 2020

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For my beloved family Thank you for believing in me

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To begin with, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to God for always guiding me and accompanying me in every step of my life.

Second, I would like to put forward my sincere gratitude for my thesis advisor

Dr. Tatang Iskarna, for his patience and understanding during me creating and developing this undergraduate thesis. I would also like to give my gratitude for

Drs. Hirmawan Wijanarka, M.Hum., as my co-advisor, for giving this thesis useful evaluation and correction. For all lecturers and staff in English Letters Department and Sanata Dharma University, I would also like to say thank you.

Thirdly, I would like to thank my family; Engkong, Goamak, Mamak, Bapak,

Lily, Engkim Seri, Cemah, Jessica, and the rest of Zhang Guang Zhong’s family members for the unconditional love and for always wishing the best for me.

Afterwards, I would like to thank my GTL squad; Whidia, Omang, Sindy, Sipit, and Tami, thank you for always be there for me. For my Bromo 21 Squad; Mbak

El, Mbak Sin, Mbak Pin, Mbak Titu, Mbak Asri, Mbak Nina, Mbak Rilis, Mbak

Osi, and Anna, thank you for your endless support for me. I also want to say thank you to these friends; Lina, Gita, Yoninho, Ayu, and Nanda for helping me during the administration process. To Ribka, Kitana, Feren, Sisca, Tata, Tasia, and Tirta, thank you for all the good memories that we shared during these four years. Lastly, for Klara, Christin, and Tyas, I will miss you, guys, thank you.

Siulienda Winata

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE ...... ii APPROVAL PAGE ...... iii ACCEPTANCE PAGE ...... iv STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY ...... v LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH ...... Error! Bookmark not defined. DEDICATION PAGE ...... vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ……………………………………………………….ix ABSTRACT ...... xi ABSTRAK ...... xii

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ...... 1 A. Background of the Study ...... 1 B. Problem Formulation ...... 5 C. Objectives of the study ...... 5 D. Definition of Terms ...... 6

CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF LITERATURE ...... 8 A. Review of Related Studies ...... 8 B. Review of Related Theories ...... 12 1. Theory of Character and Characterization ...... 12 2. The Double Consciousness among African-Americans ...... 14 3. The Concept of Pan-Africanism ...... 17 C. Overview of African Descendants Life in the US (16th -21st century)...... 19 D. Theoretical Framework ...... 22

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY ...... 24 A. Object of the Study...... 24 B. Approach of the Study ...... 25

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C. Method of the Study ...... 26 CHAPTER IV: ANALYSIS ...... 28 A. The Description of the Characters...... 28 1. Marjorie ...... 28 2. Marcus ...... 34 B. The Double Consciousness in the Characters ...... 38 1. Marjorie ...... 38 2. Marcus ...... 48 C. The Implementation of Pan-Africanism Principles ...... 54 1. The Knowledge of African Culture and History ...... 54 2. The Unity and Cooperation between People of African Descent...... 58 3. A Homegoing Process ...... 60

CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION ...... 65 REFERENCES ...... 69 APPENDIX ...... 75

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ABSTRACT

WINATA, SIULIENDA. (2020). Pan-Africanism as a Principle to Overcome Double Consciousness in African Diaspora Subjects: A Post-colonial Reading of Gyasi’s Homegoing. Yogyakarta: Department of English Letters, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Sanata Dharma. Homegoing, a novel written by Yaa Gyasi and published in 2016, is an intergenerational diasporic novel that talks about the impact of slavery to the African people both in the continent and in the diaspora. In this thesis, the writer analyzes two African American characters named Marjorie and Marcus who live in 21st century America. Because of the color of their skin, they have experienced racial discriminations which contribute to them having double consciousness. There are three objectives in this study. The first objective is to describe the portrayal of Marjorie and Marcus. The second objective is to analyze the double consciousness that they experience, and the last objective is to observe how Pan- Africanism principles help Marjorie and Marcus overcome the conflict that resulted from having double consciousness. This study uses post-colonial approach, because the topic of the study, which is double consciousness, emerges as the impact of colonialism and its consequence–racism. Library research is the method of the study that the writer uses to find proper theories and related studies. This study employs three theories; theory of characterization, concept of double consciousness, and concept of Pan- Africanism. The first analysis of the study shows the description of Marjorie and Marcus’ traits and background. Marjorie is portrayed as a caring, bright, patient, but lonely person, while Marcus is intelligent, family-oriented, and brave. Moving on to the next analysis, the writer finds that their traits correlated with the double consciousness. Because of their smartness, they cannot fully get along with other African Americans who do not care much about their education. On the other hand, they cannot get inside the white social environment because of their skin color. In order to tackle the double consciousness, Marjorie and Marcus then apply the principles of Pan-Africanism; learning about their root culture, developing solidarity between the people of African descent, and also going back to Africa (return to roots).

Keywords: Pan-Africanism, Double Consciousness, African Diaspora, Post- Colonialism.

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ABSTRAK

WINATA, SIULIENDA. (2020). Pan-Africanism as a Principle to Overcome Double Consciousness in African Diaspora Subjects: A Post-colonial Reading of Gyasi’s Homegoing. Yogyakarta: Department of English Letters, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Sanata Dharma. Homegoing, novel yang ditulis Yaa Gyasi dan dipublikasikan pada 2016 lalu, adalah sebuah novel diaspora antargenerasi yang membahas konsekuensi dari perbudakan orang keturunan Afrika di benua itu sendiri dan di Amerika. Dalam penelitian ini, penulis menganalisa dua karakter Afrika-Amerika yang tinggal di Amerika pada abad ke-21. Sebagai orang kulit hitam, mereka mengalami diskriminasi ras, yang berakibat pada munculnya konflik kesadaran ganda. Penelitian ini memiliki tiga tujuan. Tujuan pertama adalah untuk mendeskripsikan karakter Marjorie dan Marcus. Tujuan kedua adalah untuk menganalisa kesadaran ganda yang dialami kedua tokoh, dan tujuan terakhir adalah untuk melihat bagaimana prinsip-prinsip Pan-Afrikanisme dapat membantu kedua tokoh mengatasi konflik kesadaran ganda mereka. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan post-kolonial, karena topik penelitian ini, yang mana adalah kesadaran ganda, muncul sebagai akibat dari kolonialisme dan efeknya–rasisme. Studi pustaka adalah metode penelitian yang digunakan penulis untuk mencari beberapa teori dan penelitian yang mendukung. Dalam penelitian ini, ada tiga teori yang digunakan; teori karakterisasi, konsep kesadaran ganda, serta konsep Pan-Afrikanisme. Bagian pertama analisis penelitian ini membahas tentang deskripsi kepribadian Marjorie dan Marcus. Marjorie memiliki sifat peduli, pintar, sabar, tetapi juga kesepian, sedangkan Marcus digambarkan sebagai orang yang inteligen, bersifat kekeluargaan, serta berani. Di analisis selanjutnya, penulis menemukan bahwa konflik kesadaran ganda mereka berhubungan dengan sifat-sifat yang mereka miliki. Karena kepintaran mereka, mereka tidak dapat berbaur sepenuhnya dengan orang Afrika-Amerika lain karena kebanyakan dari mereka tidak terlalu peduli dengan pendidikan. Akan tetapi, mereka juga tidak dapat memasuki lingkungan sosial orang kulit putih karena warna kulit mereka. Untuk mengatasi konflik kesadaran ganda, Marjorie dan Marcus lalu mengimplementasikan prinsip- prinsip Pan-Afrikanisme; memahami akar budaya mereka, membangun solidaritas antar orang keturunan Afrika, serta kembali ke benua Afrika (kembali ke akar).

Kata kunci: Pan-Africanism, Double Consciousness, African Diaspora, Post- Colonialism.

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

Among many functions of literature, one of them is to criticize or to inform people about issues that are happening in society, e.g., racism, gun violence, gender inequality, and many more. A professor named Caesar said in GulfNews interview:

“Literature is thought-provoking; it allows us to raise questions and gives us a deeper understanding of issues and situations” (Ismail, 2008). It infers that literary works are beneficial as a tool to make the readers more aware of social problems happening in society without making them feel like being coached.

Literary works have many genres, and in this thesis, the writer chooses to analyze diasporic literature. The term “encompasses literature that deals with experiences of migration and exile, and cultural or geographical displacement, most often in the context of postcolonialism” (Cuddon, 2013, p. 201). It is part of post- colonial literature, or literature that are written by the subjects of European colonization. Usually, the themes of post-colonial literature revolve around racial discrimination, cultural dominance, sense of belonging, or quest for identity.

The novel that becomes the object of the study is entitled Homegoing, written by Ghanaian-American author named Yaa Gyasi. Homegoing is a unique intergenerational diasporic novel that structured like a compilation of short stories.

The author divides the book into fourteen chapters in which each chapter focuses on a character’s life story in a particular era relating to slavery and its lasting effect–

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racism, that have harmed black people lives in the diaspora. The novel also carries on themes like colonization, cultural heritage, and Black identity, which privilege the readers to gain more knowledge about the issues and also an understanding of black lives in America today.

Another noticeable thing in Homegoing that highlights its importance as a literary work is how several characters experience the sense of having double identity–as an African and as an American, which is called as double consciousness by American sociologist and Pan-Africanist named W.E.B. Du Bois. Most of the

African descendants living in America have experienced this dilemma of not fully belong to either culture and often feel the confusion toward their own self. In an interview with The Rumpus, Gyasi says:

I don’t feel Ghanaian enough when I’m in Ghana, I don’t feel American enough when I’m in America, and this straddling of these two worlds where I feel some kind of alienation from either side of things was really eye-opening. Homegoing was really trying to investigate that double consciousness (Bereola, 2016).

From the quotation above, we can infer that the issue of ‘double consciousness’ is relatable and prevalent to many people living in the 21st century, because majority of people are now living in diasporic spaces, and living in the foreign land requires them to assimilate to the culture of the place where they live, which leads to them slowly forgetting their root or origin culture and contribute to the emergence of double consciousness.

The phenomena of double-consciousness actually had been experienced since the arrival of the Western culture through colonialism and evangelism in some parts of African countries. Some African writers in their home land were aware of that PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

state of mind. Okot p’Bitek described in his narrative poem “Song of Lawino” how

“the adoption of Western culture in the post-colonial era resulted in cultural conflict amongst the Ugandan people” (Iskarna, 2011, pp. 259, 279). The character of

Waiyaki in Ngugi wa Thiongo’s novel The River Between is the one who realized that “appreciation to Western education and Kikuyu tradition was one of the ways how to solve the problems of cultural conflict amongst the Kenyan people in the post-colonial age. Waiyaki’s double consciousness was believed as the clue for the horizontal conflict amongst the Kikuyu people” (Iskarna, 2018, pp. 191-192).

Now, as the writer chooses a novel that illuminates the lives of African diaspora subjects (the term is used interchangeably with African Americans or black people), the writer will focus on the double consciousness that those people undergo.

The emergence of double consciousness in African American is a consequence of African diaspora movement, either through the forced migration (slavery) or voluntary migration. As for the first type of migration, when the Africans first arrived at the United States, they were forced to work in plantations and constantly receive inhumane treatments from the slave masters. Even after the slavery was abolished, they continued to live as minorities. The white supremacists associate black people with evil, and they believe that the status of Blacks are ‘lower’ than white people. The result of this false thinking in today’s world is what people call as systemic racism.

Dixson and Rousseau state that “Racism is a pervading and permanent part of

American society” (Dixson & Rousseau, 2006, p. 4). The oppressed black people have to deal with institutional racism, internalized racism, and even intra-racial PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

racism, which make themselves believe that they are indeed inferior compared to white people.

Institutional racism refers to the incorporation of racist policies and practices in the institutions by which a society operates: for example in education, law, and health care. Internalized racism refers to when people of color believe in white superiority, which make them feel less attractive, less capable, and wish they were white or looked more white. Intra-racial racism refers to discrimination within the black community against those with darker skin and more African features (Tyson, 2006, pp. 361-362).

It becomes an irony because though the United States is a democratic country, the citizens, mainly white, does not know the essence of the democracy itself, as

Baldwin stated below:

No one in this country, as far as I can see, really knows any longer what it means to be an American. He does not know what he means by freedom. He does not know what he means by equality. We live in the most abysmal ignorance of not only the condition of the 20 million Negroes in our midst, but of the whole nature of the life being lived in the rest of the world (Baldwin as cited in Jones, 2015, p. 124). As time passes by, the people of African descent were finally given the rights as citizen of the United States of America, but that did not mean that black people stop receiving discriminatory treatments from the racist society. They still have to watch how they act in the society that favors white supremacy. Many young

African Americans have to make sure that they are not too good at school or work so that they do not threaten their white colleagues.

In Homegoing, two characters named Marjorie and Marcus portray the difficulties that black people constantly faced while living in oppressive society which lead to them suffer from double consciousness; from living in predominated white environment to studying in Predominantly White Institution.

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Not only dealing with discriminatory treatments from white students, Marjorie illuminates the common thing smart African American pupils go through in school.

Smart and diligent Afro-Americans cannot fully get along with the other Afro-

American students because black people have stereotypes attached to them, like being lazy, rude, loud, and do drugs. Those smart Afro-Americans are defined as

Oreo, because smartness is associated with white. But, instead of living to the negative prejudices about African Americans, Marjorie and Marcus choose to learn about their African ancestry, and take a trip to Ghana in order to learn about their

African heritage and history. Because of this, they are able to tackle the double consciousness as they are being reconnected to their roots.

B. Problem Formulation

In conducting this study, the writer formulated three research questions:

1. How are the characters described in the novel?

2. How do the characters experience double consciousness?

3. How do Pan-Africanism principles help the characters overcome the double

consciousness?

C. Objectives of the study

There are three objectives of this study. First, the writer describes the characters’ traits in order to give a clearer image of the characters being discussed in this thesis. Then, the writer tries to find and to describe how the characters experience the double consciousness while they have engaged with the diasporic movement from Africa, either willingly or through slavery. After that, the writer PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

tries to see how Pan-Africanism principles can help them overcome the double consciousness.

D. Definition of Terms

In order to avoid any misunderstanding on specific terms, the writer would like to define three terms mentioned in the title and problem formulation.

The first term is Pan-Africanism, which is an idea and a movement that

“rooted in the African people effort to maintain their identity and dignity throughout the history of slavery in America” (Lemelle, 1992, p. 17). In the United States, the

“Pan-Africanist ideas first began to circulate in the mid-19th century, and many

African American abolitionists and activists led it. Some of the names are Martin

Delany, Alexander Crummel, W.E.B. Du Bois, and many more” (Kuryla, 2016).

Pan-Africanism can be safely equated as an ideology that takes the black race as one political and cultural unit having a common history in the past and common destiny in the future. It born out of resistance to subjugation, slavery, and racial domination that takes the unity and empowerment of the black race as a way to reverse their negative trajectory. Thus, what captures the heuristic essence of Pan-Africanism is the fact that it is a struggle for self-determination of Africa. It’s a struggle for Africa to be the master of its fate and a quest for dignity as a member of mankind endowed with all attributes of a society for self-rule (Alemayehu, 2016).

The second term is Double Consciousness. As cited from study.com, double consciousness can be described as “a feeling of having more than one identity, which makes it challenging to develop a sense of self.” W.E.B. Du Bois first introduced this term in his book titled The Souls of Black Folk (1903).

Du Bois says that African-Americans live in an oppressive society which devalued them as equals. In contrary, the black culture encourages equality and dignity. Thus, black people are forced to view themselves from two lenses, and as they are forced to view themselves from both culture’s perspective, it is difficult for them to protect their African American subculture with their overall American identity (Su, 2017). PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

The last term is Diaspora, a “voluntary or forcible movement of peoples from their homelands into new regions…” (Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin, 2007, p. 61).

Some of the significant diaspora movements that had occurred in the world include the Jewish Diaspora through the Middle East and Egypt; African Diaspora to the

United States of America; and the Chinese Diaspora to Southeast Asia, Europe, and many other places (Longley, 2019). This thesis, however, uses the African diaspora term because the subjects of the novel are African-American people. The African

Diaspora first started by the colonial settlements of Europeans in many African countries. “They needed large-scale labour in the plantations, and thus it resulted in the enslavement of Africans and the relocation to many new places among the

British colonies” (Yew, 2002).

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CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

A. Review of Related Studies

Homegoing tells the stories of people of African descent who were affected by the harmful damage of slavery. Many Africans were brought to America to work at the cotton plantations. In the oppressive white society, African Americans have experienced fragmentation which scatter them with their relatives. They are also victims of marginalization that puts them in powerless state within the American society. Therefore, to be accepted in predominated white environment, Afro-

Americans are ‘forced’ to construct a new identity, and this identity is constantly clashed with their actual identity as a black person. These two identities refer to the phenomena of double consciousness that Afro-Americans have.

Some studies that are previously conducted by other scholars and related to

Homegoing and the concept of double consciousness were discussed in this thesis.

The first study is a journal article written by Ava Landry entitled “Black Is Black

Is Black?: African Immigrant Acculturation in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s

Americanah and Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing” (2018).

In her research, she tries to explain the gap in African immigration acculturation by using sociological approach along with theories of race, ethnicity, and acculturation. By analyzing two diasporic novels–Americanah and

Homegoing, she finds that “the immigration of African people has contributed to re-shape the identity of black people in America. They slowly deepen their racial

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relation in the United States by navigating the different social spaces of whites,

African Americans, and other black immigrants” (Landry, 2018, p. 137).

When African immigrants enter the US, they carry their pre-migration ethnic identities, though in there they are labeled as ethnicized Others. At first, they feel the need to reject the label of “Blackness”, but later they will acknowledge that Blackness is an identity projected onto them. Then they understand what Blackness is by informing and building on what it means and what it looks like (Landry, 2018, pp. 138-145).

Although Landry uses a different approach and theories from what the writer uses in this thesis, the research is still useful to help the writer understand more about the racial problems black people experience in America and how being black in America means.

The second review is another journal article entitled “The Shadow of Slavery:

A Look into How Homegoing Depicts the Structural Oppression Apparent in

American and Ghanaian Society” by Nathaniel Welnhofer in 2017.

In this research, Welnhofer argues that Homegoing shows “the implications of colonialism, imperialism, and slavery to the struggles in the black community nowadays in the culture and society that favors white people” (Welnhofer, 2017, p.

6). He also points out how Gyasi portrays the exploitation and oppression that

African-American people experience for more than hundreds of years.

In the novel, Gyasi portrays Esi’s daughter, which is called Ness, as a slave working in a plantation called Hell. By writing this, Gyasi tries to show how the slave work is basically a literal Hell on Earth. The plantation owner, which is called as the Devil, instilled the fear into them that led to paranoia which creates a distrust and fear of the white oppressors. These feelings do not go away easily, and although slavery is long gone the distrust and fear of authoritative whites still linger (Welnhofer, 2017, p. 8).

Gyasi also shows “the traumatized feelings of the African-American community as a whole, due to the “nightmarish stories”” (Welnhofer, 2017, p. 8) PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

that black parents tell their children in H’s chapter. H was imprisoned because the police accused him of staring at a white woman in the street. In prison, he was whipped and scarred, and at that time, he thought that he “couldn’t go back to the free world, marked as he was” (Gyasi, 2016, p. 167-168).

These scars illustrating further the continuity of slavery following its legal death. The disillusioned tone also indicates the knowledge that had become common for many blacks at the time–that freedom was not yet truly here. Gyasi alludes to the fact that even though slavery was banished, the criminal justice system still permitted the same oppression in practice (Welnhofer, 2017, p. 8).

The last point that Welnhofer states in his paper is how colonialism, imperialism, and slavery “force Africans into a world shaped by white people and for white people. Even though there is an Affirmative Action and Brown v. Board of Education to lessen the effects of the systemic oppression–they do not address the root cause” (Welnhofer, 2017, p. 10).

Welnhofer’s article talks about the racism and unjust treatments that befallen

African Americans, and this study helps the writer to understand the factors that contribute to the emergence of double consciousness, as the issue of dual identity happens as a result of oppression that black people constanstly experience while living in the States.

The third study is a research paper of Thao Ho of the University of Berlin, entitled “Temporality, Haunting, and Resurrection in Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing”

(2016). His objectives in conducting this study are as follow:

This study seeks to find how temporality and memory relate to history; how Gyasi use time to reconsider the meaning of Black identities; how the protagonists in Homegoing remember about their root; and whether the novel can be considered as a “liberatory narrative” or not (Ho, 2016, p. 3).

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He finds that “multi-perspectivity of Homegoing contributes to a diverse understanding of Black subjectivity by including experiences that are not limited to one gender or age” (Ho, 2016, p.9). Those multi-perspectivity gives readers a portrayal of the slavery effects toward the African descendants, which lasted until now. By knowing the effects, Ho hopes that “a better future build in solidarity and coalitions can be realized in society by looking at the past African experiences”.

Ho’s study helps the writer to learn more about the effect of slavery, especially in the lives of African in the diaspora today. It is useful as background information as Ho’s study gives explanation about the conflict that many characters in

Homegoing undergo, especially those in the diaspora.

The last study used as a reference in this paper is written by Farah Nurisyana in 2017 titled “Double Consciousness in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake”. It analyzes the double consciousness in Gogol, a half Indian-American child. When he was just a child, his family and he immigrated to America. Since they are physically and culturally different from the American people, they have to adjust themselves when talking to their American friends and also to people who share the same ancestry as them. As time goes by, Gogol’s sister, which is named Sonia, finally gets absorbed in American culture, and she regards herself as an American, even though her physical appearance is different from the Americans.

Being an immigrant child usually made them forget about their parents’ first identity, which is a non-American. They tend to feel more American, because being an American sounds more prestigious rather than their parents’ nationality (Nurisyana, 2017, p. 136).

When Gogol reaches adolescence age, he also gets to the point where he wants to ignore his Indianness and lives as an American because of the dilemma of “living PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

between two worlds, struggling between two identities at times. It affects immigrants to act differently between personal and social identities, especially those who lived in a diasporic society” (Nurisyana, 2017, p. 137).

Gogol finally decides in which culture he wants to live in after his father’s death. After he went through the process of selective acculturation, which means integrating himself with American culture while also keeping some of his parents’ culture, he finally reconciled with his root and accepted his Indian identity. Thus, he was no longer caught between the two cultures but lived through them.

Even though the last study has different object from this study, it still help the writer to learn that people from other ethnic minorities that live in America also suffer from double consciousness. Besides, it also helps the writer understand more about the concept of double consciousness and the different choices between people that suffer from it in dealing with double consciousness.

B. Review of Related Theories

In order to analyze the problem, the writer uses some theories; theory of character and characterization, the concept of double consciousness, and the concept of Pan-Africanism.

1. Theory of Character and Characterization

Characters can be described as “the fictional representation of a person which is likely to change” (Childs & Fowler, 2006, p. 23). Meanwhile, in A Glossary of

Literary Terms, character is “the persons represented in a dramatic or narrative PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

work, possessing a particular moral, intellectual, and emotional qualities by inferences from their dialogue and their action” (Abrams & Harpham, 2009, p. 42).

Characters, along with the plot, are the most crucial element in a story, because the characters are the ‘tool’ to develop the story. A good story often is a mix of a good plot and memorable characters that have the wisdom, attitudes, and behaviors that are admirable to the readers, because many of the readers take fictional characters as a mean to reflect upon their own lives. As written in An Introduction to Literature, Criticism, and Theory:

Characters are the life of literature: they are the objects of our curiosity and fascination, affection and dislike, admiration and condemnation. Literary characters are often cease to be simply ‘objects’. Through the power of identification, through sympathy and antipathy, they can become part of how we conceive ourselves, a part of who we are (Bennett & Royle, 2014, p. 63).

To explain what a character looks like, authors use characterization, which is

“the representation of persons in narrative and dramatic work, using direct methods

(description or commentary by another character) and indirect methods; inferring qualities of a character from characters’ actions, speech, or appearance” (Baldick,

2001, p. 37). Meanwhile, according to Henkle, characterization is “the representa- tives of human condition and the time which they live” (Henkle, 1977, p. 87).

The classic book that is mainly used as a reference to understand characterization is written by M. J. Murphy entitled Understanding Unseen, and in there, he presents nine ways of characterization. The first method is personal description, in which the author describes the physical appearance of a character, either through another character dialogue or using direct explanation. The second method is characters as seen by others; a character is described indirectly through PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

the eyes and opinions of another character. The third method of characterization is by speech, in which character is described by what the person says in a conversation or when s/he shares his/her opinion. The fourth method is past life, in here a character is described by letting the readers learn something about a person’s past life. The fifth method is conversation of others, in which a character is described through the conversations of other people about him. The sixth method is reactions, in here character is described by how the person reacts to various situations and circumstances. The seventh is direct comments, in which the author described the character directly. The eight method is thoughts, in here a character is described by letting the readers know what the person thinks about something. The last method is mannerism, in which a character is described by the person’s manners and habits

(Murphy, 1972, pp. 161-173).

2. The Double Consciousness among African-Americans

As cited from the Encyclopedia of Identity,

Double consciousness is the condition of being simultaneously American and not American and having little ability to change that reality. African Americans initially marked as Other. Double consciousness, then, creates internal conflict because Black Americans are pulled in two directions at the same time and cannot unify competing cultural elements into a singular identity (Jackson, 2010, p. 67) The term is first mentioned in an article entitled “The Strivings of the Negro

People”, published in The Atlantic Magazine in 1897. The article was then revised to be the first chapter of Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk:

The Negro is.. born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness… It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder (Du Bois, 2007, p. xiii).

Based on the quotation above, Du Bois infers that the identity conflict of African

Americans happen because of the racism that they faced for centuries. Although black people have legally been accepted as an American citizen, they cannot truly belong to the white society, because their physical appearance and the way they speak are different from the white people. The black people even their version of

English, because “they came from different African tribes with distinguished languages, and thus they invented the so-called Black English/Ebonics” (Dodson,

2006, p. 40).

Double consciousness was initially used to convey the special difficulties arising from black internalization of an American identity. This concept is useful to illuminate the experience of post-slave populations and also to animate a dream of global co-operation among peoples of color (Gilroy, 1993, p. 126).

From the quotation, we can infer that people of African descent that live in

America must be experiencing double consciousness.

Prior to emancipation the status of a Negro was always relevant to an identity as a slave; either freed, runaway, or currently enslaved. However, in July 1868 the Fourteenth Amendment became law and the Negro became a citizen—an American. Suddenly, there were two consciousnesses to navigate as well as the awareness that both identities were constantly clashing (Dabbs, 2011, p. 4).

Because of the negative stereotypse that the white society imposes to black people, the African Americans instill a feeling of inferiority that suggests that their place is always below white people. They also feel like they have no power to change the condition at all. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

The confusion leads to black people choosing different choices while presenting themselves in society. Many of them choose to introduce themselves by including their origin so that they can overcome the feeling of uprootedness while living in

America. In contrast, there are some who desperately want to blend in white society, therefore they adjust their behaviors like the white people. For example, an African

American woman straighten her hair in order to look more attractive.

Some have struggled over the very appellation “African-American,” either shunning it—declaring themselves, for instance, Jamaican-Americans or Nigerian-Americans—or denying native black Americans’ claim to it on the ground that most of them had never been to Africa (Berlin, 2010). Hall, in his acclaimed article titled “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”, shares his experience that shows how African-American have tried so hard to find a sense of belonging in American society long after the slavery was abolished:

In 1950s, living as a child in Kingston, I was surrounded by the signs, music and rhythms of this Africa of the Diaspora, but, although almost everyone around me was some shade of brown or black, I never once heard a single person refer to themselves or to others as ‘African’. It was only in the 1970s that this Afro-Caribbean identity became historically available to the great majority of Jamaican people, at home and abroad. In this historic moment, Jamaicans discovered themselves to be ‘black’-just as, in the same moment, they discovered themselves to be the sons and daughters of ‘slavery’ (Hall, 1994).

From the quotation above, we can infer that African Americans have difficulty in defining themselves, because even though they are in fact African, they do not share the same history that African people have, as they descended from slaves.

Before the Afro-caribbean identity is available, the black people in America regard themselves as American because after they were brought to America, the slave masters separated the African people with their relatives. In the plantation, they took away their language and culture by prohibiting them performing those actions PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

related to Africa. It was done in order to control the slaves and prevented them to rebel against the slave masters.

During the so-called “Seasoning process”, slave overseers tried to “break” the African spirit. Slave masters believed that if they took away the Africans’ language, customs, names, and their history, slaves would forget their African cultural heritage. Without a heritage, the planter class thought they could easily control slaves and made them accept their slave status. (Lemelle, 1992, p. 16) 3. The Concept of Pan-Africanism

According to Lemelle in Pan-Africanism for Beginners, the term defines “a set of ideas and ideologies containing social and cultural, political and economic, material and spiritual aspects about Africa.” (Lemelle, 1992, p. 11). Certain conditions contribute to the raising of Pan-African ideas:

Humiliation and exploitation of African in the diaspora, racism and white supremacist arguments about inferiority of people of African descent, and European and U.S. imperialism in Africa (Lemelle, 1992, p.41).

“Pan-Africanism is like the thin thread that connected [the African in the diaspora] with Africa, and also a great force that kept the hope of reunion alive despite domination [in the diasporic space] and its accompanying sense of uprootedness [as they have to assimilate to the culture of the place where they live in]” (Alemayehu, 2016).

Pan-Africanism (formerly known as Pan-Negro) was a political and cultural movement, but as time passed by, the Pan-Africanism served more as educational principle or political philosophy, which meant to

reestablish a sociohistorical and cultural anchor for African American students. It attempts to establish political solidarity among Africans around the world, promote race pride among African Americans, and shield them from the psychological oppression and identity ambiguity they have historically encountered in American society (Alridge, 1999, p. 194).

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Pan-Africanists encourages the African people and African in the diaspora to

“surround themselves with positive images of African culture and history because as Du Bois says, the “double consciousness” could be transcended by black people who has a strong grounding value in African and Black culture” (Alridge, 1999, p.

188).

Because the identity ambiguity that African in the diaspora experience contribute to them suffer from internalized racism and even intra-racial racism, Du

Bois and other Pan-Africanists points out the need for African Americans to learn about their African history in order to bring out a sense of identity for them.

Pan-Africanism tries to create a bond between Black people of Africa and the Diaspora, recognizing that they are all linked to Africa through a common experience of oppression and slavery. The Pan-African idea and movement grew out of Black people’s desire to rediscover and recover their identity and heritage and to fight for their liberation from colonialism and racism (Lemelle, 1992, p.12).

There are two themes that Pan-Africanist scholars highlight, which are liberation and integration.

The theme of liberation was necessitated by the history of Negro slavery and the colonization of Black Africa. Integration, a theme that arose in the colonial era, answered the necessity for solidarity—the solidarity of the oppressed (Ola, 1979, p. 67).

These integration between people of African descent is needed to help them eradicate the intra-racial racism that some of them employ, and this theme is also highlight the need for developing solidarity between black people in the continent and in the diaspora so that they can rally together in order to advance black people lives everywhere.

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C. Overview of African Descendants Life in United States (16th -21st century)

African Americans are descendants of African people who do voluntary and forced migration to America. The voluntary migrants come from “Africa, South

America, and the Caribbean”, while the latter type of migration “begins through the

Atlantic slave trade and chattel slavery” from 16th to 19th century (Pun, 2017, p. 11).

The African tribes that were kidnapped and sold to American plantations include “Bambara, Malinka, Fon, Dinka, Ewe, Bakongo, Mende, Igbo, Yoruba,

Ashanti, Wolof, Serer, Susu, and hundreds more” (Hayes III, 2001, p. 16). The colonizers use slave ships to transport the African people to the New World, and they always “maximized the ship’s cargo capacity, which made it impossible for the Africans to turn over or sit up during the several months' voyage from Africa to the New World” (Coombs as cited in Davis, 2005, p.47).

This leads to many Africans suffocated from death, the others do suicide by jumping off the ship, and many others died from diseases such as flux and dysentery incurred by the ship’s unsanitary conditions (Brawley as cited in Davis, 2005, p. 47).

The horror of the transportation of African slaves to American plantations is so horrible that Smythe remarked, “Mankind has experienced few tortures so ghoulish and uncivilized as the transportation of slaves from Africa to the New World”

(Smythe, 1976, p. 5).

Life at plantations also made slaves experienced great suffering as they had to work all day picking cotton with a little break. The slave masters “inculcated effective lessons to obedience the slaves through acts of violence of cruelty” (Katz,

1968, p. 200). PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

A slave owner made an example of a captured run-away–He gathered all of the slaves into the outhouse, and started a huge fire. Upon tying a 17-year-old slave to a meat block, and amidst the pleas for mercy, he commenced chopping the boy into pieces beginning at his ankles and tossing the boy’s severed body parts into the fire, while lecturing other on-looking slaves of the impropriety of disobedience and running away (Katz, 1968, p. 200).

“The institution of slavery existed in the United States from 1619 to 1865”

(Pun, 2017, p. 12), and during that time, “approximately 46 million Africans died as a result of American slavery” (Davis, 2005). Then, President Lincoln passed the

Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, which declares

“all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” The Proclamation didn’t end the problem, and Lincoln said it was to be followed by a constitutional amendment in order to guarantee the abolishment of slavery (13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery, 1865).

“The American Civil War (1861-1865) was the result of debates over slavery that finally brought slavery to an end. After the Emancipation, overcoming the legacy of slavery remained a crucial issue in American history, from the

Reconstruction (1865-1877) following the war to the Civil Rights movement in the

1950s and 1960s” (Pun, 2017, p. 12).

During the 19th century, people of African descent are “simultaneously continued to fight against segregation, racism, and poverty”, and they also have to live under the Jim Crow Laws which regulates:

Blacks couldn’t use the same public facilities as whites, live in many of the same towns or go to the same schools. Interracial marriage was illegal, and most blacks couldn’t vote because they were unable to pass voter literacy tests (Onion, Sullivan, & Mullen, 2009).

Starting from the 20th century, African American lives were getting better. The black leaders built activist organizations “to fight for equal rights and to improve PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

the social and economic conditions of African descent in America. The example is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1910” (Moving North, Heading West, 1870).

The new era also encourages the artistic movement known as ‘Harlem

Renaissance’ during the 1920s and 1930s. The movement is specifically named

Harlem Renaissance because

Many creative young poets and novelists were either lived in or were associated with the dynamic African American neighborhood of Harlem. The rich blend of cultures and the urban dynamism of upper Manhattan had become a magnet for creative African Americans, and we see the rise of many famous jazz, blues, and gospel musicians there (An Artistic Rebirth, 1930).

The Black people’s fight for a better life continues. In 1964, the American government finally passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which “protected all citizens from discrimination and segregation in nearly all areas of public life, including education and employment”, along with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which “guaranteed African Americans the right to vote as an American citizen” (A

Social Revolution, 1948).

The long history of the African Americans to be a part of American citizen is described as “a history of struggle for human rights, socio-economic development, and collective survival” (Hayes III as cited in Kurian, 2001, p. 15). The quotation infers that as second-class citizen, African Americans are associated with having low income, living in underdeveloped neighborhood, and being victims of police brutality. The struggle for getting better life for the black people in America is not over yet as the African Americans still have to deal with systemic racism. As a theory, systemic racism claims that: PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

United States was founded as a racist society. Racism thus embedded in each major part of U.S. society–the economy, politics, education, religion, the family–i.e. social institutions, structures, and social relations within our society” (Feagin as cited in Cole, 2019).

Systemic racism that happens in the United States brings grim consequences for the minority ethnic groups living in America, though among the minority groups, the African Americans receive the worse treatment by white supremacists. Glenn

Harris, which is the president of Race Forward gives an example of the negative effect of systemic racism on African American people in particular:

A lot of people of color are homeless or lack housing security because of the legacy of redlining. Nearly half of the homeless population, (approx. 13% of the population) are black people, according to Department of Housing and Urban Development report presented in January 2020 (Yancey-Bragg, 2020).

The racial discriminations also influence the psychological state of black people. According to Jaynes and Williams, “many African Americans report that racism is a primary form of stress in their day-to-day lives” (Jaynes & Williams,

1989). Harrell also states that “negative messages about black people have effectively stripped away the dignity, self-efficacy, and self-respect of African

Americans youth” (Fields, 2014, p. 5).

D. Theoretical Framework

In this thesis, the writer uses three theories; theory of character and characterization, the concept of double consciousness, and concept of Pan-

Africanism. The writer also uses some studies conducted by other scholars about the object of the study and the topic being analyzed in this thesis. The previous studies are beneficial to give more information about the novel, and by reading PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

those papers, the writer could know the differences between this study and the previous ones.

The writer has formulated three research questions, and to answer the first question, which is how the characters are being described in the novel, the writer uses the theory of character and characterization. It is used to explain the traits and behaviours of the main characters, for example, through their speech, thoughts, mannerism, and others.

After that, the writer uses Du Bois’ concept of double consciousness as the writer focuses on the depiction of the difficulty of having a dual identity while living in the racist and oppressive society like in the United States.

In the next step, the writer uses the concept of Pan-Africanism that acts as a solution to their ‘double consciousness’ dilemma. The Pan-Africanism principles help them in learning about their African history and origin, developing solidarity between people of African descents, and giving them access to return to Africa in order to reconnect them to their origin. Then, at the end of the novel, the characters can finally accept themselves being an African and also an American. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

A. Object of the Study

The object of the study used by the writer is a novel entitled Homegoing, written by Yaa Gyasi and first published in 2016. It won the NBCC’s John Leonard

Award in the same year. The novel has been reprinted many times since its first publication, and in this paper, the writer uses the 2017 paperback edition published by Penguin Books in London, United Kingdom. Aside from NBCC award, the novel also became the winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award in 2017.

This historical fiction tells the story of people of African descent who were victims of British colonization in Ghana started from 16th until 19th century.

Homegoing is divided into two parts, and each part consists of seven chapters. The story follows Effia and Esi along with their descendants from the time of British colonization in Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) until modern-day America.

The first chapter starts with Effia’s story, the daughter of a servant named

Maame. She gave birth to Effia after being raped by Cobbe Otcher, a chief in Fante village. Right after she gave birth to Effia, she got a chance to run away from the village as there was a fire raging near the village. In the second chapter, Maame arrived at Asante village and met Kwame Asare, which was the leader of the village.

She married him and gave birth to Esi, which became half-sister with Effia, though they will not know about each other at all. Times went by, and by the time they reached adolescence age, things went very different for both Effia and Esi. On one

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

side, Effia married a British officer named James Collins and settled in Cape Coast

Castle as a wife of the colonizer who organized the slave trades to America. On the other hand, Esi lived as a captive in the dungeon below the Cape Coast Castle, and later traded as a slave to America plantations.

The different faith between Effia and Esi affect the lives of their descendants.

Effia’s sixth descendant, which name is Marjorie, has difficulty in finding sense of belonging in Africa and American culture. Esi’s sixth descendant, on the other hand, is longing to go to Africa in order to be reconnected to his African origin and to forget racial discriminations he constantly experience while living in America.

B. Approach of the Study

Since the writer wants to analyze the feeling of double consciousness which emerges as a result of the diasporic movement, and also the Pan-Africanism principles that help the characters tackle the double consciousness, the post-colonial approach is used for analyzing this work. This approach is suitable to be used because the post-colonial approach looks at “the effects of colonization on cultures and societies” (Ashcroft et al, 2007, p. 168).

In Critical Theory Today, Tyson states that this approach “seeks to understand the operations—politically, socially, culturally, and psychologically—of colonialist and anti-colonialist ideologies” (Tyson, 2006, p.418).

Bressler states that “Post-colonial literature and theory investigate what happens when two cultures clash and when one of them with its accompanying ideology empowers and deems itself superior to the other” (Bressler, 2011, p. 200).

Here, the superior one that has the power to instill their ideology to the inferior PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

culture is the British colonizer. Through language, religion, and their way of living, the colonizer forced the colonized people to behave like what they call ‘civilized people’, though by doing so, the indigenous people slowly losing their culture and their identity.

C. Method of the Study

The method of the study the writer used in conducting this research was library research. It is a method to gather information from offline and online sources; journals, books, and online articles. The sources the writer used in this research were divided into two categories; primary source and secondary source. The primary data of the study was Yaa Gyasi’s debut novel entitled Homegoing, and the secondary sources were books and e-Books about postcolonialism, and also articles and journals that were related to the topic and object that the writer was going to analyze in this thesis. These resources helped the writer to have broader knowledge about the topic and also the approach of the study.

The writer did four steps in conducting this study. The first step was to read

Homegoing more than twice so that the writer could fully comprehend the meaning of the story as a whole. However, the writer only focused on two characters that were considered relevant to the topic of the study.

The second step that the writer took was to search and gather the theories related to double consciousness and Pan-Africanism. The data related to the topic of study and the theories are taken from books, journals, e-Books, and academic papers. Most of them are collected from internet, along with reviews of the books and journals that are reviewed in this research. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

The third step was to answer the problem formulation that had been mention in the first chapter. Here, the writer first tried to describe the portrayal of Marjorie and

Marcus in order to give background informations about both characters, and how their backgrounds contribute to them employing double consciousness. The writer used Murphy’s theory of character and characterization in order to analyze the character’s behaviour, thoughts, manners, etc. After that, the writer analyzed the double consciousness in the characters by using concept of double consciousness.

Lastly, the writer explained how the principles of Pan-Africanism helped the characters to overcome the conflict of having a double identity as a result of continually experiencing unjust treatments while living in a racist society.

The fourth step was to reread the analysis and summarized the points that had already been discussed in the analysis and then made a solid conclusion for the whole study. In this part, the writer explained the relation between theories and the analysis of the study.

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

CHAPTER IV

ANALYSIS

This part of the thesis is divided into three parts. The first part tells the description of the characters using Abram Murphy’s theory of character and characterization. The second part shows the analysis of factors that contribute to the characters conveying double consciousness by using W.E.B Du Bois' concept of double consciousness. The last part tells about the influence of Pan-Africanism principles in order to help the characters overcoming the phenomena of double consciousness.

A. The Description of the Characters

In this part, the writer focuses on the description of two characters named

Marjorie and Marcus, which employ double consciousness while living in the

United States. The writer analyzes their physical and emotional traits using the theory of character and characterization. In describing the characters, the author uses most of the characterization techniques as proposed by Murphy, and in telling the story, she uses the third person limited point of view.

1. Marjorie

Marjorie is a girl of African descent who was born in America and lives in

Alabama with her parents. Her parents migrated to America before she was born because her father wanted to continue his education, and in there, he also became a history teacher at the community college. Marjorie and her family descended from

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Asante tribe that live in Ghana. Because both her parents are of pure African blood, her appearance is as described by Marcus when he first meets her at a museum:

She was dark–blue-black, they would have called her on playgrounds in Harlem–and she was thick with sturdy, large breasts and a wild Afro that made her look as though at some point very recently she had been kissed by lightning… She lifted her head, the curtain of wild hair parting to reveal a lovely face and a beautiful necklace (Gyasi, 2017, pp. 291-292).

Besides the physical characteristic, the writer gives a description of her personality or emotional traits below. a. Caring

Marjorie has a grandmother named Akua who lives in Cape Coast, Ghana, and she has a very close relationship with her grandmother. She always spends her long holidays in Cape Coast because her grandmother lives alone in there. The proof from the novel is as cited below:

Marjorie was in Ghana visiting her grandmother, as she did every summer. “My Old Lady. I’ve missed you,” Marjorie said. She hugged her grandmother too forcefully and the woman yelped (Gyasi, 2017, p. 265).

In her village, Akua is also known as Crazy Woman of Edweso because she unintentionally burnt her house and killed her children while she was sleepwalking.

In the Cape Coast, she is known as Old Lady. “So old, they say, she could recite the entire history of Ghana from memory alone” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 265). Whenever

Marjorie is in there, they will do their summer ritual, where her grandmother “takes her hand and walks her farther and farther out into the [sea]” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 268), while reciting their family history. She tells Marjorie that their ancestor was called

Effia the Beauty, which was married to a British officer responsible for organizing PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

the slave trade from Africa to America plantations back in the 18th century. Akua claims that a firewoman comes to her dreams and gives her visions about the past.

On her last year at high school, her parents get a call from Cape Coast, and it informs that Old Lady is frail. “She didn’t leave the bed as often as she used to– she, the woman who had once been afraid to sleep” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 276). Marjorie is writing a poem for her school’s event at the moment, but she hears the conversation and becomes anxious about her grandmother's condition.

Marjorie wanted her family to go to Ghana immediately. She stopped writing the poem, snatched the phone away from her confused father and demanded that the caretaker put Old Lady on the phone, even if it meant waking her. “Promise me you won’t leave until I can see you again,” Marjorie said. “I promise I will never leave you,” Old Lady said (Gyasi, 2017, p. 276).

Even though Marjorie does not go to Ghana to look after her grandmother, she

“has asked her grandmother to call her once a month as an assurance, even though she knew it was cumbersome for the old woman to have to do so” (Gyasi, 2017, p.

280). In the end, her grandmother dies, days after she read her poem at the school’s event. “She died in the middle of a sleep she used to fear. Her plea was to be buried on a mountain overlooking the sea” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 283). After receiving the news,

Marjorie takes the rest of the school year off and go to Cape Coast with her parents to organize her grandmother’s funeral. b. Lonely

Since Marjorie attend a kindergarten at Huntsville town, she has a quiet personality and does not takes the initiative to socialize with her peers. Her teacher gives her parents a note that says, “Marjorie does not volunteer to answer questions.

She rarely speaks” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 266). PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

It continues until she is in senior high school. In there, she does not have close friends and does not interact much with other students. She usually “eats her lunch in the English teachers’ lounge or reading in the library” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 278).

On the last year before she graduated from high school, she meets a Germany student named Graham, who later she has a crush on. They first meet at the school’s library at lunchtime when Marjorie is reading Middlemarch, and he tells her about a book he is reading at the moment titled Pigeon Feathers.

After being close for some time, Graham then asks her to go on a movie date with him, and this helps ease her feeling of aloneness a little bit. After that, they go on another date at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, and in there, they talk about if Marjorie ever misses moving back to Ghana. Marjorie then answers ‘no’ as she feels that people can smell the “loneliness, or aloneness in her, the way [she] don’t fit here or there. [Her] grandmother’s the only person who really sees [her]” (Gyasi,

2017, p. 278). Then, several days after that, she receives the news that her grandmother is sick, and it makes her worry so much. In the school, “Marjorie became quiet. She didn’t raise her hand in any of her classes... She brushed people off” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 278).

One day, Marjorie decides to eats at the cafeteria. She goes there “because she wanted to be alone while surrounded by people” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 278). Not long after that, Graham comes and sits in front of her, but he leaves soon as a white female student tells him that people will start to think negatively for him sitting in the same table with a black person. Marjorie tells him to go, and “he got up, looking almost relieved” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 279). PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

c. Bright

According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, one definition of the word “bright” is “intelligent and quick to learn, and usually used to talk about young people” (“Bright”, 2015). This definition suits Marjorie because she is smart and excels in academics. She is an avid reader since she was a young girl, and the author uses direct comment to show her reading habit, “Marjorie had read every book on her family’s bookshelves… [She] had once spent an entire afternoon trying to read her father’s book” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 270).

In school, her African American teacher named Mrs Pinkston also encourages her reading habit by recommending her to read classic English novels like

Middlemarch and Lord of the Flies, and also to “search for a book that makes her feel it inside her” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 270).

And so Marjorie spent three years this way… By senior year, she had read almost everything on the south wall of the school’s library, at least a thousand books, and she was working her way through the north wall (Gyasi, 2017, pp. 270-271).

Besides reading, Marjorie also likes to write poems. One time, her school held a black cultural event titled ‘The Waters We Wade In’. Mrs. Pinkston then asks her to write and read her own poem that tells about “what being African American means to her” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 273). Marjorie then makes a poem which is inspired by fragments of her grandmother’s stories about their ancestors. Even though

Marjorie does not have an idea about Effia and Esi, but her poem captures their life stories, where one is involved in slave trade, while one is a victim of the slave trade, but the bigger picture is that they both victims of colonialism. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

Another statement that shows that Marjorie is a smart student in her school is by the author's direct comment in the last part of her chapter when she has to go to

Ghana to attend her grandmother’s funeral. “Marjorie took the rest of the school year off, her grades so good it didn’t make much of a difference” (Gyasi, 2017, p.

283). d. Patient

Patient means to be “able to accept annoying behaviour or difficulties without becoming angry” (“Patient”, 2015). Marjorie grows as a quiet and patient girl because she is the only child her mother and father has. The other reason why she is considered as a patient person is because she used to take care of her grandmother every time she spends her holidays in Ghana.

She is also showing patience when an African American student named Tisha mocks her English accent when she is reading a classic English novel for a class.

“Why you reading that book?” Tisha asked. Marjorie stammered. “I-I have to read it for class.” “I have to read it for class.” Tisha mimicked. “You sound like a white girl. White girl. White girl. White girl.” They kept chanting, and it was all Marjorie could do to keep from crying (Gyasi, 2017, p. 269).

The passage above shows that Marjorie is a patient person because though

Tisha humiliates her in front of the other students, she does not fight back and choose to hold back her anger and tears.

Another proof that shows Marjorie is a patient person is when Marjorie helps

Marcus to gather data for his dissertation. They go to Birmingham and meet with an old man who claims that tells the story about Marcus’s great-grandpa named H. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

When the old man had heard Marjorie’s voice, he said he wanted to feel her. That this was how he got to know a person… [Marjorie] let the man run his hands along her arms and, finally, her face, like he was reading her. It was her patience that had amazed him… He could already tell that she had enough patience to take her through almost any storm (Gyasi, 2017, p. 295).

2. Marcus

Marcus is an African American man who is taking his PhD in sociology at

Stanford University. He is a descendant of a slave named Esi, which was half-sister with Effia the Beauty, the ancestor of Marjorie. There is not much description on his physical appearance, because throughout his chapter the author focuses more on depicting his struggle and attempt to overcome the struggle of double consciousness. One evident that tells readers about his physical appearance is when

Marcus compares his skin with Marjorie’s friend the first time they meet in the museum. She was “light-skinned like himself was…” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 291).

Moving on from the description of physical appearance, analysis of Marcus’s characterization is shown below. a. Intelligent

Marcus is an intelligent person. He is “good at learning, understanding and thinking in a logical way about things” (“Intelligent”, 2015), and it is proven by him taking PhD degree in sociology at Stanford University. He is smart like his father, although his father did not have the same chance like he has in education.

“His father’s mind was a brilliant mind, but it was trapped underneath something.”

(Gyasi, 2017, p. 285), and that ‘something’ is drugs.

When he was young, his father liked to tell him the history of “slavery, the prison labor complex, the System, segregation, and the Man” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 284). PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

He also taught Marcus about discriminatory treatments that African Americans have to experience while living in America.

Marcus would never forget his father’s early teachings, the alternative history lessons that got Marcus interested in studying America more closely in the first place… There were things about injustice that Sonny used to talk about that Marcus never saw in his history books, but that later, when he got to college, he learned to be true. (Gyasi, 2017, pp. 284-285).

Another proof that shows Marcus is an intelligent person is that he has a critical mind and always thinks about something in a logical way. One time,

Marcus had told his grandmother about how he would see things that feels so real while his grandmother prayed and sang, and she’d told him that maybe he had the gift of visions. But Marcus never could make himself believe in the god of Ma Willie, and so he’d gone about looking for family and searching for answers in a more tangible way, through his research and his writing (Gyasi, 2017, p. 290). b. Family-Oriented

Marcus loves his family and always feels proud of them. Before he takes his

PhD in Stanford, he lives with his grandmother, aunt, and father in an apartment at

Harlem, New York, and he has grown in a loving family though his mother is not living with them.

When he was a little boy, his crack mother tried to steal him from his father and grandmother. She told Marcus to come with her to get an ice cream, but then she dragged him up and down 116th Street, “showing him off to her dope fiend friends, the broke jazz crew.”

Marcus was still amazed by that. Not by the fear he’d felt throughout the day when the woman who was no more than a stranger to him had dragged him farther and farther from home, but by the fullness of love and protection he’d felt later, when his family had finally found him. Not the being lost, but the being found (Gyasi, 2017, p. 293).

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

According to Oster, “Individuals who consider themselves family oriented may come from a strong religious background, may have a tightly knit family” (Oster,

2020). This statement matches Marcus, as proven in next quotation:

It was their weekly phone call. Marcus made it every Sunday afternoon, when he knew his aunt Josephine and all the cousins would be in Ma Willie’s house cooking and eating after church. He called because he missed Harlem, he missed Sunday dinners, he missed Ma Willie singing gospel at the top of her voice, as if Jesus would be there in ten minutes if she would only just summon him to come fix a plate (Gyasi, 2017, p. 286).

The close relationship with his family helps him to be a better man as they provide financial and psychological support for Marcus. Unlike his father, Marcus has a chance to achieve high degree in college, and this is because his father and grandmother always support him and tell him to focus on his education so that he can have a better job and better opportunities than them.

The love Marcus feel from his family makes Marcus aware that he should not disappoint his family. As he lives near underdeveloped black neighborhood, there is a high chance for him to be involved in gang activities or repeated what his father did in the past, but Marcus does not do this and focus on his education because he wants to make his family proud of him. c. Brave

Marcus has a fear about water, particularly, the sea. The author gives direct comment that tells about his trauma at the beginning of his chapter:

He was in college the first time he saw the ocean up close, and it had made his stomach turn, all that space, that endless blue, reaching out farther than an eye could hold. It terrified him. he hadn’t told his friends he didn’t know how to swim… There was something about the smell of the ocean that nauseated him. That wet salt stink clung to his nose and made him feel as though he were already drowning (Gyasi, 2017, p. 284).

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

One time, he also shows up at a pool party with his friend, Diante, and after ten minutes being in that place, he decides to walk six miles to his home. When he arrives, he immediately takes a shower and “let the water beat over his head, never lifting his face up toward it, still scared of drowning” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 286).

Though he has an unexplainable fear towards the sea, he decides go to Cape

Coast Castle in Ghana with Marjorie to gather data for his research. The castle is a place where the captured people of many African tribes were kept in the castle’s dungeon and waited to be put on the slave ships outside. At the dungeon, Marcus feels breathless, and when the guide shows them The Door of No Return, which is the gateway for transferring the slaves from dungeons to the beach, Marcus feels a sudden urge to escape from there, so he opens the door and runs toward the beach.

When he runs outside, Marjorie follows him and finds him looking at the vast sea. Marjorie knows Marcus has fear toward water, but then she starts running in the water and asks Marcus to come to her, then

[Marcus] closed his eyes and walked in until the water met his calves, and then he held his breath, started to run. Run underwater. Soon, waves crashed over his head and all around him. Water moved into his nose and stung his eyes. When he finally lifted his head up from the sea to cough, then breathe, he looked out at all the water before him, at the vast expanse of time and space. He could hear Marjorie laughing, and soon, he laughed too (Gyasi, 2017, p. 300). After he bravely follows Marjorie into the water, Marcus realizes that “the fear that he had felt inside the Castle was still there, but he knew it was like the fire, a wild thing that could still be controlled, contained” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 300).

Therefore, he is considered as a brave person because he successfully overcomes his fear. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

B. The Double Consciousness in the Characters of Homegoing

In this part, the writer gives an analysis about the double consciousness that

Marjorie and Marcus experience. The writer refers to Du Bois’ concept of double consciousness and also the related background about African American lives in the

United States in analyzing the conflict resulted from having double identity.

1. Marjorie

A sociologist named Joe Feagin states that “America was founded in racism”, and “white racist ideologies and attitudes were created to maintain and rationalize white privilege and power” (Feagin as cited in Cole, 2019). White privilege provides white people with better education and jobs than black people in America, and simply because of their skin color, white people are getting better treatments than black in every aspect of life. The discrimination based on race towards black people then “creates an internal psychological conflict for African Americans as they continually perceive themselves through the lens of the dominant society” (Du

Bois as cited in Johnson, 2017, p. 4).

As a black person living in America, Marjorie has experienced racial discriminations from the white people which contribute to the emergence of double consciousness in her. In order to make a more consequential analysis, the writer divides the analysis of the double consciousness in Marjorie into three parts; child, teenager, and adult. a. Child

In the previous section, we learn that Marjorie is a girl of African descent who lives in Alabama along with her parents. “They lived on the southeast side of PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

Huntsville. They were the only black family on the block, the only black people for miles and miles and miles” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 268). From the quotation, we can infer that Marjorie lives in white neighborhood, and being the only black family in predominantly white environment makes them aware of how different they look compared to the other white people around them. Marjorie then grows up as a quiet and lonely child, because she relates as a victim of the racial tension that justifies the discrimination toward black people as minorities in America.

Besides the seclusion based on skin color, when Marjorie is in kindergarten, she is secluded from the social interactions because she is used to speak different language from the other children in that kindergarten. It happens because her parents, who were African immigrants having a strong connection to the motherland, speak Twi to communicate while they are at home. Therefore,

Marjorie learns Twi and considers it as her first language, but because white

American people do not speak nor understand Twi at all, Marjorie does not have friends to communicate using Twi outside her home. In school, she grows to be a quiet child and does not make initiative to interact with other children, and also because she is also the only black child in the kindergarten, other white children do not take initiative to approach her. Then, her parents receive a note from her kindergarten teacher which says:

Marjorie does not volunteer to answer questions. She rarely speaks. Does she know English? If she doesn’t, you should consider English as a Second Language classes. Or perhaps Marjorie would benefit from special care? We have great Special Ed classes here (Gyasi, 2017, p. 266).

The ‘Special Education’ program is designed for students with disabilities, e.g. dislexia, auditory processing disorder, and others. The note that Marjorie received PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

illuminates how American school teachers often have assumption that students of color are inferior compared to white students: “less intelligent…lack[ing]…cultural sophistication… work ethic, or social skills (Essed as cited in Tyson, 2006, p. 370).

When Marjorie parents read the note, they are furious, and her father “read the note aloud four times, shouting, “What does this foolish woman know?” after each repetition” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 266). After receiving that indirect mockery, Marjorie’s parents make Marjorie communicate with them using only English language, and they become very strict about it.

On the same time, when Marjorie goes to Ghana every summer break to visit her grandmother, she has to adjust herself to a whole different customs and ways of life. In there, her grandmother demands her to use Twi all the time.

“Are we going to the water today?” Marjorie asked her grandmother. “Speak Twi,” her grandmother answered sharply, knocking Marjorie on the back of her head. After her parents received the note from her kindergarten teacher, they quizzed Marjorie on her English every night. When Marjorie tried to answer them in Twi, they would say, “Speak English,” until it was the first language that popped into her head (Gyasi, 2017, p. 266).

The quotation shows the negative side of assimilation, as stated by Sun,

“Assimilation is not simply just adapting to the mainstream culture–it is when you lose touch with your own culture and start overvaluing the dominant culture” (Sun,

2015). Because Marjorie should use English in the States, she has to drop the Twi language though she considers Twi as her first language. b. Teenager

When Marjorie is eligible to travel alone, she always spends her summer holidays in her grandmother’s house at Cape Coast, Ghana–a city once known as PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

the center of slave trade from Africa to America. In one of those trips, right after she comes out from the airport, a boy immediately approach her and says:

“Ess-cuse me, sistah. I take you see Castle. Cape Coast Castle. Five cedis. Juss five cedis,” he said. He wore no shirt, and she could feel the heat radiating off of his skin, coming toward her. She was tired after all the traveling, and so she soon found herself shouting in Twi, “I’m from Ghana, stupid. Can’t you see?” The boy didn’t stop. “But you come from America?” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 264).

For the boy, Marjorie looks like a black tourist, a foreigner who is taking vacation in Ghana. This implicitly reminds Marjorie that although she considers

Ghana as her motherland, in reality she is not fully Ghanaian nor American.

After spending her holidays in Ghana, Marjorie comes back to America and prepares to enter high school.

She was entering high school, and while she had always hated Alabama, the bigger school reminded her of why. Her family lived on Hunstville where they were the only black family on the block, the only black people for miles and miles (Gyasi, 2017, p. 268).

The line ‘she had always hated Alabama’, highlights the double consciousness in Marjorie, because it shows how difficult it is for her to blend in the predominated white environment.

In her chapter, the author also raise the topic of how African Americans, especially teenagers, are constantly facing the feeling of aloneness because they are being the minorities while studying in school which is labelled as the Predominantly

White Institution. In the PWI, the majority of students are Caucasians, and students from other ethnic minorities usually experience discrimination from the school’s apparatus in one or other ways, for example

As we know from the description of Marjorie’s characteristics in the previous sub-chapter, Marjorie is a bright student in her school, and being a smart black PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

student which still have a connection to Africa makes it difficult for Marjorie to befriend other African-American students in her school, as they do not care much about their education and have their own form of culture.

At her new high school, there were more black children than Marjorie was used to seeing in Alabama, but it took only a few conversations with them for Marjorie to realize that they were not the same kind of black that she was. That indeed she was the wrong kind (Gyasi, 2017, p. 268).

There are some reasons why Marjorie feels uncomfortable hanging with other

Afro-Americans though they are both black and have African blood in them, and those are; her self-identification, awareness for education, and speaking style.

First, she feels that she is different with other African Americans because she identifies herself as Ghanaian-American. She still has a strong connection with

Ghana through her grandmother until the third year of high school, and during that time, her grandmother always reminds her of her African heritage and history.

Therefore, she rejects the notion African American, or what African people call as akata. “They are called akata as they were too long gone from the mother continent to continue calling it the mother continent” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 273).

Second, as being discussed in the description of the characters, Marjorie is portrayed as a bright student in her school, as she likes to read and study. It then creates a gap between her and the other Afro American students, because in her school, there is only a few of African American students who cares about their education. It happens because of the negative prejudices attached to African

Americans. According to National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), “in

2014, the high school graduation rate for white students was 87%, while for black, the rate was 73%. Test scores show a similar racial gap” (Weir, 2016). PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

In the novel, the author then highlights the comparison between Marjorie and other Afro American students when she is getting ready to read her poem at the cultural event at her school.

The auditorium sat two thousand. From backstage, Marjorie could hear the other students filing in.. She was pacing the room, too scared to look out past the curtain. Beside her, Tisha and her friends were practicing a dance to music that played faintly from the boom box (Gyasi, 2017, p. 281).

The difference between Marjorie and Tisha is important to be noticed, because it shows another difference between Marjorie and other African-American and how she does not fit with the common prejudices white people have toward African-

American. She likes to read and study, because her father is an academician himself, while the other Afro-Americans usually do not try really hard at school.

An Afro-American student who has a same experience like Marjorie said:

some of the African American teenagers became “Super Black”, and other African American students who spoke properly were teased for “talkin’ white”, those who took college prep classes were teased for “actin’ white”, and going to the library or carrying books are just “like a white boy”. It was as if African Americans were only supposed to play sports, sings, or dance (LaGrone, 2015).

The last statement of the quotation implies that the approved occupation of black people in a racist society is only in entertainment industry, as a lot of black people are known as marvellous jazz and blues musicians, actors, and athletes. The story behind this is related to the Harlem Renaissance, “where many creative arts of African American culture flourished. It is seen as the biggest influential movement in the history of African Americans” (Hutchinson, 2019).

The last reason that makes Marjorie feels separated from other black students is because she has a different speaking style with the other African American students, and the proof is presented below: PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

“Why you talk like that?” Tisha asked her when she joined them for lunch. “Like what?” Marjorie said, and Tisha’s accent turning almost British in order to capture her impression of Marjorie. “Like what?” Tisha said. The next day, Marjorie joined them again in lunch time, and she was sitting across Tisha and her friends reading Lord of the Flies. Not long after that, Tisha looked at her and said, “Why you reading that book?”. Marjorie stammered. “I-I have to read it for class.” “I have to read it for class.” Tisha mimicked. “You sound like a white girl. White girl. White girl. White girl.” After that, Marjorie was made aware, yet again, that here “white” could be the way a person talked, and “black” is the music a person listened to (Gyasi, 2017, pp. 268-269).

Tisha mocks Marjorie’s British accent though they are both black because of their different style of speaking. As mentioned previously, Marjorie comes from

Ghana, a country that is once colonized by the British colonizers, therefore she and her family are used to speaking British English. On the other hand, Tisha is an

African descent who grows up in America, and she is using Ebonics/African

American Vernacular English (AAVE), which is the “dialect of American English spoken by a large proportion of African Americans, and usually being used in the home or for day-to-day communication rather than for formal occasions”

(Mufwene, 2017).

For African Americans, proper English is used only when they are speaking with white people, and they tend to use slang when they are speaking with other

African Americans. Marjorie is not familiar with the AAVE as she grows up in predominantly white environment, because of that, she cannot get along with other

African Americans.

The writer has explained Marjorie’s difficulties in finding a sense of belonging in African American culture in the first half of analysis of this sub-chapter. Moving on to the later half, the writer analyzes how discriminatory treatments Marjorie PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

receive from the white people in her high school contribute in making her feel not belong to either African nor American culture.

As we can see above, when she enters senior high school, she first tries to befriend other African Americans, but it does not turn out good, and Marjorie’s only friend in school is her African-American teacher named Mrs. Pinkston. But then, in the last year of her high school, she meets Graham, a Caucasian from

Germany. They both like to read, and since then they become close and go on several dates afterward.

Being close to Graham makes Marjorie really grateful, because he is the only person who sees Marjorie as equal as other students in the school. The color of

Marjorie’s skin does not bother him, and this perspective is very different from other white students in the school. Marjorie’s experience with Graham echoes Du

Bois’ experience when he was studying sociology at University of Berlin on 1892.

In Europe,

Du Bois’s racial consciousness was transformed.. He encountered white people who exhibited little or no racial prejudice: “I found myself on the outside of the American world, looking in. With me were white folk—students, acquaintances, teachers—who… did not always pause to regard me as a curiosity, or something sub-human; I was just a man of the somewhat privileged student rank, with whom they were glad to meet and talk over the world; particularly, the part of the world whence I came” (Du Bois as cited in Edles & Appelrouth, 2015, p. 510).

For some moment, Marjorie is really happy finding someone that is not judging her based solely on the color of her skin, but it does not last long for her. Being close to Graham only makes things worse for Marjorie because every action reminds Marjorie that her skin color is a limitation for her to achieve same PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

treatments and opportunities that white American has. The example is when the prom night event is coming. Marjorie’s mother asks her:

“Has someone come to ask you to prom?” Esther asked, grinning widely. Marjorie sighed. The thought that her daughter could be one of those special girls was a hope that flickered like light in Esther’s eye, just as it stung like dust in Marjorie’s. Marjorie was one of thirty black people at her school. None of them had been asked to prom the year before (Gyasi, 2017, p. 272).

Marjorie becomes pessimistic that Graham will take her to the prom night, because although they have gone on dates outside school, they remain as though they do not know each other inside the school. One time, Graham approaches

Marjorie when she is eating at the cafetaria by herself, and he sits in front of her.

Not long after that, a white girl approaches them,

She glanced at Marjorie, and Marjorie notice the wrinkle of disgust that had begun to form on her face. “Graham, you shouldn’t sit here. People will start to think… Well, you know. Just come sit with us,” she said. At this point, she was scanning the room, her body language turning anxious. “Go,” Marjorie said, and Graham turned toward her. “Go, it’s fine.” And once she had said it, she stopped breathing. She wanted him to say no, to fight harder.. But he didn’t. He got up, looking almost relieved. She had thought he was like her, a reader, a loner, but after that, she knew he was different. She saw how easy it was for him to slip in unnoticed, as though he had always belonged there (Gyasi, 2017, pp. 279-280).

The quotation above shows the contrast between white and black in America.

Through the portrayal of Graham, the author shows what only matter for the racist society is the color of the skin, not the qualities of one’s self. The white girl’s ‘fear of being seen interacting with a black person’ and her anxious body language also emphasizes the negative images of black person in general.

After the incident at the cafetaria, Marjorie does not meet Graham anymore, but at the night the prom is held, Graham calls her and says: PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

“Marjorie? I wish I could take you. It’s just that…”, his voice trailed off, but it didn’t matter. He had wanted to take Marjorie, but his father didn’t think it would be proper. The school didn’t think it was appropriate. As a last defense, Marjorie had heard him tell the principal that she was “not like other black girls.” And, somehow, that had been worse. She had already given him up. There was nothing like love for Marjorie in Alabama (Gyasi, 2017, p. 280).

The line ‘Marjorie is not like other black girls’ makes Marjorie feels even worse because Graham reminds her that she cannot belong to either African and

American culture. She has same mannerism with other white girls, but a wrong skin color. She has read white people literature, like Middlemarch, Lord of the

Flies, and others, but she says that she does not feel the books inside her–meaning she cannot relate with those literature, because they do not echo with her life experience as a black person living in America. c. Adult

As mentioned above, Marjorie is asked by Mrs. Pinkston to write and read her own poem at a black cultural event in her school. Mrs. Pinkston tells her to “tell what being an African-American means to her”, but she immediately argues that she is not an African American. To her, African-American is an akata– descendants of the slaves, the ones who had been forced to leave their motherland and have no knowledge about their ancestors at all. Meanwhile, until the last year of her high school, she still comes regularly to Ghana. While Marjorie says that she is not an

African American,

She wanted to tell that she could feel herself being pulled away too, almost akata, too long gone from Ghana to be Ghanaian. But the look on Mrs. Pinkston’s face stopped her from explaining herself at all. “Listen, Marjorie, I’m going to tell you something that maybe nobody’s told you yet. Here, in this country, it doesn’t matter where you came from first to the white people running things. You’re here now, and here black is black is black” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 273). PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

Mrs. Pinkston’s remark at Marjorie’s argument makes Marjorie drifts further from her root culture, because it coerces Marjorie to put on the label African

American and makes her abandons her grandmother’s legacy about the Ghanaian customs and language.

Her problem of not belonging to American and African culture is getting worse, because when she is about to finish high school, her grandmother dies, and years later, her parents also die, and losing them make Marjorie turns her back on African culture. When Marcus asks her if she ever come back to Ghana, she says:

“Oh, I’ve been busy with my work… I haven’t been back since my grandmother died, actually… Almost 14 years. When my parents were alive, they used to try to make me go, but it was too painful, losing her. Then I lost my parents, and I guess I just didn’t see the point anymore. My Twi’s so rusty, I don’t know if I could even get around anyway” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 294).

2. Marcus

In Marcus’ part, the author focuses on telling his experience studying in college in which the majority of the students are white. She also tells a little bit of Marcus’s past as a child, therefore, the analysis of Marcus’s double consciousness is divided into two parts; child and adult. a. Child

In the sub-chapter that talks about description of Marcus’s characteristics, we learn that he is an African American, and he was living in East Harlem with his father and grandmother together in one apartment before taking a PhD degree in

Stanford University.

In Harlem, they live near the underdeveloped black neighborhood where the cracks and broke jazz crews settle. In fact, Marcus’s father was a heroine addict PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

himself before he finally decided to quit and work as a custodian in a hospital. On the other hand, his grandmother’s job is cleaning houses on the Upper East Side, which is a wealthy neighborhood on that area.

His father, named Sonny, used to be marching in the streets and locked in the jail for joining the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

(NAACP), an organization that intends “to ensure a society in which all individuals have equal right without discrimination based on race” (NAACP, n.d.). After a while, Sonny then quitted the organization and been a drug addict as he was involved with a jazz singer named Amani, which would become Marcus’s mother.

At age 45, he finally decided to quit his crack addiction, and stays with his mother to raise Marcus as a single parent.

Because Marcus grows up in a black neighborhood and surrounded by other

African Americans, he rarely sees white people in his neighborhood. He mostly interacts with his family, and as mention in the description of Marcus’ characteristics, his father usually recites the history of oppression African

Americans face during slavery until the contemporary era.

Sonny has hatred toward white Americans because he had been a victim of racial injustice. When he was young, he could not get an opportunity to study in a good school and get the achievement that Marjorie’s father has in his lifetime. He could only learn about the history of oppression done toward black people and the negative consequences of slavery and racism through books written by black authors like W.E.B. Du Bois, and others black writers. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

After Marcus was born, Sonny then passed his knowledge about black histories to Marcus, the one he calls as “alternative history lesson, which is proven to be true when he attends college” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 284). But although Sonny’s lecture makes Marcus become successful in school until he has a chance to get a PhD degree, it also has negative impact toward Marcus. As he learns about the unjust treatments befallen African Americans since a young age, he becomes really aware that his skin color can endanger him, as black people are often seen as a threat to the white society.

One example that shows Marcus’ unexplainable fear toward white people is when he is in elementary school and the teacher brings Marcus and other students to go on a field trip to museum. Marcus is at the end of the line when they walk around exhibit after exhibit, and not long after that, he gets separated from his teacher and friends, and seeing so many people taller than him makes him freezes at his place, until a white elderly couple notices him.

“Look, Howard,” the woman said. Marcus still remember how the color of her dress, a deep bleeding red, only served to scare him even more. “Poor thing’s probably lost or something.” Howard, while tapped at Marcus’s foot with a slender cane, said, “You lost, boy?” Marcus didn’t speak. “I said, you lost?” The cane kept hitting at his foot, and Marcus had felt as though at any moment the man would lift the cane all the way up toward the ceiling and send it crashing over his head. He couldn’t guess why he felt that way, but it had scared him so badly… He’d screamed and ran and ran until a security guard caught him.. the teacher came and the whole class were sent back out into the street, back onto the bus, back home to Harlem (Gyasi, 2017, p. 288).

The red dress can be referring to black people’s blood that are spilled through history of lynching, police brutality, and violence in America. Through his fathers’ stories and teachings, Marcus realizes that the racist society see him and black PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

people in general as a problem, because of the negative prejudices about black being involved in a gang or other criminal activities.

Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. How does it feel to be a problem? (Du Bois, 2007, p.7). b. Adult

As Marcus grows up, he constantly negotiates his African and American identity, which means using different speaking style when he is interacting with white people and other African Americans. In home, he uses Black English to talk with his family members, and the proof can be seen below:

“Y’all doing good over there?” Marcus asked. “The kids an’ ’em all okay?” “Yeah, we good. We good.” “You still straight?” Marcus asked. He didn’t ask often, but he asked. “Yeah, I’m good. Don’t you worry ’bout me. Keep yo head in dem books. Don’t be thinkin’ ’bout me” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 287).

While in the college, he has to pay attention with how he presents himself, because the white people often have negative prejudices about black people, which results in

black individuals in predominantly white settings to be isolated by their non- black peers. On one hand black people have the education and qualities to be an insider, however, in reality, their Blackness precludes them from integrating into the mainstream culture of the institution they are in (Mabokela & Madsen as cited in Martin, 2014).

The feeling of being an ‘outsider’ brings frustration and anger to African

Americans, because the racial discrimination toward minority people has happened for years in America and it has not gotten any better. In the quotation below, the author wants to show years of unjust treatments done toward the African descendants through Marcus’ inner thought about his research: PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

At first, Marcus wanted to talk about the convict leasing system that affected his great-grandpa H’s life, but the project got bigger and bigger. He can’t talk about Great-Grandpa H’s story without mentioning millions of other black people who had migrated north, fleeing Jim Crow. But if he mentioned that, he’d have to talk about Harlem, the heroin addiction, crack in the ‘80s, the “war on drugs.” And if he talked about why his black friends were doing five-year bids for possession of marijuana when nearly all the white people he’d gone to college with smoked it openly every day, he’d get so angry that he’d slam the research book on the table of the library, which would make everyone in the room stare at him, and all they would see would be his skin and his anger, and they’d think they knew something about him, thought about the same reason that had justified putting his great-grandpa H in prison, only it would be less obvious than it once was (Gyasi, 2017, pp. 289 - 290).

His great-grandpa named H lives in the 1880s America, at the era of Black

Reconstruction in America. Though slavery had been abolished at his time, the ex- slaves were still treated unfairly by the white authorities, and the black people had to bring an identification paper that stated they were a free man every time they go outside their homes. But though the ex-slaves have the paper, the white policemen still put a lot of black people in prison for the smallest action that they consider inappropriate. Marcus’s great grandpa was jailed because the white authorities accused him for ‘studying’ at a white woman in the street.

Years later, when Marcus wants to slam the book at the library because of frustration learning how bad black people are being treated in America, he says that

“[white people].. will think about the same reason that had justified putting his great-grandpa H in prison”. Marcus’s thought echoes the other educated black male experiences which study in other predominantly white institution. An African

American teacher named Carlton says:

Even though we're educated we still haven't moved very far from people being afraid of that Angry Black man. In some instances what educated African Americans perceive as confidence, or passion has been perceived as anger and arrogance (Carlton as cited in Martin, 2014). PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

This happens because “in a racist society, people attribute certain cognitive, psychological and moral qualities to the colour of the skin” (Bredella, 2000, p. 339).

Double consciousness then “limits a black person’s social freedom because they must consider the repercussions of their actions not on a moral standard, but on a racial basis” (Oshipitan, 2017).

The last event that shows Marcus’s double consciousness is when he and

Marjorie come to Cape Coast, Ghana for the sake of his research. Not long after they landed at the airport, a relative of Marjorie greets her akwaba, which means

“welcome” in Twi language. After they talk with Marjorie’s relative, Marcus then asks Marjorie about the Cape Coast Castle, he wants to go there immediately, but

Marjorie says:

Marjorie clutched at her backpack straps, pulled them away from her body. “That’s what the black tourists do when they come here.” He lifted an eyebrow at her. “You know what I mean,” she said. “Well, I’m black. And I’m a tourist” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 297).

Marcus’s remark that he is a “black tourist” highlights the double consciousness he has. Iheduru states:

One that has double consciousness accepts Africa for historical identity and aesthetic values, while retaining European norms, cultures, and values for realistic reasons (Iheduru, 2006, p. 219).

Marcus is conscious that as a descendant of slaves, his American side is much stronger than his African side, and this consciousness fits what Martin Luther King states, “The Negro is an American. We know nothing of Africa. He’s got to face the fact that he is an American” (King as cited in Iheduru, 2006, p. 216).

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

C. The Implementation of the Pan-Africanism Principles

The last part of the thesis talks about the how Pan-Africanism principles help the characters overcome the conflict resulted from having double consciousness.

There are many interrelated aspects of Pan-Africanism as a movement and as an ideology, and the goal is clear: the advancement for African people in the continent and in the diaspora. In the Pan-Africanism: The Idea and Movement,

1776-1991, Esedebe writes:

The essential attributes of Pan-Africanism are as follow: the notion of Africa as a homeland for persons of African descent, solidarity among Africans and peoples of the African diaspora, belief in a distinct African personality, rehabilitation of Africa's past, pride in African culture, and the hope of a united and glorious African future (Esedebe, 1994, p. 4). Marjorie and Marcus, African descendants who live in diaspora, have implemented the values as mentioned above in order to help them overcome the conflict resulted from having double consciousness. The analysis of Marjorie and

Marcus’ implementation of Pan-Africanism principles are summed up into three points below.

1. The Knowledge of African Culture and History

A lot of African American people do not want to learn about African culture or the history of slavery which put them in America in the first place. Those people regard themselves as black Americans, and they think that they have no connection with the African continent at all since they were born in America. Growing up in

America as black people then give them two options: try to completely assimilate to American culture or claim themselves as African-Americans with their forms of culture. The example as shown in the novel is Tisha, an African American girl who PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

can be said as the antithesis of Marjorie. She does not like reading or learning too much, she dances and listens to hip hop and rap, and she uses Ebonics language.

These are the things that are regarded as African-American culture.

Unlike many other African Americans, Marjorie and Marcus are interested in learning about Africa; its culture, history, and values. As mentioned in the previous chapters, Marjorie and Marcus are smart, and both of them choose to study subjects related to African history and culture in college. Marjorie says that African and

African-American literature are relatable with her own experiences as black people in America, and as for Marcus, his father early teachings and his grandmother’s song influence him to “study and understand his family and other black lives more intimately..” (Gyasi, 2017, p. 290). Their choices to learn about Africa supports the statement Wachuku says below:

Negroes in America should be linked to their origin. They cannot be effective in the society in which they have found themselves unless, like searching roots, they reach deep into the rich soil of their birth to bring new strength and nourishment into the tree (Wachuku, 1962, p. 366).

Wachuku’s analogy highlights the importance of learning about Africa for black people, because knowledge about African and African Americans history can give black people a sense of identity and dignity. It helps them to encounter racism and discrimination in the oppressive society. As Du Bois says, in order to “resolve the ‘twoness’ of African-American racial identity, African Americans have to reclaim their African history” (Gomez, 2004, p. 177).

Since a young age, Marjorie and Marcus have received information from their parents regarding the history of oppression that makes black people feel worthless PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

and adrift from Africa culture. Marjorie’s father is a professor at the community college in Alabama, and also an author:

Her father’s book, The Ruin of a Nation Begins in the Homes of Its People, is his lifework. He’d taken the title from an old Asante proverb and used it to discuss slavery and colonialism (Gyasi, 2017, p. 270).

On the other hand, Marcus’s father, which was an activist when he was young, likes to tell Marcus the other side of the story about black people, that are different from the contents inside many American history books. He was influenced by Du

Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk, and also other books that provide the realities of oppression and discrimination black people received through the centuries. These early teachings help Marjorie and Marcus to know about their origin.

Besides reading literature about African and African Americans experiences,

Marjorie and Marcus also get to learn about African culture and history through their family. As for Marjorie, she had been in Cape Coast, Ghana for several occasions in the past. She comes to Ghana in order to visit her grandmother, and in there, they always do their ‘summer ritual’:

“We will go to the water now. Put away your things.” Old Lady said. Her grandmother took her hand… “Our family began here, in Cape Coast.. In my dreams I kept seeing this castle, but I did not know why.. then I came to these waters and I could feel the spirits of our ancestors calling to me. Some were free, and they spoke to me from the sand, but some others were trapped deep in the water that they’ll never be free, so that I had to wade out so far to hear their voices. When they were living they had not known where they came from, and so dead, they didn't know how to get to dry land. I put you in here so that if your spirit ever wandered, you would know where home was” (Gyasi, 2017, pp. 267-268).

Knowing her family’s history helps Marjorie to find a sense of belonging which then help her to overcome the conflict resulted from having double consciousness. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

In the last line of the quotation, Old Lady’s statement about “I put you here…” refers to Marjorie’s umbilical cord. The full excerpt can be seen below:

The day she was born, thirteen years ago, all the way across the Atlantic, her parents had mailed her umbilical cord to Old Lady so that the woman could put it into the ocean. It was her request for them to send something of that child back to Ghana (Gyasi, 2017, p. 267).

The throwing of umbilical cord to the sea can be seen as a form of traditional

African culture. This has significant meaning to Marjorie because it makes her feel closer to her root culture. But after Old Lady and her parents die, she does not come back to Ghana for almost fourteen years and only focus on her study in America.

The only thing that reminds her of Africa when she drifts further from the continent is a necklace that her father gave to her after she finished high school.

It had belonged to Old Lady and to Abena before her, and to James, and Quey, and Effia the Beauty before that. It had begun with Maame, the woman who had set a great fire. Her father had told her that the necklace was a part of their family history and she was to never take it off, never give it away. There’s shimmer of gold waves inside the black stone necklace (Gyasi, 2017, p. 267).

Necklace and other heirloom that people of African descents possess are helpful to help them feel connected to the continent, and those products of culture

“should be preserved in order to give additional content to the projection of the

African personality and the achievement of Pan-Africanism” (Akwei, 1962, p. 128).

Unfortunately, most African Americans like Marcus and his family do not have a direct connection with Africa, as they have lived in America for decades and does not have any relatives living there. Many African Americans familiarize themselves with literature and documentaries, although the understanding of their root culture is still half-completed. Despite this, many African Americans, PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

especially those who major in African studies in college, find ways to make a connection to the African continent and learn about its culture and history.

The example is as shown by Marcus when he and his African American friend named Diante attend an Afro-Caribbean dance party/gallery night held by their colleague from the university.

Inside, they were greeted by the tinny sound of large steel drums. Men with brightly colored kente cloths wrapped around their waists held drum mallets with round pink tips. A woman stood at the end of this row, wailing out a song… Marcus pushed farther in, and saw the piece Diante had made, a woman with horns strung around a baobab tree (Gyasi, 2017, p. 291).

The preservation of African culture and the learning about African history through various forms as being explained above are beneficial to free Africans that live in the continent or in the diaspora from the impacts of colonialism.

2. The Unity and Cooperation between People of African Descent

The second aspect of Pan-Africanism is the need for the unity and cooperation between Africans in the continent and the diaspora. Especially for the African

Americans, as they do not have a direct connection to the motherland,

Forming relationship with people from other African countries… helps strengthen social relations and their ethnic bond within the US. They sought the friendship of people from same ancestry ot other African countries.. in order to re-create a sense of home with people who share similar racialized experiences, foods, morals, values, and customs even though it might be different (Asante, 2012, p. 44).

From the previous chapters, we know that Marjorie and Marcus are family- oriented persons. Since childhood, they have a close relationship between their parents and grandparents. Being close to their family help them to deal with the feeling of “being adrift, worthless, and devoid of ancestry” (Campbell & Kean, PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

1997, p. 76), and help to prevent them in internalizing all the negative stereotypes imposed to them by the white people.

Marcus shows how his family help him to cope with his double consciousness by mentioning the Sunday dinners in his grandmother house, where

Marcus and his whole family would hold hands and pray.. and Ma Willie began to sing. His grandmother’s voice was one of the wonders of the world. Listening to it, he could imagine.. a hut in Africa where a patriarch holding a machete; a forest of palm trees where a crowd watching a girl carrying a bucket on her head; a cramped apartment with too many kids; a small, failing farm, around a burning tree or in a classroom. He wanted so badly for all the people he saw to be there in that room, with him (Gyasi, 2017, p. 290).

The places and people that Marcus sees in his imagination are real, and that events showed Marjorie’s and Marcus’s ancestors that lived in Africa and America.

By mentioning these events, the author is like giving a summary of the relatives that

Marjorie and Marcus do not even know. The author’s intention to mention

Marcus’s African families then illuminates one of African culture about the Ashanti principles named collectivism–a concern for the family, the extended family, and tribe (Fontaine, 1962, p. 246). It serves as a way to live up the spirit of Pan-

Africanism, which emphasizes on the importance of history to African descents wherever they are in order to give a sense of solidarity and unity between the

Africans.

In college, Marjorie and Marcus also make friends with other African

Americans, because they share the same racialized experiences. It “provides a positive sense of one’s roots and a sense of belonging, which reduces the sense of isolation and aloneness” (Noguera as cited in Wright, 2009, pp. 127-128). The proofs that points out ‘a sense of home’ are shown by Marcus. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

“Shit, Marcus, how long we gon’ stay out here, man? It’s hot as hell. This some Africa heat right here.” Diante was always complaining. He was an artist whom Marcus met at a house party in East Palo Alto, and even though Diante had grown up in Atlanta, something about him reminded Marcus of home. They’d been like brothers ever since (Gyasi, 2017, p. 285-286).

When Marcus meets Marjorie at the Afro-Caribbean party that he attends with

Diante, he also mentions about how Marjorie has reminded him of home, and he compares it with his experience when his mother tried to steal him when he was just a young boy.

Marcus thought about that day often. He was still amazed by it. Not by the fear he’d felt throughout the day, when the woman who was no more than a stranger to him had dragged him farther and farther from home, but by the fullness of love and protection he’d felt later, when his family had finally found him. Not the being lost, but the being found. It was the same feeling he got whenever he saw Marjorie. Like she had, somehow, found him (Gyasi, 2017, p. 293).

Diante reminds Marcus of the familiar neighbourhood of Harlem, as they both are African Americans, and Marjorie reminds Marcus of Africa, the place he longs to go in order to learn about his ancestry.

3. A Homegoing Process

Homegoing or “return to home” is the last point that Pan-Africanists suggests in order to educate the African descents about their origin root and as a way to overcome the double consciousness that the diaspora subjects face for centuries.

Pan-Africanist named Marcus Garvey invented ‘Back to Africa’ movement in

1920s, which encouraged African Americans to “migrate to Africa in order to attain social equality and develop self-emancipation” (Seppou, 2017). Although the idea cannot be fully realized, the literal visit to Africa, and, PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

creating a diasporic home outside the States is a useful strategy to help African Americans cope with, or separate themselves from the experiences of racism they encountered. “Home” becomes the place of cultural understanding, a place where they don’t have to deal with racism or racial tensions (Pierra as cited in Asante, 2012, p. 39).

Marjorie describes the experience of going to Africa on one of the trips she takes to Ghana to visit her grandmother, which is presented below:

To be alone while surrounded by people.. is a feeling she sometimes liked, like stepping off the plane in Accra and being met by a sea of faces that looked like her own. For those first few minutes, she would capture that anonymity, but then the moment would drop... (Gyasi, 2017, p. 279).

From the quotation above, we can see how easy for her to blend in with the people in Ghana. She does not have to worry that people will stare or comment on her look, and this creates a pleasant feeling for her. She does not need to be as cautious as she is usually doing in public spaces in America, because in Ghana, they have no prejudices and stereotypes toward people’s skin colour.

Not only Marjorie, Marcus also feels excited and grateful when he finally comes to Ghana for the sake of his research. Before going to Cape Coast, he and

Marjorie have gone to Edweso and Takoradi to pay homage to Marjorie parents’ birthplace. Marcus says that

Everything was brilliant here, even the ground. Everywhere they went, Marcus would notice sparkling red dust. It coated his body by the end of every night. Now there would be sand to join it (Gyasi, 2017, p. 297).

After they arrive in Cape Coast airport, they also meet with Marjorie’s relative, and he greets them akwaba in Fante language.

It was one of the few words Marcus had learned in his time here. “Welcome.” Marjorie’s family, strangers on the street, even the man who had checked them in at the airport, had been saying it to her their entire stay. They had been saying it to him too (Gyasi, 2017, p. 298).

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

Although Marcus does not know all the people that he meets in Ghana, he is amazed because they also greet him and talk to him like they have known him for a long time. The warmth he feels in Ghana make him happy because for some times, he forgets about the discrimination and racism that he has to continually face when he is living in America.

In many ways, Africa gave blacks from the diaspora a sense of home, belonging, and family. Although being at home in Africa did not erase the memories slavery and racism in the United States (Malisa & Nhengeze, 2018, pp. 8-9).

The last moment that completes Marjorie and Marcus’s journey on ‘returning to Africa’ is when they finally able to overcome their fears toward fire and water.

Marjorie has fear towards fire because of her grandmother stories about firewoman that teaches her about their family’s history. Marjorie father’s face also burnt because the Old Lady set their hut on fire when he was just a young boy, and since then Marjorie feels an unexplainable fear towards fire. Fire also symbolizes destruction when her family was involved in slave trade back in 18th century Ghana.

On the other hand, as discussed on the sub-chapter that talks about the description of the characters, we know that Marcus has a fear of water. When he talks to his father about this, his father says

black people didn’t like water because they were brought over on slave ships. What did a black man want to swim for? The ocean floor was already littered with black men (Gyasi, 2017, p. 284).

This explanation resonates with what Akua says to Marjorie earlier, that she almost drowns in order to hear what the spirits of African people that were sold as slaves want to say deep in the ocean floor. In here, water also symbolizes the trauma PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

resulted because of torture that black people had to experience when they were to board the slave ships to American plantation.

In the end, Marjorie and Marcus are finally able to overcome their fears after they come back to where the story starts, which is the Cape Coast Castle. They are at the dungeon and the guide are explaining about how the African people were stacked and locked in the cells and waited to be brought to the ships. Marcus suddenly feels nauseated and runs pass The Door of No Return, the gate which connects the dungeon and the beach. He runs past a bonfire that the fishermen make, and at the edge of the ocean, he turns and asks Marjorie to come to him and gets over her fear of fire. Marjorie then does the same to him, she runs to the sea and tells Marcus to follow her.

When he finally reached Marjorie, and saw the glints of gold come off of her black stone necklace, shining in the sun. “Here,” Marjorie said. “Have it.” She lifted the stone from her neck, and placed it around Marcus’s. “Welcome home.” He felt the stone hit his chest, hard and hot, before finding its way up to the surface again… Marjorie splashed him suddenly, laughing loudly before swimming away, toward the shore (Gyasi, 2017, p. 300).

Marjorie’s action symbolizes the reconciliation between her family and

Marcus. Effia, Marjorie’s ancestor, was involved in the slave trade and married

British officer who organized slave trade in Cape Coast, while Esi, Marcus’s ancestor, was forced to leave her homeland in order to be sold as slave to America.

Thus, when Marjorie says, “welcome home” to Marcus, she has made remedy about the past events that make Marcus and his family suffer while living in the diaspora.

By saying that, it also gives new hope for African people both in the continent and the diaspora to cooperate and fight to free entirely from the colonization effects PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

that make black people suffer. As stated in an an essay titled Afrocentricity: an important feature of Pan-Africanism:

Pan-Africanism arose as an effort to bring people of African descent throughout the world together to fight racial discrimination in the Americas and colonialism in Africa (Gyamfi, 2018).

By knowing and reclaiming their African culture and history, African

Americans will no longer be tortured by their clashed identity and advance their lives into a better state than they are now. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

This study examines double consciousnesss in two characters named

Marjorie and Marcus from the novel Homegoing. As the novel contains many themes related to people of African descent lives from slavery era until 21st century

America, there are many topics that can be analyzed from the novel. The writer finds three related studies that talk about Homegoing, and those studies have given the writer useful background information, as they mainly talk about the effect of colonialism and racialism to the characters of Homegoing. For Marjorie and

Marcus, spesifically, the racial discriminations that they experience as being member of ethnic minority in America contribute to the emergence of double consciousness in them.

Below, the writer concludes the result of the analysis to answer the three problem formulations stated in the first chapter of the thesis, which are: how the characters of Gyasi’s Homegoing described, how the characters experience double consciousness, and how the Pan-Africanism principles help the characters overcome the conflict resulted from having double consciousness.

On the first sub-chapter of the analysis, two characters named Marjorie and

Marcus are described, and the writer finds that Marjorie is a caring, bright, patient, but lonely person. Marjorie is a caring person because she always comes to Cape

Coast every holiday to visit her grandmother. When her grandmother is sick,

Marjorie calls her almost every day and speaks to her in order to make her feels

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

better. Marjorie is also a bright pupil in her school because she likes to read books.

Her father is also a professor at the community college near her neighbourhood, and he always reminds her to focus on her education. As she likes to read, she grows up to be a quiet and patient girl. In high school, she is mocked by the other African

Americans because she is concerned about her education. She also receives unfair treatments by the white students in her high school because they of her skin colour.

Despite all of this, she does not confront them and stays quiet even though they hurt her feeling. Because she cannot get along with other African American students nor white students in her school, she becomes a lonely person. During the breaks, she eats alone in the teacher’s lounge or reads books in the library.

Moving on the Marcus, the writer finds that Marcus is an intelligent, family- oriented, and brave person. Marcus is smart because he is influenced by his father, who joined NAACP before he became a drug addict. His father liked to give him historical lessons about African Americans history, and because he is also concerned about his education, he can get a PhD degree at Stanford University.

Marcus is very close with his family. He lives with his grandmother and father in a single apartment before he takes the PhD degree at Stanford, and when he is away, he always calls his family every Sundays and interacts with them. Marcus is also a brave person, and it is shown when he comes to Ghana with Marjorie at the end of the story. He has a fear toward the sea, and he cannot swim at all because of that fear, but in the end, he overcomes his fear by running to the vast sea, and after that, he realizes that it is something that can be controlled. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

The second part of the analysis tells about the Marjorie and Marcus’s double consciousness or clashed identity. Most of the black people in America feel this conflict because of the repressive white society, and also because the white people have negative prejudices toward the African Americans. The sense of double consciousness also becomes more apparent as Marjorie and Marcus attend predominantly white institution and excels in academics. As an educated black, they cannot fully get along with other African American students because of the internalized racism that African Americans experience. Most of them associate smartness with white people, so they mock smart African American students as

‘acting white’, and invents the term Oreo (black on the outside, white in the inside).

The last part of the analysis is about how Pan-Africanism help the characters overcome the double consciousness. The writer finds three essential elements of

Pan-Africanism which help Marjorie to reconnect with her African roots after years being drifted away from Africa. Pan-Africanism principles also help Marcus to learn about his African heritage, because as a descendant of slave, he does not know much about his African heritage. These Pan-Africanism principles help them to create a sense of belonging and ease the conflict resulted from having double consciousness. The principles are as follow: learning about African culture and history, cooperating between people of African descents, and doing a process of homecoming.

Since a young age, Marjorie and Marcus have been taught about the struggle faced by African and African Americans in getting rid of colonialism effects. In the college, Marjorie takes the study about African and African Americans PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

literature, while Marcus studies sociology and writes a dissertation about the history of African Americans in the post-slavery era. By having knowledge about African culture and history, Marjorie and Marcus have a sense of solidarity toward the

African people that were brought to America as slaves.

When Marjorie and Marcus meet in the college, they immediately feel close to one another, and this is also because as a black person, they share the same racialized experiences and experience same racial discriminations while living in

America. Spending time with people that have the same origin and culture help

Marjorie and Marcus to find a sense of belonging and strengthen their etnnic bond.

The last solution which help Marjorie and Marcus ease the conflict of double consciousness is by going to Africa. Marjorie considers herself as Ghanaian-

American before she drifts away for some years after her grandmother dies. By taking a trip back to Ghana again, she refamiliarize herself with Ghanaian culture and tradition. On the other hand, Marcus feel more relax and happy because there is no racial discrimination and prejudices from the society in Ghana. Both of them then feel like they are at home because there is also strong solidarity between the communities in there.

To conclude, Marjorie and Marcus have successfully overcome the conflict resulted from having double consciousness after they apply the principles of Pan-

Africanism. At first, Marjorie and Marcus often feel lonely and confused because they cannot fully belong to American and African culture. However, in the end, they are finally reconnected to their root culture and thus can embrace their African and their American sides. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

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APPENDIX

Summary of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

The first chapter of Homegoing sets place in Fante village on 1700s, and tells the story of Effia, daughter of an Asante woman named Maame. She is latter to be married a British officer and live in Cape Coast Castle with the person who organizes the slave trade to America. In the next chapter, the author recites

Maame’s other daughter after she escapes to Asanteland, whose name is Esi. When

Esi is 15-years-old, she is held captive in Castle’s dungeon in order to be sold as a slave to America. She never meets her mother again, nor known her sister, Effia, who lives in the Castle above her.

The next chapters of Part I titled “Quey”, “Ness”, “James”, “Kojo”, and

“Abena” going back and forth to Africa and America. Quey is the son of Effia and

James Collins. He grows up in the Castle and studies in England in order to handle the business negotiations latter. Back in Africa, he then marries a girl from political alliance and has a son named James. At the same time, Ness, Esi’s daughter, is being tortured in plantation that she refers to ‘Hell’, where her husband is being beaten to death later when they try to save their one and only son named Kojo.

Quey’s son, James, does not like his family’s business, and when he meets

Akosua, who refuses to shake his hands as he involves in the slave trade, decides to run away and marries Akosua. He becomes a farmer and lives a simple life with

Akosua, and later has a daughter named Abena. When she is in her adolescence, she gets pregnant with her childhood friend, and then she lives in a missionary church. In America, Kojo is successfully being saved by Ma Aku and lives in

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Maryland. He has a son named H, but H is taken away from him when he is just a baby.

Moving on to Part II, the author tells the story of H, Akua, Willie, Yaw,

Sonny, Marjorie, and Marcus. H, who does not know his family at all, is forced to work in coal mine, and continues working there even when he is already a free man.

On the other hand, Akua, Abena’s daughter, decides to escape the church and marries to Asamoah after she realizes the missionary who lives there is the one who kills her mother. She then starts to get dreams about firewoman, and one night she burns her hut while sleepwalking, kills her two daughters, burns her body and the face of her only son named Yaw badly.

Back to H’s chapter, he has a daughter named Willie, who dreams of being a jazz singer in New York. She cannot do it in the end because of her skin’s colour, and becomes a housekeeper. Her son, Sonny, becomes a drug addict until age 45 because he cannot get proper education because of the thick segregation line between white and black in America at his era. But eventually, his son Marcus receives better opportunity than him, and able to take a PhD degree at Stanford

University.

Like Marcus, Akua’s son, Yaw, is able to be an educated man as he studies in Africa. He then migrates to America with his wife and daughter, and be a college professor there. He has a daughter named Marjorie, who then crosses road with

Marcus.

Adapted from: Cohen, M. (2017). Homegoing Summary. Retrieved from GradeSaver, https://www.gradesaver.com/homegoing/study-guide/summary (on 21 July 2020).