THE REPRESENTATION OF CHILD ABUSE IN SAPPHIRE’S PUSH AS THE PORTRAIT OF HARLEM SOCIETY IN 1980s

Abstract

A Literary work is a reflection of reality. It depicts some conditions and situations in social life. Novel is kind of literary genre used to depict feeling, perspective, and etc, about several conditions and situations that happen in some eras. In other words, it can be called the representation in literary works is used as a medium to communicate to each other or the society. The representation in the literary work is framed by the discourse. Discourse, here, is used as the framework of knowledge to get the meaning of the representation. This research analyzes Sapphire’s Push portraying the situation in 1980s which has racialism as its discourse. The novel tells about child abuse occurred in black community; Harlem. The portrait of child abuse represents the sociological condition in Harlem at that time. The main purpose of the writing this thesis is to find what the ideology that constructs the production of the novel. Therefore, this research uses Stuart Hall’s theory of representation. By taking this research on Hall’s theory, this novel has indeed made a new representation on Black in Harlem that Black also can do anything, black is not always cruel, always stupid and un-skilled. This is the ideology brought by the novel; that is anti-racialism. There is no race; there is only an equal human being.