An Analysis on the Construction of Orientalism in Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress

Abstract

This research attempts to analyse the issues related to the exploration of Orientalism between the West and the East. It is represented in Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress through the character named Ensei Tankado who comes from Japan (the Orient Subject). This is an interesting novel to be analysed because Dan Brown as one of the Western people who describes the Eastern subject through the characters. As similar as many scholars write about the West and the East, Brown also demonstrates the superiority of the Western and he compares it with the East inferiority. From that description, the East only accommodates the West ideological interest. This research uses theory that is offered by Edward Said entitled Orientalism. In addition this research has two goals of the study. The first goal is to explore the discourse of orientalism, how the East is portrayed by the West and how the orientalism is constructed through the narrative structure of the novel. This research is qualitative research and a documentary method is used to collect the data. There are two kinds of data that is used in this research, Primary data and secondary data. The primary data are taken from Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress. The data in this thesis are the selected narrative conversations and narrative events. I also use film, journals, theses, articles, other books and websites as the secondary data in this research. An inductive method is used to analyse the problems. It means that specific to general becomes the way of transferring the idea in this analysis. After discussing this research, it can be concluded that Dan Brown represents the orientalism through description between the East and the West. This is in line with Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism that the East is described as inferior, backwardness, subordinate while the West is Superior. Those constructions are the result of the author’s knowledge or his ideological interest in the social environment portrayed in the novel. Digital Fortress becomes the evidence that Brown supports the East as inferior. It is linear to Said’s orientalism that the West attempts to maintain cultural domination practice of viewing the East based on their point of views. In other word, the West tries to make a distinction as the stereotype to the East. From analysing the novel. The Western’s practice to stereotype the East is a proof that they still maintain and continue process of colonialism. Therefore, the reinforcement of their practices are generally to hegemony even to conquer the Eastern World