the ideas of colonizer and colonized as seen in ernest

THE IDEAS OF COLONIZER AND COLONIZED AS SEEN IN

ERNEST HEMINGWAY’S INDIAN CAMP AND JOHN

HENRIK CLARKE’S THE BOY WHO PAINTED CHRIST

BLACK: A POSTCOLONIAL STUDY

AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra

in English Letters

By

ANTONIUS

Student Number: 154214118

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS

FACULTY OF LETTERS

UNIVERSITAS SANATA DHARMA

YOGYAKARTA

2019

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

ii

THE IDEAS OF COLONIZER AND COLONIZED AS SEEN IN

ERNEST HEMINGWAY’S INDIAN CAMP AND JOHN

HENRIK CLARKE’S THE BOY WHO PAINTED CHRIST

BLACK: A POSTCOLONIAL STUDY

AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra

in English Letters

By

ANTONIUS

Student Number: 154214118

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS

FACULTY OF LETTERS

UNIVERSITAS SANATA DHARMA

YOGYAKARTA

2019


vii

A JOURNEY

OF

A THOUSAND MILES

BEGINS WITH

A SINGLE STEP

(LAO TZU)


viii

For

My Beloved Parents

and

My Dearest Twin Sisters


ix

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, let me address my deepest gratitude to Almighty God for giving

me the strength, knowledge, and ability to complete my undergraduate thesis

successfully. Without His blessings, this achievement would not have been

possible.

I deliver my greatest gratitude to my family members who have always been

there for me, encouraged me in all of my pursuits, and inspired me to follow my

dreams. I am especially grateful to my wonderful parents (Lai Jun Phin and Liaw

Lie Ha) and my beautiful younger sisters (Felly Oktaviani and Shelly Oktaviana)

who never stop loving and supporting me in everything I do.

I extend my special thanks to my thesis advisor, Drs. Hirmawan Wijanarka,

M.Hum., for his patient guidance, enthusiastic encouragement, and useful advice

during the process of writing this thesis. I would like to thank my co-advisor, Dr.

Tatang Iskarna, for his assistance and constructive evaluation in improving this

thesis. My gratitude is also dedicated to my previous academic advisor, F.X.

Risang Baskara, S.S., M.Hum.; to my current academic advisor, Dr. B. Ria Lestari,

M.Sc.; to all awesome lecturers and staffs in English Letters Department for their

help and support for these past three and a half years of my study at Sanata

Dharma University.

Finally, to all my friends and my classmates, thank you for the valuable

friendship throughout these years. Thank you for letting me experience ups and

downs which motivate me to find my true self.

Antonius.


x

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE ...................................................................................................... ii

APPROVAL PAGE ........................................................................................... iii

ACCEPTANCE PAGE ...................................................................................... iv

STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY .................................................................... v

LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH...vi

MOTTO PAGE ................................................................................................. vii

DEDICATION PAGE ...................................................................................... viii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................... ix

TABLE OF CONTENTS ..................................................................................... x

ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................... xii

ABSTRAK .......................................................................................................... xiii

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ....................................................................... 1

A. Background of the Study ............................................................................... 1

B. Problem Formulation ..................................................................................... 4

C. Objectives of the Study .................................................................................. 4

D. Definition of Terms ....................................................................................... 4

CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF LITERATURE ................................................... 7

A. Review of Related Studies ............................................................................. 7

B. Review of Related Theories......................................................................... 17

1. Theory of Characterization ..................................................................... 17

a. Personal Description ......................................................................... 18

b. Character as Seen by Another ............................................................ 18

c. Speech ............................................................................................... 19

d. Reactions ........................................................................................... 19

e. Thoughts ............................................................................................ 19

f. Mannerisms ........................................................................................ 20

2. Postcolonial Theories .............................................................................. 20

a. Binarism/Binary Opposition ............................................................. 20

b. Orientalism ......................................................................................... 21

c. Dependency ........................................................................................ 24

d. Counterattack (Négritude) ................................................................. 26

C. Review of Related Backgrounds ................................................................. 27

1. Backgrounds of the Authors ................................................................... 27

a. Ernest Hemingway’s Biographical Background ............................... 28

b. John Henrik Clarke’s Biographical Background .............................. 30

2. Racial Discrimination from the Whites toward Indian Americans .......... 31

3. Racial Discrimination from the Whites toward African Americans ....... 32

D. Theoretical Framework ................................................................................ 33


xi

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY ................................................................. 36

A. Object of the Study ...................................................................................... 36

B. Approach of the Study ................................................................................. 38

C. Method of the Study .................................................................................... 39

CHAPTER IV: ANALYSIS ............................................................................... 42

A. The Position of the Characters in the Stories............................................... 42

1. The Personal Description of Colonizer and Colonized ........................... 44

2. Colonizer and Colonized Revealed by Character as Seen by Another .. 47

3. Colonizer and Colonized Revealed by Speech ....................................... 50

4. Colonizer and Colonized Revealed by Reactions .................................. 53

5. Colonizer and Colonized Revealed by Thoughts ................................... 56

6. Colonizer and Colonized Revealed by Mannerisms .............................. 57

B. The Ideas of Colonizer and Colonized Reflected through the Position of the

Characters ................................................................................................... 60

1. Colonizer-Colonized Binary Opposition ................................................. 60

2. Eurocentrism of the Colonizer and Othering the Colonized .................. 65

3. Dependency Complex of the Colonized and Domination Complex of the

Colonizer ................................................................................................. 69

4. Counterattack from the Colonized toward the Colonizer ...................... 73

C. The Authors’ View on Colonialism ............................................................ 76

1. Ernest Hemingway and Indian Camp in the Discourse of Colonialism 78

2. John Henrik Clarke and The Boy Who Painted Christ Black in the

Discourse of Postcolonialism ............................................................... 82

CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION ......................................................................... 88

REFERENCES ................................................................................................... 91

APPENDICES .................................................................................................... 95

Appendix 1: Ernest Hemingway’s Indian Camp ............................................ 95

Appendix 2: John Henrik Clarke’s The Boy Who Painted Christ Black ....... 100


xii

ABSTRACT

Antonius. (2019). The Ideas of Colonizer and Colonized as Seen in Ernest

Hemingway’s Indian Camp and John Henrik Clarke’s The Boy Who Painted

Christ Black: A Postcolonial Study. Yogyakarta: Department of English Letters,

Faculty of Letters, Universitas Sanata Dharma.

A postcolonial study usually portrays the dichotomy between colonizer and

colonized. Ernest Hemingway’s Indian Camp and John Henrik Clarke’s The Boy

Who Painted Christ Black are two examples of literary works that show this

polarization. Both of the stories narrate about the oppression from the White

toward the Other in a postcolonial context. This construction of dichotomy

triggers the researcher to study how the authors position the characters in both of

the stories in representing the ideas of the colonizer and the colonized.

This study has three objectives. The first objective is to identify the authors’

ways in presenting the position of the characters in the stories. The second

objective is to explain the characters’ position in reflecting the ideas of colonizer

and colonized. The third objective is to discover the authors’ view on colonialism.

This study uses library research method. The primary sources of this study

are two short stories by two different writers, namely Indian Camp by Ernest

Hemingway and The Boy Who Painted Christ Black by John Henrik Clarke. The

secondary sources are taken from relevant journal articles, essays, and books

related to the topic of this study. The approach used in this study is postcolonial

approach. Six steps taken in this study are: close-reading, proposing a hypothesis,

reviewing some related studies, studying some related theories, scrutinizing both

of the short stories by using theory of characterization and some postcolonial

theories, and lastly drawing conclusions.

The results of the analysis are as follows. The researcher finds out that both

of the authors position the characters in a dichotomy between colonizer and

colonized. By adopting Murphy’s theory of characterization, the researcher finds

out that there are six ways on characterization which can be applied in order to

justify the dichotomy, namely: personal description, character as seen by another,

speech, reactions, thoughts, and mannerisms. Furthermore, regarding the ideas of

colonizer and colonized, there are four ideas or concepts of the colonizer and the

colonized relation reflected through the characters’ position in the story. These

four ideas are colonizer-colonized binary opposition, eurocentrism of the

colonizer and othering the colonized, dependency complex of the colonized and

domination complex of the colonizer, and counterattack from the colonized

toward the colonizer. Finally, Ernest Hemingway, in writing his Indian Camp,

embodies the colonialist ideology. On the other hand, John Henrik Clarke, in

writing The Boy Who Painted Christ Black, embraces the anti-colonialist

ideology.

Keywords: postcolonialism, colonialism, binary opposition, colonizer, colonized.


xiii

ABSTRAK

Antonius. (2019). The Ideas of Colonizer and Colonized as Seen in Ernest


Christ Black: A Postcolonial Study. Yogyakarta: Program Studi Sastra Inggris,

Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Sanata Dharma.

Sebuah studi poskolonial pada umumnya menggambarkan dikotomi antara

penjajah dan terjajah. Indian Camp karya Ernest Hemingway dan The Boy Who

Painted Christ Black karya John Henrik Clarke adalah dua contoh karya sastra

yang menunjukkan polarisasi ini. Kedua cerita ini mengisahkan penindasan dari

kaum kulit putih terhadap Other (kaum yang lain) dalam konteks poskolonial.

Konstruksi dikotomi ini memicu peneliti untuk mempelajari bagaimana kedua

pengarang tersebut memposisikan karakter-karakter di dalam kedua cerita untuk

merepresentasikan ide-ide penjajah dan terjajah.

Penelitian ini memiliki tiga tujuan. Tujuan pertama adalah untuk

mengidentifikasi cara-cara kedua pengarang menyajikan posisi karakter dalam

cerita. Tujuan kedua adalah untuk menjelaskan posisi karakter dalam

merefleksikan ide-ide penjajah dan terjajah. Tujuan ketiga adalah untuk

mengetahui pandangan kedua pengarang terhadap kolonialisme.

Penelitian ini menggunakan metode studi pustaka. Sumber utama dari

penelitian ini adalah dua cerita pendek oleh dua pengarang yang berbeda, yaitu

Indian Camp oleh Ernest Hemingway dan The Boy Who Painted Christ Black

oleh John Henrik Clarke. Sumber sekunder diambil dari artikel-artikel jurnal yang

relevan, esai-esai, dan buku-buku yang berkaitan dengan topik penelitian ini.

Pendekatan yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah pendekatan poskolonial.

Enam langkah yang ditempuh dalam melakukan penelitian ini antara lain: close-

reading (pembacaan mendalam), pengusulan hipotesis, peninjauan beberapa studi

terkait, pemahaman beberapa teori terkait, penganalisisan kedua cerita pendek

tersebut dengan menggunakan teori karakterisasi dan beberapa teori poskolonial,

dan pada akhirnya penarikan kesimpulan.

Sebagai hasil analisis, peneliti menemukan bahwa kedua pengarang

memposisikan karakter-karakter dalam dikotomi antara penjajah dan terjajah.

Dengan mengadopsi teori karakterisasi dari Murphy, peneliti menemukan enam

cara karakterisasi yang dapat diterapkan untuk membenarkan posisi dikotomi

tersebut, yaitu: deskripsi pribadi, karakter seperti yang terlihat oleh orang lain,

ucapan, reaksi, pikiran, dan tingkah laku. Berkenaan dengan ide-ide penjajah dan

terjajah, ada empat ide atau konsep relasi penjajah dan terjajah yang tercermin

dari posisi karakter dalam cerita. Keempat gagasan tersebut antara lain: oposisi

biner penjajah dan terjajah, Erosentrisme penjajah dan othering (pelainan) terjajah,

sindrom ketergantungan terjajah dan sindrom dominasi penjajah, serta serangan

balik dari terjajah terhadap penjajah. Ernest Hemingway menggunakan ideologi

kolonialis dalam menulis Indian Camp. Sebaliknya, John Henrik Clarke menganut

ideologi anti-kolonialis dalam menulis The Boy Who Painted Christ Black.

Keywords: postcolonialism, colonialism, binary opposition, colonizer, colonized.


1

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

One of the postcolonial topic of discussion is the binary opposition between

the colonized and the colonizer, oppressed and oppressor, subjugated and

subjugator. Using a postcolonial criticism, one can easily recognize the ideas of

polarization in literary texts. Ernest Hemingway’s Indian Camp and John Henrik

Clarke’s The Boy Who Painted Christ Black are two example of literary works

that show the polarization. The stories portray a vivid view on colonialism. Both

of the stories tell about the oppression from the White toward the Other in a

postcolonial context. The ways on how the authors position the characters in both

of the stories represent the ideas of colonizer and colonized.

The first story, Indian Camp tells a story about Nick, his Uncle George and

his father who are going to an Indian camp. Nick’s father, who is a doctor, is

about to help an American Indian woman who has been in a torturous labor for

two days in delivering her baby. The social position of the Whites with the Native

Americans, the Indians in the story is depicted vividly. It indicates the ideas of

colonizer and colonized. The Whites (represented by Nick, Uncle George, and the

doctor) tended to treat the Indians with superiority. The domination toward the

Indians is in line with the notion that:

Hence, another major book, which can be said to inaugurate postcolonial

criticism proper is Edward Said's Orientalism (1978), which is a specific

expose of the Eurocentric universalism which takes for granted both the

superiority of what is European or Western, and the inferiority of what is

not. Said identifies a European cultural tradition of 'Orientalism', which is a


2

particular and long-standing way of identifying the East as 'Other' and

inferior to the West (Barry, 2009, p. 186).

The identification of the Indian as ‘Other’ and inferior to the White can be

seen from the story when the doctor performs a cesarean operation on the Indian

woman with a jack-knife and without using any anesthetic to deliver the baby.

The way the doctor treats the Indian woman is considered cruel and inhuman.

During the cesarean, the woman screams out loud enduring the extreme pain.

However, the doctor shows no empathy at all, he just simply says “her screams

are not important”.

The second story, The Boy Who Painted Christ Black shows the terrible

pressures Blacks faced under the American Jim Crow system. The story was set in

the 1940s Georgia, a time when African Americans were striving for their rights

and freedoms. It narrates a story about a black young boy named Aaron Crawford

who painted Jesus Christ black. Aaron was the smartest boy in Muskogee County

School for colored children. He drew a painting of Jesus Christ black as a present

for his teacher’s birthday. The painting was being displayed in the assembly room.

It was soon discovered by a White Supervisor, Prof. Danual who visited the

school. The supervisor asked and blamed the boy. But soon, the principal stepped

forward to defend the school’s prize student. The supervisor got very angry and in

that moment the principal get fired. Few days later, the principal resigned from

the school. He didn’t look brokenhearted and took Aaron with him. They never

seems regret and they are brave that they had done it. The story ended with these

two strong people “walking in brisk, dignified strides, like two people who had

won some sort of the victory”.


3

The position of the characters in The Boy Who Painted Christ Black reveals

the ideas of colonialism and racism that happened during that time in America.

There was a racial segregation. White is portrayed as higher class than the Black.

White is positioned as the superior while the black is inferior, that is the reason

why Christ should be white. Since the Black at that time is the lower class people,

they might seem to be stupid. The black people were treated badly at that time.

They were forced to educate the children that White is better than Black. In the

story, it shows a struggle from the black people to be treated equally, just as the

white people, as human beings.

The Boy Who Painted Christ Black reveals the idea of resistance in the

discourse of postcolonialism. It indicates the opposition to colonialism and the

struggle in finding an identity. The resistance is concordant to Aimé Césaire’s

Negritude. He is protesting against the idea of inferiority of the ‘Other’ as well as

proclaiming counterattack toward the colonialism ideas.

I have always thought that the black man was searching for his identity. And

it has seemed to me that if we want to establish this identity, then we must

have a concrete consciousness of what we are--that is, of the first fact of our

lives: that we are black; that we are black and have a history, a history that

contains certain cultural elements of great value; and that Negroes were not,

as you put it, born yesterday, because there have been beautiful and

important black civilizations (Rothenberg, 1983, p. 54).

Césaire encourages the Black to establish their own identity and also raises

the pride of being black. The principal in the story reflects the idea of Negritude,

to rebel against the authority of the colonizer.

In this recent study, the researcher analyzes the position of the characters in

both of the stories in order to find out the ideas of colonizer and colonized


4

reflected in it. The ideas of the colonizer and colonized are the concepts or the

notions of postcolonialism which emerge through the relation between colonizer

and colonized. Thus, this paper aims to find out various postcolonial notions or

ideas depicted in the story by scrutinizing the colonizer-colonized relation.

B. Problem Formulation

In order to analyze the topic of this study, three questions are formulated as

follows:

1. How do the authors present the position of the characters in the stories?

2. How do the characters’ positions reflect the ideas of colonizer and

colonized?

3. How do the ideas of colonizer and colonized reflect the authors’ view on

colonialism?

C. Objectives of the Study

Based on the problem formulation above, this study has three objectives.

The first aim of this study is to identify the authors’ ways in presenting the

position of the characters in the stories. The second aim is to explain the

characters’ position in reflecting the ideas of colonizer and colonized. The third

aim is to discover the authors’ view on colonialism.

D. Definition of Terms

This study focuses on the ideas of colonizer and colonized in the

postcolonial context. Therefore, there are some terms that need to be explained

further in order to avoid misunderstanding and ambiguity in this study. The


5

significant terms that are often mentioned in this study are colonizer, colonized,

and postcolonial study.

Colonizer and colonized are two inseparable terms in the postcolonial

context. In order to define the terms, colonizer and colonized, it is needed for us to

understand about binarism or binary opposition in the colonial discourse.

According to Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin (2007):

Binary oppositions are structurally related to one another, and in colonial

discourse there may be a variation of the one underlying binary –

colonizer/colonized – that becomes rearticulated in any particular text in a

number of ways, e.g. colonizer : colonized, white : black, civilized :

primitive, advanced : retarded, good : evil, beautiful : ugly, human : bestial,

teacher : pupil, doctor : patient (p. 19).

From the quotation above, in the colonial discourse, colonizer can be

defined as the people or a social group which is considered as elevated, civilized,

and stronger than the colonized. On the contrary, colonized is degraded and

visualized as backwarded, uncivilized, and weak.

In the realm of colonialism, there are many terms for colonizer and

colonized, namely: self and other, occident and orient, oppressor and oppressed,

subjugator and subjugated, west and east. The dichotomy of the two sides also can

be studied from Edward Said’s Orientalism as quoted below:

This means, in effect, that the East becomes the repository or projection of

those aspects of themselves which Westerners do not choose to

acknowledge (cruelty, sensuality, decadence, laziness, and so on). At the

same time, and paradoxically, the East is seen as a fascinating realm of the

exotic, the mystical and the seductive. It also tends to be seen as

homogenous, the people there being anonymous masses, rather than

individuals, their actions determined by instinctive emotions (lust, terror,

fury, etc.) rather than by conscious choices or decisions (Barry, 2009, p.

186).


6

The other important term in this study is postcolonial study. Postcolonial

study is inter-disciplinary field of perspectives, theories and methods that explore

the profound and inescapable effects of colonization on literary production and

also how text contradicts its underlying assumptions and reveals its colonialist

ideologies and processes (Ashcroft et al, 2007, p. 173). Thus, the postcolonial

study scrutinizes about the relation of the colonizer and colonized in the literary

works.


7

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

In this chapter, the researcher provides some reviews in order to support the

analysis of this study. This chapter is divided into four parts, namely review of

some related studies, review of some theories applied in analyzing this study,

review of social and historical background related to this recent study, and

theoretical framework.

A. Review of Related Studies

This part contains four studies previously done by different researchers.

These four studies consist of one master thesis, one undergraduate thesis, and two

journal articles. These studies are chosen because they have either similar object

or topic with this thesis.

The first study is a master thesis conducted by Sarah Rhoads Nilsen, a

graduate student of The University of Oslo (2011), entitled Power, Distance, and

Stereotyping between Colonizer and Colonized and Men and Women in A

Passage to India. In this previous study, Nilsen presents the power of dichotomy

between colonizer and colonized, male and female, which is very useful for this

recent study to get more insight on the ideas of binary opposition.

In her introduction, Nilsen explains the existence of stereotypes in relation

with the existence of power hierarchies. The power hierarchies depend on four

types of distance, namely: social, physical, emotional, and narrative distance.

According to Nilsen, these distances trigger the dichotomy between the Indians

and the British Anglo-Indians, the male characters and the female characters, and


8

the East and West. Further, Nilsen argues that the distance also leads to the

reliance upon stereotypes as a means of understanding the people and places the

characters encounter in the novel (Nilsen, 2011, p. 6).

In conducting her research, Nilsen uses several theories, they are;

Postcolonial theory, Feminist theory, and Narrative theory. In the first section of

her analysis, Nilsen focuses in discussing the relationship between the British

Colonizers and the Indian Colonized. By applying Edward Said’s Orientalism and

Homi Bhabha’s theory on the concept of “fixity” in the colonial construction of

otherness, Nilsen portrays the binary opposition between colonizer and colonized.

She argues that:

In A Passage to India the stereotypes that are evident between the East and

the West and Colonizer and Colonized follow a pattern: The traditional

Western imperialistic ideal of the Colonizers as strong, dominant,

masculine, intelligent, and civilized; and the traditional Western

imperialistic perception of the Colonized in the East as weak, submissive,

feminine, naive, and uncivilized (Nilsen, 2011, p. 43).

In the second section of her analysis, Nilsen discusses the relationship

between male and female characters in the novel. In her discussion, Nilsen uses

the Feminist theorist Hélène Cixous’ theory of binary oppositions that relates to

the connection between power constructs and gender. By using this theory, Nilsen

finds out that:

The overall presentation of male and female characters in A Passage to

India supports the traditional, now antiquated, Western stereotype of men as

logical, calculated, dominant, strong, and informed while women are

emotional, spontaneous, submissive, weak, and uninformed (Nilsen, 2011,

pp. 65-66).

In her last section, Nilsen concludes that distance is the main key in the

novel which causes the power dichotomy between the British Colonizers and male


9

and female characters, while also perpetuating the reliance upon stereotypes in the

novel. The Western Colonizers and Eastern Colonized segregate from one

another; similarly the men and women in the novel seem to live relatively separate

lives.

The second reviewed study is Emergence of The Colonizer and The

Colonized in Three Texts: William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Aphra Behn's

Oroonoko: Or, The Royal Slave and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, an

undergraduate thesis written by Nowshin Naher in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for her BA degree of English in BRAC University 2006. Naher’s

study focuses on the presence of the colonizer and the colonized in a contrasting

image within the three texts. She applies Edward Said’s concept of “Self” and

“Other” and Homi Bhabha’s concept of “mirror-image” in discussing her study.

Naher examines the colonizer and the colonized in terms of the master and slave

relationship and provides the occurrence of the “mirror-image”.

In the first text, William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Naher discusses the

colonial relationship between Prospero and Caliban. Naher argues that:

William Shakespeare's The Tempest is considered as a paradigm of the

colonial setting. Because the protagonist Prospero possesses certain

characteristics of a colonizer and Caliban represents the colonized world

and mind (Naher, 2006, p. 25).

Naher identifies the binary opposition in the novel between Prospero, as the

colonizer and Caliban, as the colonized. Prospero is a European of high social of a

noble birth, while Caliban is depicted as a creature that is half man, half beast. In

the beginning of the novel, Caliban used to be a good friend of Prospero. He used

to introduce Prospero the beauty and the riches of the island which he lives on.


10

Unfortunately, later in the story, Prospero starts to take over the island and treats

Caliban as his slave.

In the second text, Naher examines the dichotomy of power between the

narrator of the novel, a White woman colonizer and Oroonoko, her slave.

Oroonoko is depicted as an admirable slave to the white colonizer. Oroonoko is

depicted as an educated “royal slave” because he knows the European knowledge

well. However, he remains a slave due to colonization and slavery at that time.

In her thesis, Naher shows the struggle of Oroonoko to liberate themselves

from slavery. Even though Oroonoko is portrayed more positively than other

slave, he fails to free themselves from the slavery.

Oroonoko wants to get back his position. He does not want their (Oroonoko

and Imoinda) child to be born as a slave. He wants his child to continue his

royal nation. Though he tries to get back his liberty by paying a good

ransom of money, he fails to get his liberty as a result he revolts (Naher,

2006, p. 38).

In the third text, Naher discusses about Robinson Crusoe, an Englishman

who colonizes the island and tries to expand Christianity over the land. In the

beginning, Crusoe thinks there is no one except himself on the island. However,

he later discovers a single footprint on the sand, the sign of the presence of a man

on his island. Crusoe then finds out a man and he names him Friday. Starting from

that day, Crusoe begins to teach Friday many basic needs of human being to turn

the savage into a colonized 'other' and very soon Friday becomes a faithful,

loving, sincere servant in the kingdom of Crusoe (Naher, 2006, p. 50).

At the end of Naher’s discussion, we may find out the series of colonizer

and colonized. There are many portraits are used to distinguish the colonizer and


11

the colonized, the master and the slave. The colonizer always reinforces his

superiority over the colonized and alienates the colonized from his true self.

The third related study is a journal article entitled “Screaming Through

Silence: The Violence of Race in Indian Camp and The Doctor and The Doctor’s

Wife”, written by Amy Strong, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1996.

Strong’s essay focuses on the lack of an Indian presence within two of Ernest

Hemingway’s short stories, Indian Camp and The Doctor and The Doctor’s Wife.

Strong examines how Hemingway represents the instability of racial identity and

interrogates unequal power relations build on racial identity. According to Strong:

In the first story, he presents race simply as a biological feature, but then in

the second revises this model to create a complex, shifting depiction of race

that anticipates the essentialist/constructionist debates waged today (Strong,

1996, p. 18).

These both of Hemingway’s stories are commonly read as tales of initiation.

The Indian in the stories are often portrayed as symbols of darkness and

primitivism. In the beginning of Indian Camp, Hemingway narrates Nick, Nick’s

father, and Uncle George are transported across a lake through a dreary, foggy

darkness. Joseph DeFalco explains that “the classical parallel is too obvious to

overlook, for the two Indians function in a Charon-like fashion in transporting

Nick, his father, and his uncle from their own sophisticated and civilized world of

the white man into the dark and primitive world of the camp” (Falco as cited in

Strong, 1996, p. 19).

Strong points out some shocking issues in Indian Camp when the doctor has

finished his cruel operation on the Indian woman and when the Indian slitted his

own throat. The reason why the Indian man commits suicide remains a riddle.


12

Strong argues that we might simply accept the doctor explanation that the Indian

man “couldn’t stand things,” however it can also have other different

interpretation. Strong proposes a critical interpretation:

... is it the doctor’s presence that drives the Indian husband to suicide? I

believe Indian Camp tells a different kind of initiation story, one that, like

the Orphic myth, shows how a purified and initiated identity cannot be

constructed without the binary opposition of unpurified and fallen selves

(Strong, 1996, p. 20).

Further, Strong also argues that Indian Camp represents the structures of

domination. We may find out some proofs of the domination, namely: the

“violent” Caesarean operation toward the Indian woman, the doctor’s response to

the woman’s screams (her screams are not important), the suicide of the Indian

husband which is probably triggered from enduring the great pain of his wife’s

suffering, and the doctor’s desire to publish his crude operation procedure in the

medical journal. All of these proofs represent the racial inequality between the

two different cultures and show the power relation between the dominator and

dominated.

In the next discussion, Strong presents the role changing between the white

man and the Indian in the second story, The Doctor and The Doctor’s Wife. The

story narrates about “the doctor now needs the Indian men to help him dislodge

the logs and saw them up” (Strong, 1996, p. 25). In this second story, we may find

out the counterattack toward the white man domination as seen in the first story

Indian Camp. The idea of counterattack can be obtained from Strong discussion

below:

Dr. Adams’s verbal threat, “If you call me Doc once again, I’ll knock your

eye teeth down your throat,” is returned with “Oh no, you won’t, Doc”. Not


13

only does Dick Boulton make the doctor back down, but he uses Ojibway, a

language unfamiliar to Dr. Adams, to mock him. This scene presents an

utter reversal power relations, where the dominant language, or, the

language of dominance, has lost its force (Strong, 1996, p. 25).

From this quotation, we can find the counterattack done by the Indian

toward the white man. The power relation seems to be reversed in this second

story. Furthermore, other ideas of counterattack are shown in the story when Dick

Boulton dares to accuse Dr. Adams for stealing the logs and when the doctor’s

medical journal is described to be neglected. In the conclusion, Strong states that:

Borrowing from Michael Omi and Howard Winant, I would suggest that

Hemingway’s stories represent race as an “unstable” and “decentered”

complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political

struggle (Strong, 1996, p. 27).

The last related study is Lisa Tyler’s Dangerous Families” and “Intimate

Harm” in Hemingway's Indian Camp. This paper is published in Texas Studies in

Literature and Language, Vol. 48, No. 1, (2006: 37-53). Tyler discusses the ways

in which “dangerous families” as seen through Hemingway’s Indian Camp can

create terrible things and make “intimate harm”. In the discussion, Tyler focuses

on the intimate harm of a father that affects the character of Nick Adams.

Furthermore, Tyler also wants to examine what Hemingway has to say about

violence and empathy, dominance and submission, war and peace (Tyler, 2006, p.

37).

Indian camp is a short story in Ernest Hemingway’s short story collection,

In Our Time. According to Tyler, Indian Camp, just like other several stories in In

Our Time, centers on suffering especially women’s suffering. This short story

dramatizes what is apparently the young Nick Adams's first confrontation with


14

profound personal suffering. Nick Adams witnesses his father’s crude operation

toward an Indian woman and the tragic suicide of the Indian woman’s husband

(Tyler, 2006, p. 38).

Tyler argues that the story presents Nick’s two ways in responding to

women’s suffering. The first alternative is to empathize with the woman,

specifically the (literal) mother as the Indian’s husband chooses to kill himself

because he can no longer endure his wife’s pain. While the second alternative

would be to identify with his father and deem the Indian woman’s screams

unimportant. Both of these alternatives have different representations. The first

choice represents a death of the self in endless empathy, while the second choice

represents cold isolation and regarding human beings as objects (Tyler, 2006, pp.

38-39).

In the story, Nick chooses the second alternative which rejects the empathy

and triumphs as his father did. Actually, there is a third possible choice which is

to hear the woman’s scream, to recognize their importance, and to respond to

them by trying to help. The doctor could probably at least explain to the Indian

woman what he is going to do to her rather than treating the woman like an object.

Tyler also provides a critical question toward the doctor action: Would he dismiss

a white woman’s scream as “not important”? This question is related to the

racism. Furthermore, Tyler also provides many critics on the doctor action:

Regardless of its cause, I am not the only critic to find the doctor's behavior

inappropriate. Arthur Waldhorn refers to "Dr. Adams's callous indifference

to the squaw's agony". Charles G. Hoffman and A.C. Hoffman criticize the

doctor's "insensitivity to suffering"; Thomas Strychacz criticizes his

"distanced superiority" and "cold-blooded technical expertise". Judith

Fetterley characterizes the Caesarean as "contemptuous and grotesque";


15

Wendolyn E. Tetlow calls it a "butchery-style birth" and notes, "This scene

prepares for later stories in the sequence that focus on the inability of men

and women to connect with one another physically or emotionally". Jürgen

C. Wolter scribes the doctor as "inadequately equipped (psychologically and

literally)" and criticizes his "superficial self-importance". Ann Edwards

Boutelle is critical of the doctor's "cocky indifference to human suffering"

(Tyler, 2006, pp. 40-41).

Tyler later conveys that the father-son relationship portrayed in the story

nevertheless had some basis in Hemingway’s own childhood. When he was a

young boy, Hemingway used to watch an operation done by his father. In Indian

Camp, Nick’s father, the doctor is a demanding father. He forces Nick to become

a doctor just like him and asks Nick to accompany him to the Indian Camp where

Nick witnesses many cruel things that actually inappropriate for a child. Similarly,

Clarence Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway’s father, was also a demanding father.

According to Grace Hemingway’s scrapbook, Ernest was taught to load,

cock, and shoot a gun at the age of two years and eleven months. When

Ernest was four, she wrote, “He is a good pistol shot. Hits the bull’s eye

quite frequently in target practice”. His birthday present that year was an all-

day fishing trip in the rain with his father. When Ernest was five, his father

took him on a seven-mile hike that “blistered his feet so badly there was

blood in his socks and shoes” (Tyler, 2006, p. 44).

Finally, Tyler ends his discussion by providing an interesting sentence: “It is

interesting to read Indian Camp as Hemingway’s own retrospective analysis of the

intimate harm that his own dangerous family caused him” (Tyler, 2006, p. 48).

There are some differences between the four related studies reviewed above

with this recent study. The first difference is that even though the first and the

second related study above discuss about colonizer and colonized, they have

different objects with this recent study. The first related study discusses a novel by

E. M. Forster, entitled A Passage to India, while in the second related study has


16

three works as the objects of study, namely: William Shakespeare's The Tempest,

Aphra Behn's Oroonoko: Or, The Royal Slave and Daniel Defoe's Robinson

Crusoe. Different from these two previous studies, this recent study uses two short

stories, Ernest Hemingway’s Indian Camp and John Henrik Clarke’s The Boy

Who Painted Christ Black as the objects of study.

Secondly, although the third and the fourth previous study have Indian

Camp as the object of study, both of these previous studies have different topic of

discussion with this recent study. Strong centers in discussing the violence of race

which deals more with the racism. Tyler focuses on the ideas of dangerous family

which causes intimate harm in the story. However, this recent study centralizes on

the ideas of colonizer and colonized reflected by the position of the characters in

the stories.

The third difference is that the four previous studies and this study apply

different theory. Nilsen uses postcolonial theory, feminist theory, and narrative

theory in conducting her research. Naher applies Edward Said’s concept of “Self”

and “Other” and Homi Bhabha’s concept of “mirror-image” in discussing her

study. Strong uses critical race theory in writing her journal article. Tyler,

however, applies historical-biographical theory in discussing her journal paper.

Different from all of those previous studies, theory of characterization and some

theories of postcolonialism (Binarism, Orientalism, Dependency, and Aimé

Césaire’s Négritude) are applied in this study. Binary opposition or binarism is the

main theory that is applied in this study, while the other postcolonial theories are

the supporting theories.


17

Besides the differences, the four aforementioned studies are very useful in

terms of providing more perspectives and insights in scrutinizing this recent study.

The first and second related study provides the discussion on the same topic as

this study, about the colonizer and colonized. The third and fourth related studies

discuss the same object with this study, which is Indian Camp short story. What

makes this study different from other study is that this recent study discusses the

ideas of colonizer and colonized through the position of the characters in both of

the provided stories. Furthermore, to the researcher’s knowledge, no one has used

John Henrik Clarke’s The Boy Who Painted Christ Black as the object of study in

the way the researcher discusses it through the position of the characters in order

to reveal the ideas of binary opposition between colonizer and colonized. Thus,

this study can be considered as a recent research which discovers new ideas.

B. Review of Related Theories

This study uses theory of characterization and some theories of

postcolonialism. Theory of characterization is used in analysing the characters in

the story. However, theories of postcolonialism are applied in discussing the ideas

of colonizer and colonized as the main focus in this study.

1. Theory of Characterization

According to Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature,

characterization is defined as “the representation in fiction or drama of human

character or personality” (1995, p. 229). Furthermore, Jack Reams, in his honors

thesis, defines characterization as “any action by the author or taking place within

a work that is used to give description of a character” (2015, p. 4). Thus,


18

characterization is very reliable to reveal the personalities or the traits of the

characters in both of the stories used for this study in order to identify the position

of the characters in the story.

Murtagh John Murphy provided nine ways in scrutinizing the characters in a

story. These nine ways “in which an author attempts to make his characters

understandable to, and come alive for, his readers” (Murphy, 1972, p. 161) are:

personal description, character as seen by another, speech, past life, conversation

of others, reactions, direct comment, thoughts, and mannerisms. From these nine

methods, three of them, namely: past life, conversation of others, and direct

comment, are not used because there is no evidence from the story that show the

application of those three methods. Thus, through this study, six methods are used

to identify the authors’ ways in presenting the position of the characters in both of

the stories, they are:

a. Personal Description

The author can describe a character through her/his physical appearance and

clothes (Murphy, 1972, p. 161). The physical appearance of a character can

include the body proportion, the face, skin, eyes, or any details of a character’s

body anatomy. Furthermore, a character’s choice of clothes is also important to

reveal something about the character’s personality.

b. Character as Seen by Another

The author is able to describe a character through the eyes and opinions of

other characters in a story (Murphy, 1972, p. 162). The comments or opinions of


19

another character can give us clue about the quality/personality that a certain

character has within a story.

c. Speech

Murphy explains that “Whenever a person speaks, whenever he is in

conversation with another, whenever he puts forward an opinion, he is giving us

some clue to his character” (1972, p. 164). From this explanation, it can be said

that what a person says or what a person express through her/his speech can

indicate her/his personality or character.

d. Reactions

The author can give the reader a clue of a person’s character through the

way on how that person reacts to various situations and events (Murphy, 1972, p.

168). We can identify a person’s character through her/his response to a situation

or event.

e. Thoughts

We can recognize a person’s character by learning what she/he is thinking

about. Murphy explains that:

The author can give us direct knowledge of what a person is thinking about.

In this respect he is able to do what we cannot do in real life. He can tell us

what different people are thinking (Murphy, 1972, p. 171).

Thus, the author is able to give us hints about a person’s personality or

character through her/his thought. The author also can give us clear view on how

people are thinking differently from one another depends on their

characters/personalities.


20

f. Mannerisms

The author can give us clues about a person’s character through her/his

mannerisms, habits or idiosyncrasies (Murphy, 1972, p. 173). The characters’

ways of behaving and their attitudes can tell us who she/he is and also it can give

us a clue of their position in the story.

2. Postcolonial Theories

Some postcolonial theories are applied in this study to answer the second

problem formulation, in order to explain the characters’ position in reflecting the

ideas of colonizer and colonized.

a. Binarism/Binary Opposition

The French structural linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, is the forefather of

the binarism concept. Saussure presents the binarism concept in the opposition

between the signifier and the signified. The binarism concept is extensively used

in many fields and one of them is used in the field of postcolonial studies

(Ashcroft et al, 2007, p. 19).

One of the most prominent figures in the field of postcolonial studies is

Frantz Fanon. He is the one who introduces the idea of the Other, a key concern in

postcolonial studies (Al-Saidi, 2014, p. 95). Fanon develops the concept of power

relation between the two parties, Other (colonized) and Self (colonizer). Fanon, in

his book entitled Black Skin, White Masks, argues that:

One can have no further doubt that the real Other for the white man is and

will continue to be the black man. And conversely. Only for the white man

The Other is perceived on the level of the body image, absolutely as the not-

self – that is, the unidentifiable, the unassimilable (Fanon, 2008, p. 124).


21

From the quotation above, we can learn that the dichotomy between the

Other and the Self in the colonial context is undeniable. The way on how the Self

constructs and alienates the Other is in order to emphasize the great gap between

those both parties. The Self has a tendency in seeing the Other as inferior to

themselves in establishing a relation of dominance (Ashcroft et al, 2007, p. 19).

In order to comprehend the concept of the Self and the Other, binarism in

colonial discourse is a suitable way that helps us to understand well the contrast

between these two parties.

Binary oppositions are structurally related to one another, and in colonial

discourse there may be a variation of the one underlying binary –

colonizer/colonized – that becomes rearticulated in any particular text in a

number of ways, e.g. colonizer: colonized, white: black, civilized: primitive,

advanced: retarded, good: evil, beautiful: ugly, human: bestial, teacher:

pupil, doctor: patient (Ashcroft et al, 2007, p. 19).

In relation to the theory of binary opposition and the two stories provided

for this recent study, it can be seen that the portrayals of being colonizer and

colonized are vividly depicted in both of the stories. The first story shows the

relation between the Whites (colonizer) and the Indians (colonized). The second

story represents the idea of binary opposition in the relation between the Whites

(colonizer) and the Negroes (colonized).

b. Orientalism

Another key concepts in postcolonial study is Orientalism. Orientalism is a

popular term introduced by Edward Said’s Orientalism, in which Said examines

“the processes by which the ‘Orient’ was, and continues to be, constructed in

European thinking” (Ashcroft et al, 2007, p. 153). According to Said, Orientalism

can be understood into three interdependent ideas. The first idea is Orientalism as


22

an academic discipline (Said, 1979, p. 2). This first idea is related to the use of

Orientalism for the academic purposes. The term Orientalism refers to either the

object of certain study or the scientific activity that is done by the Orientalist

researchers or scholars who have interest in the Oriental studies.

The second idea is Orientalism as a “style of thought based upon an

ontological and epistemological distinction made between the Orient and (most of

the time) the Occident” (Said, 1979, p. 2). This second idea enables one to

compare and contrast the distinction between the East and the West. However, the

distinction made between those both parties are seen in a negative and unequal

way as if the Orient is somewhat more inferior to the Occident. Said argues that

many writers begin to put forward their views “concerning the Orient, its people,

customs, “mind,” destiny, and so on” (Said, 1979, pp. 2-3). Thus, it should be

noted that the writers’ views on the Orient are not always objective, it can be

subjective regarding the different individual ideology or perspective.

The third meaning is “Orientalism as a Western style for dominating,

restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (Said, 1979, p. 3). This third

idea shows Orientalism as a “tool” of the colonizer in colonizing the colonized.

Said explains that Orientalism in this third meaning can be considered as a

“discourse by which European culture was able to manage – and even produce –

the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and

imaginatively” (Said, 1979, p. 3). From this quotation, we can learn that

Orientalism is closely related to the ideas of Eurocentrism and Othering. Tyson

(2006) provides a vast understanding on Eurocentrism and Othering.


23

Eurocentrism is “the use of European culture as the standard to which all other

cultures are negatively contrasted” (p. 420). Furthermore, Othering is defined as

the “practice of judging all who are different as less than fully human, and it

divides the world between “us” (the “civilized”) and “them” (the “others” or

“savages”)” (p. 420).

Edward Said also proposes three qualifications in dealing with Orientalism.

Firstly, the Orient is not merely an idea without corresponding to reality (Said,

1979, p. 5). Secondly, Orientalism can be understood by seeing the Occident-

Orient relationship as a relationship of power and complex hegemony (Said, 1979,

p. 5). Lastly, the concept of Orientalism is not only a concept of lies or myths,

however it is a symbol of domination of the European power toward the Orient

(Said, 1979, p. 6).

Orientalism should not be limited only to the traditional European

Orientalism which only shows the dichotomy between Europe and the Orient,

however it also includes the American Orientalism. In the transcript of an

interview arranged by Media Education Foundation in 2005, Edward Said

introduces the idea of American Orientalism. According to Said, different kinds of

Orientalism (European, French, and American Orientalism) occur because of “the

differences between different experiences of what is called the Orient” (Talreja,

2005, p. 6). Furthermore, in the interview, Said also argues that:

So I would say the difference between British and French Orientalism on

the one hand and the American experience of the Orient on the other is that

the American one is much more indirect, much more based on abstractions.

(Talreja, 2005, p. 6).


24

“Based on abstractions” here means that the subject or the view on the

Orient is very general and thus applicable to many different situations and

contexts. The significance of Orientalism for this recent study is in portraying the

dichotomy between the colonizer (the Occident) and the colonized (the Orient). In

this recent study, Orientalism is used to portray on how the Occident (White

Americans) judge the Orient (Native American Indians and Black Americans)

negatively. The idea of Eurocentrism and Othering also play important roles in

centralizing Orientalism. Furthermore, Orientalism provides a way to expose how

the characters in Indian Camp and The Boy Who Painted Christ Black may have

been established and manipulated to justify colonialism.

c. Dependency

Dependency theory was first established by Octave Mannoni, a French

psychoanalyst, by proposing two psychological complexes of the colonized

people. The colonized people suffered from “dependence” and “inferiority”

complexes.

Mannoni in his book entitled Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of

Colonization said that: “Dependence and inferiority form an alternative; the one

excludes the other. Thus, over against the inferiority complex, and more or less

symmetrically opposed to it, I shall set the dependence complex” (Mannoni, 1990,

p. 40). In overcoming their inferiority and backwardness, the colonized people

usually form a dependency complex toward their colonizer.


25

Mannoni’s work receives critics from Frantz Fanon. In his book entitled

Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon criticizes Mannoni’s ideas regarding the

dependency complex and inferiority of the colonized. In his book chapter four

entitled The So-Called Dependency Complex of the Colonized, Fanon argues that:

“The feeling of inferiority of the colonized is the correlative to the European’s

feeling of superiority. Let us have the courage to say it outright: It is the racist

who creates his inferior” (Fanon, 2008, p. 69). While Mannoni centralizes on the

pathology complex of inferiority of the colonized people, Fanon, on the other

hand, highlights the superiority of the colonizer that makes the colonized people

feel inferior.

Dependency theory is one of the theories in postcolonial study that offers

“an explanation for the continued impoverishment of colonized ‘Third World’

countries on the grounds that underdevelopment is not internally generated but a

structural condition of global capitalism itself” (Ashcroft et al, 2007, p. 59).

Further, Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin (2007) also argues that these backwarded

countries are usually previously colonized states that are exploited for the sake of

the development of their colonizer’s countries (p. 60). This exploitation results in

the retardation of many aspects of life and the dependency of the colonized

people.

Dependency theory, thus, discusses about the dependency of the colonized

toward her colonizer. The dependency theory creates master/slave relationship

between the colonizer and the colonized. The colonizer has a tendency to


26

dominate. On the other hand, the colonized suffered from a dependency complex.

The colonized cannot stand on his own, they are dependent to their colonizer.

d. Counterattack (Négritude)

Aimé Césaire constructs a counterattack toward the white domination. Aimé

Césaire and his friends, Léopold Sédar Senghor and Léon Gontran Damas,

proposed the concept of Négritude in the late 1920s (Diagne, 2018, para. 3).

Négritude is a general theory of Negro people that sought to extend the perception

of a unified Negro ‘race’ to a concept of a specifically ‘African personality’

(Ashcroft et al, 2007, p. 145). Négritude criticizes the abolishment of the black

identity. Césaire once said:

That we are black; that we were black and have a history, a history that

contains certain cultural elements of great value; and that Negroes were not,

as you put it, born yesterday, because there have been beautiful and

important black civilizations (Césaire, 1972, p. 30).

This concept encourages the subjugated to rebel against the subjugator.

Further, this concept also shows the pride of being Black that the Black has its

own identity which is different from the White, not descended of the parental

White identity. Négritude implies that every people of Negro descent have

“inalienable essential characteristics” in all aspect of life intellectually,

emotionally and physically (Ashcroft et al, 2007, p. 145).

This counterattack concept of Négritude is not merely an abstract concept or

theory, far from that, Négritude is a revolution and a concrete way of living.

Césaire once confirms that “If someone asks me what my conception of Negritude

is, I answer that above all it is a concrete rather than an abstract coming to


27

consciousness” (Césaire, 1972, p. 30). Furthermore, in a lecture at Florida

International University in Miami, Césaire declares that:

Négritude, in my eyes, is not a philosophy. Négritude is not a metaphysics.

Négritude is not a pretentious conception of the universe. It is a way of

living history within history: the history of a community whose experience

appears to be … unique, with its deportation of populations, its transfer of

people from one continent to another, its distant memories of old beliefs, its

fragments of murdered cultures. How can we not believe that all this, which

has its own coherence, constitutes a heritage? (Césaire as cited in Diagne,

2018, para. 19).

Négritude, indeed, is the foundation of rebellion toward the white

subjugation and also the basis in gaining self-esteem of being black. This theory is

a rejection for the colonization of the White toward the Black. In relation to the

theory of Négritude and this recent study, this counterattack theory is applied

extensively in discussing the relation between the White American and Black

American in the second story. The counterattack toward the white domination in

the second story is vividly reflecting the idea of Négritude.

C. Review of Related Backgrounds

1. Backgrounds of the Authors

The third objective of this study is to discover the authors’ view on

colonialism in writing their stories. Thus, the backgrounds of the authors play an

important role in accordance to their perspectives toward colonialism. M.H

Abrams, in his book entitled The Mirror and the Lamp, introduces four groups of

literary theories, namely: mimetic, pragmatic, expressive, and objective theory

(Abrams, 1971, pp. 7-29). In the expressive theory part of discussion, Abrams

argues that a literary work is actually a result of a creative process and a combined


28

product of the author’s perceptions, thoughts and feelings (Abrams, 1971, p. 22).

The expressive theory indicates that a literary work can be the representation of

the author’s ideology on certain ideas. Therefore, the backgrounds of both

authors, Ernest Hemingway and John Henrik Clarke, are important to be reviewed

in order to find out the authors’ stance toward colonialism.

a. Ernest Hemingway’s Biographical Background

Ernest Hemingway was a famous and notable White American writer of the

twentieth century. In his childhood, Hemingway and his family used to spend

summers in Michigan, which influenced him to be an outdoor enthusiast. Besides

that, Hemingway also interested in the primitive life of the Native Indian people.

Jeffrey Meyers, in his essay entitled Hemingway’s Primitivism and “Indian

Camp”, states that:

Hemingway expressed his lifelong attraction to primitive people- for the

values of northern Michigan over those of Oak Park-in stories about Indians

and Negroes, boxers and bullfighters, Africans and Spaniards, and about

tough, stoical heroes like Harry Morgan and Santiago (Meyers, 1988, p.

215).

Hemingway has many stories that narrate about the Indian people, some of

them namely: Indian Camp, The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife, Ten Indians, and

Fathers and Sons. The Indians characters are always depicted as backwarded and

inferior in justifying the colonial domination. Furthermore, Meyers argues that

Indian Camp shows Hemingway’s ambiguous attitude toward primitivism

(Meyers, 1988, p. 211). Hemingway’s primitivism is closely-related to the

primitivism key concept in the postcolonial study. This concept often creates an

unequal comparison between the primitive and the civilized.


29

This discrimination lends itself too easily to unfounded and often pejorative

comparisons of the ‘value’ of different cultures. Thus African or Pacific

Islander or Native American Indian or Australian Aboriginal art was often

described as ‘primitive’ (implying a savage crudity and simplicity, if also a

welcome freshness and a child-like vision) because its conventions did not

match those of the dominant European tradition whose values were

considered to establish the norms of civilized and mature art (see

universalism, savage). Even the most positive descriptions based on the

category of the primitive are in danger of exoticizing these cultures and

othering them (Ashcroft et al, 2007, p. 179).

From the quotation above, we can learn that the White colonialists who

encounter the primitive people often derogate them to assert their Western

superiority. Therefore, by studying Hemingway’s primitivism, it can be

considered that it is possible for Hemingway to uphold the seeds of the colonialist

ideology in writing his Indian Camp.

Richard Fantina in her book entitled Ernest Hemingway: Machismo and

Masochism in chapter 6, Hemingway, Race, and Colonialism, states that:

Despite a few mild remarks acknowledging the contradiction of his position

concerning colonialism, such as “[w]e are the intruders” (GHOA 285), and

confessing that he wants “to know more about this country than I had any

right to know” (TAFL 39), Hemingway accepts the imperial patronage and

never seriously questions the legitimacy of British colonialism. Susan Gubar

notes that in The Garden of Eden, “presenting a portrait of the artist as

colonizer, Hemingway admits with some guilt his reliance on an Otherness

with which he cannot abide” (Fantina, 2005, p. 133).

From the quotation above, we can obtain Hemingway’s view on colonialism

as a colonialist. Hemingway does not oppose colonialism but accepts it. Fantina

further argues that Hemingway’s apolitical position regarding the colonization of

the colonized people is a position that tacitly endorses colonialism (Fantina, 2005,

p. 134).


30

b. John Henrik Clarke’s Biographical Background

John Henrik Clarke was a famous Pan-Africanist writer and also expert in

the African American field of study. Clarke was considered as one of the most

vocal Pan-Africanists who often put forward critiques against the Jim Crow

practice and racial discrimination toward Black Americans. He had written many

autobiographical articles that show his stance toward colonialism. Some of the

articles are A Search For Identity, Portrait of a Liberation Scholar, and From SBA

to SIA: A Great And Mighty Walk. All of these articles declare his opposition

toward colonialism as an anti-colonialist.

The Boy Who Painted Christ Black is the most famous short story of John

Henrik Clarke. This story is closely related to the background and ideology of

Clarke himself. Clarke explains his first experience that triggers his view toward

white colonization:

What set me in motion was when I learned to teach the junior class in

Sunday school, and couldn’t find the image of my own people in the Bible.

They were nowhere to be found in the Sunday school lessons. I began to

suspect that something had gone wrong in history. I see Moses going down

to Ethiopia where he marries Zipporah, Moses’ wife, and she turns white. I

see people going to the land of Kush, which is the present day Sudan, and

they got white. I see people going to Punt, which is present day Somalia,

and they got white. What are all these white people doing in Afrika? There

were no Afrikans in Afrika, in the Sunday school lesson (Person-Lynn,

2014, p. 74).

Clarke questions the abolishment of the black identity due to the white

domination. He is unable to discover any single images of his own people in the

(White) Bible. Clarke claims that “the most disastrous of all White colonizations

is that they colonized the image of God” (Person-Lynn, 2014, p. 98).


31

John Henrik Clarke wrote The Boy Who Painted Christ Black as one of his

“tools” in counterattacking the White colonization. The story represents many

ideas of anti-colonialism. Furthermore, the story also reflects Clarke’s thought

about the self-pride of being Black as stated in the quotation below:

Every people on earth has a right and a responsibility to love itself and to

protect itself. We have to stop flinching from the fact that once we love

ourselves, people will call us separatists and call us racists. We have to

restore to Afrikan people the independence, the dignity and the connection

that was destroyed by slavery and colonialism. Then we have to move

beyond that and build a new world society for ourselves, and subsequently

for all people. Use the essential selfishness of survival before you think of

all people. Think of yourself. It is from that base of having taken care of

yourself that you can look out and discover what you’re going to do for the

rest of the world (Person-Lynn, 2014, p. 96).

2. Racial Discrimination from the Whites toward Indian Americans

Ernest Hemingway’s Indian Camp is set during the time when the Native

Americans, the Indians, were living segregated from the White Americans. This

short story tacitly represents the colonial system in America during the 19th

century. There was a great persecution from the Whites toward the Native Indians

during that time. The Indian were living under the oppression of the Whites. The

oppression occurs due to “the clash of cultures between red man and white”

(Billard, 1974, p. 311). In the very first encounter of the white with the Indian, the

seeds of colonialism have already emerged. The ways on how the white men see

the Indian as subhuman reflects the idea on colonialism.

The white men who came afterward on voyages of “discovery,” finding a

countryside so seemingly unadulterated by man’s presence, could only

conclude that the New World was but casually occupied – and by a race

more brutish than human. Certainly, they felt, there was no serious moral

obstacle to the displacement of that race (Billard, 1974, p. 312).


32

In 1830, there is an action called Removal Act. This removal act is a policy

to relocate the Native Indian to the west, and it is often done by forces.

The 1830 Removal Act was followed rapidly by other unilateral measures:

creation of an Indian Affairs department with an overwhelming

bureaucracy, assumption of power in the internal affairs of the tribe,

granting to U. S. courts the right to supersede tribal authority in cases

involving a white man. Treaties which in the early years of Indian-white

association had expressed mutual friendship and trust were now succeeded

by treaties serving primarily as instruments for separating the Indian from

his land (Billard, 1974, p. 329).

The Indian people are removed from their land and placed in the

reservations. The reservations are represented in Ernest Hemingway’s short story

that is so called “Indian Camp”.

3. Racial Discrimination from the Whites toward African Americans

John Henrik Clarke’s The Boy Who Painted Christ Black is set in the 1940s

Georgia, a place and time that are full of racial discrimination faced by African

Americans during the American Jim Crow era.

Jim Crow was an era in which whites, mostly but not always in the South,

used methods sometimes legal, sometimes illegal, often deadly, but always

immoral, to maintain political and cultural domination over blacks. Blacks

were reduced to second-class citizenship. They were denied the right to

vote, kept separate from whites in most phases of life, and in general,

treated as if they were subhuman, in an effort to justify white supremacy

and keep the black population under tight control (The Truth About Jim

Crow, 2014, p. 1).

In this era, the African Americans were treated badly and they have the

unequal living compare to the Whites. There was much segregation in many

aspects of life.

Racial segregation was the very heart of Jim Crow, and the Jim Crow era

was marked by the adoption of explicitly racist laws intended to keep blacks


33

and whites away from each other everywhere from ballparks to graveyards.

Black access to public accommodations like restaurants, buses and trains

was restricted, and blacks were forced into separate (and inferior) schools

(The Truth About Jim Crow, 2014, p. 6).

Jim Crow era is the period of the terrible racial discrimination which is full

of violence and cruelty. John Henrik Clarke is successful in portraying the Jim

Crow era in this story. In The Boy Who Painted Christ Black, we may find one of

the aspects of Jim Crow, which is school segregation. The story is set in a school

for colored children.

D. Theoretical Framework

There are five theories that are applied to answer the research questions of

this study. They are theory on Characterization and four theories on

Postcolonialism, namely: Binarism/Binary Opposition, Orientalism, Dependency,

and Counterattack (Négritude).

The first theory on Characterization is used to answer the first problem

formulation of this study. Theory of Characterization is very useful to analyze the

ways on how the authors present the position of the characters in both of the

stories. By applying Murphy’s six ways on characterization namely: personal

description, character as seen by another, speech, reactions, thoughts, and

mannerisms, the researcher are able to identify the different characters’ position

from those two stories, e.g., different position between the White Americans

(Nick, Nick’s father, Uncle George) and Indians (Indian woman and her husband)

in the first story and White Americans (Prof Danual) and Black Americans

(George Du Vaul and Aaron Crawford) in the second story.


34

Besides the theory of Characterization, there are also four postcolonial

theories applied for this study. The postcolonial theories are utilized in discussing

various ideas of colonizer and colonized reflected from the characters’ position.

The first applied postcolonial theory is Binarism or Binary Opposition. This

theory enables the researcher to get a clear view on the dichotomy between

colonizer and colonized as the main focus of this study, for example the

dichotomy between the White doctor as the colonizer and the Indian woman as

the colonized in Indian Camp and the dichotomy between the White supervisor as

the colonizer and the Black principal as the colonized in The Boy Who Painted

Christ Black.

Secondly, the theory of Orientalism is used to identify “the processes by

which the ‘Orient’ was, and continues to be, constructed in European thinking”

(Ashcroft et al, 2007, p. 153). Orientalism is important to provide a vivid

portrayal on how the colonizer (White Americans) see or judge the colonized

people (Indians and Black Americans) negatively.

Thirdly, theory of Dependency is also employed for this study. Dependency

theory contributes in depicting the dependency of the colonized (Indians and

Negroes) toward their colonizer (White Americans) in the story. Dependency

theory is useful to show the master/slave relationship between the colonizer and

the colonized.

Lastly, theory on counterattack or Négritude also plays an important role for

this study. Counterattack theory (Négritude) is used to show the rebellion of the


35

colonized toward their colonizer. By applying this theory, the researcher can

identify the rebellion of the Black Americans toward their colonizer, the White

American in the second story.


36

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

A. Object of the Study

The objects of this study are two short stories written by different writers.

The first short story is entitled Indian Camp by Ernest Hemingway, a 1954

American Nobel Prize of Literature winner, one of the most famous and

influential writers of the twentieth century. This story was first published in 1924

in a famous literary magazine; The Transatlantic Review. In 1925, the story was

republished in In Our Times, Hemingway’s best collection of short stories. Indian

Camp has received considerable admiration. It also has been frequently reviewed,

discussed, and studied by many critics. Ernest Hemingway himself even rated this

story as one of the best stories in his collection. In his selected letters, Hemingway

comments:

Your rating of I.O.T stories very interesting. The way I like them as it seems

now, without re-reading is Grade I (Big 2 Hearted. Indian Camp. 1st

paragraph and last paragraph of Out of Season. Soldier’s Home) Hell I can’t

group them (Baker, 2003, p. 180).

Indian Camp narrates about three White Americans, Nick, his Uncle George

and his father who are going to an Indian camp. Nick’s father, who is a doctor, is

about to help an Indian woman who has been in a painful labor for two days in

giving birth. This four-page-short story provides a vast of interpretation. Many

interesting ideas on colonialism can be found in these four pages. The story

successfully portrays the oppression of the Whites (colonizer) toward the Indians

(colonized).


37

The second object of study is a short story entitled The Boy Who Painted

Christ Black by John Henrik Clarke, a notable Pan-Africanist writer. He is also an

American historian, professor, and a vanguard in the field of Africana studies in

academia. Dr. John Henrik Clarke was awarded the Carter G. Woodson Scholars

Medallion from the Association for the Study of African American Life and

History in 1995. In 2002, Molefi Kete Asante, a famous African-American

professor, listed John Henrik Clarke as one of the Greatest African Americans in

his book entitled 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia.

Clarke’s most famous story, The Boy Who Painted Christ Black was

published in Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, an academic journal by the

National Urban League of the United States. The story was published in

September 1940, Vol. 18, No. 9, page 264-266 of the journal. “This story has been

translated into more than a dozen languages” (Finkelmen & Wintz, 2009, p. 424).

It was also made into a drama film in 1996 entitled America's Dream and won

NAACP Image Award 1997 for the nomination of Outstanding Television

Movie/Mini-Series. This drama film also has a great contribution to raise the

awareness to fight against racism.

The Boy Who Painted Christ Black is set in a segregated school for colored

children in Columbus, Georgia. It narrates about Aaron Crawford, a smart black

boy who creates a staggering piece of painting. He painted Christ black as a

birthday present for his teacher. This painting generates a big problem when it is

discovered by the White supervisor. This story depicts a huge discrimination from

the White toward the Black African-American. The story also represents the


38

notion of colonialism which shows the subjugation of the colonizer toward their

colonized and the rebellion against the colonization.

B. Approach of the Study

This study applies postcolonial approach to discuss and analyze the

problems. One significant idea of postcolonial criticism is to “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). Thus, postcolonial criticism centers on the discussions about the struggle of

the people whose culture is dominated by another culture.

According to Peter Barry’s Beginning Theory (2009, pp. 187-189), there are

four distinguished characteristics of postcolonial criticism. The first characteristic

is the rejection on the depictions of the non-European as exotic or immoral

‘Other’. The second characteristic concerns about language. “Some post-colonial

writers have concluded that the colonisers' language is permanently tainted, and

that to write in it involves a crucial acquiescence in colonial structures” (Barry,

2009, p. 188). The third characteristic is the consideration on identity whether it is

doubled, hybrid, or unstable. The last characteristic is the emphasis on ‘cross-

cultural’ interactions.

The positions of the characters in both of the stories, Indian Camp and The

Boy Who Painted Christ Black, are interestingly differentiated into two distinct

groups, colonizer and colonized. Synchronously, postcolonial criticism consists of

numbers of theories that discuss about the dichotomy between colonizer and


39

colonized. Some of the theories are Binarism, Orientalism, Dependency, and

Counterattack (Négritude). Thus, these four theories on postcolonialism are

applied in this recent study in order to answer the second problem formulation,

that is to find out the ideas of colonizer and colonized in both of the stories.

As the main objective of this study is to find out the ideas of colonizer and

colonized reflected in the positions of the characters, postcolonialism becomes the

most suitable guidance in this regard. The reason why the researcher chooses

postcolonial approach in discussing this study is because postcolonial approach

provides vast and comprehensive concepts about colonizer and colonized.

Furthermore, postcolonial approach also provides many theories which are well-

matched with the focus of this study. For these reasons, postcolonial criticism is

the most suitable approach for this recent study in order to provide satisfying

elaborations.

C. Method of the Study

This recent study is a library research since all the data are obtained from

documents derived from both online and offline in answering the formulated

research questions. The primary sources of this study are two short stories by two

different writers, namely Ernest Hemingway’s Indian Camp and John Henrik

Clarke’s The Boy Who Painted Christ Black. The secondary sources are taken

from relevant journal articles, essays, and books related to the topic of this study.

Some of the important sources that support this study are Understanding Unseen:

An Introduction to English Poetry and English Novel, for Overseas Students by

M.J Murphy, Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts (2nd Ed) by Ashcroft,


40

Griffiths, and Tiffin, Edward Said’s Orientalism, Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on

Colonialism, and Peter Barry’s Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary

and Cultural Theory.

The followings were the steps that the researcher took in conducting this

research.

Firstly, two objects of study, Indian Camp and The Boy Who Painted Christ

Black, were closely read. When reading the two stories, the researcher concerned

on the characters, especially on how the characters treat one another in order to

identify their roles as colonizer and colonized. Thus, some notes were taken

accordingly in order to highlight some important information.

Secondly, as the main focus of this study was to identify the ideas of

colonizer and colonized in the stories, a hypothesis was proposed. The hypothesis

was that both of the stories represent the dichotomy between colonizer and

colonized and this could be acquired from the characters’ positions. Thus, three

research questions were formulated. The first research question dealt with the

position of the characters in the stories. The second research question stressed on

the ideas of colonizer and colonized. The third research question discussed the

authors’ view on colonialism. Since it discussed on colonizer and colonized,

postcolonialism then was chosen as the most suitable approach for the study.

Thirdly, some related studies were reviewed. The reviewed related studies

included theses and journal articles which have either the same topic or similar

topic with this recent study. The related studies were very useful in terms of

providing more perspectives and insights in scrutinizing this recent study.


41

Fourthly, some related theories were studied. This was done in order to find

out suitable theories for supporting the study. Therefore, theory on

Characterization and some postcolonial theories were studied since they were the

most suitable tools to analyze the study. The postcolonial theories are Binarism,

Orientalism, Dependency, and Négritude.

Fifthly, the researcher started to answer the aforementioned problem

formulations. In answering the first question, the researcher applied theory on

characterization. The researcher collected the evidences and discussed the

quotations from the stories. For the second question, the researcher examined the

position of the characters by using some postcolonial theories in order to find out

the ideas of colonizer and colonized reflected from the characters’ positions. For

the third question, the researcher discovered the authors’ view on colonialism

based on the ideas of colonizer and colonized found in both of the stories.

Lastly, the researcher drew conclusions of the whole analysis. This final

step provided a cogent discussion of key findings and summarized the whole

results of the analysis.


42

CHAPTER IV

ANALYSIS

In this chapter, the three aforementioned research questions in the first

chapter are answered. The theories presented in chapter two are applied to answer

the research questions. This chapter consists of three parts. The first part discusses

the position of the characters in both of the stories. This part engages the theory of

characterization to identify the authors’ ways in presenting the position of the

characters. The second part explains the characters’ position in reflecting the ideas

of colonizer and colonized. By applying some postcolonial theories, various ideas

of colonizer and colonized reflected in the characters’ position are discussed in

this second part. The last part presents the authors’ view on colonialism. By

scrutinizing the ideas of colonizer and colonized found in both of the stories, the

authors’ view on colonialism can be identified vividly.

A. The Position of the Characters in the Stories

Ernest Hemingway and John Henrik Clarke present the position of the

characters in both of the stories using many different ways. However, both of the

authors always situate the characters in a dichotomy between colonizer and

colonized. The dichotomy is presented in the table below:

Table of Dichotomy between Colonizer and Colonized

Literary Works Colonizer Colonized

Indian Camp The Whites: Nick, Uncle The Indians: a young


43

George, and Nick’s father

(the doctor).

Indian woman and her

husband, two young

Indians men who row the

Whites toward the Indian

Camp, an old Indian

woman who helps the

doctor in boiling the

water.

The Boy Who Painted

Christ Black

The White: Professor

Danual (the supervisor).

The Negroes: Aaron

Crawford (The boy who

painted Christ black),

George Du Vaul (the

Principal), Aaron’s

teacher, The narrator

(Aaron’s friend).

In the first story, the author presents the characters into two groups, the

Indians represented by a young Indian woman and her husband, two young

Indians, and an old Indian woman as the colonized and the Whites represented by

Nick, Uncle George, and the doctor, as the colonizer. In the second story, the

author also presents the characters into two categories, the Negroes represented by

Aaron Crawford, George Du Vaul, Aaron’s teacher, and the narrator as the

colonized and the White represented by Professor Danual, as the colonizer.


44

The dichotomy between the colonizer and colonized can be identified

vividly by applying Murphy’s theory of characterization. Theory of

characterization can reveal the authors’ ways in presenting the position of the

characters within both of the stories. Murphy provides nine ways in analyzing the

characters, six of them are used in this recent study, namely: personal description,

character as seen by another, speech, reactions, thoughts, and mannerisms. By

using six of it, the researcher thus divides this part discussion into six sub-parts of

characterization between colonizer and colonized.

1. The Personal Description of Colonizer and Colonized

Based on Murphy, the first way to describe the character is by personal

description. Thus, at first, the researcher describes the physical descriptions of the

boy who painted Christ black, Aaron Crawford (as colonized), and the white

supervisor, Professor Danual (as colonizer):

Only Aaron Crawford wasn’t white; quite the contrary. His skin was so

solid black that it glowed, reflecting an inner virtue that was strange, and

beyond my comprehension. In many ways he looked like something that

was awkwardly put together. Both his nose and his lips seemed a trifle too

large for his face. To say he was ugly would be unjust and to say he was

handsome would be gross exaggeration. Truthfully, I could never make up

my mind about him. Sometimes he looked like something out of a book of

ancient history…looked as if he was left over from that magnificent era

before the machine age came and marred the earth’s natural beauty

(Clarke, 1940, p. 1).

From this quotation, the author gives us a vivid physical description of

Aaron Crawford, the boy who painted Christ black, through the eyes of the

narrator “I” in the story. The narrator is supposedly also a black boy since she/he


45

is one of Aaron’s friends. The narrator gives us details on Aaron’s skin-color,

nose and lips. The narrator also gives comment on Aaron’s appearance.

In this first quotation, Aaron Crawford’s skin color is not only told as

“black”, but also specified as “solid black”. The phrase “solid black” wants to

show the self-acceptance and self-esteem of the colonized people in order to be

proud of being black. The chosen adjective “solid” has strong and firm

connotations. According to Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (New

Edition), the adjective “solid” has many definitions. Some of them that most

represent the connotations are:

FIRM/HARD hard or firm, with a fixed shape, and not a liquid or gas

STRONGLY MADE strong and well made

GOOD AND LONG-LASTING a solid achievement or solid work is of

real, practical, and continuing value

DEPENDABLE someone or something that is solid can be depended on or

trusted (2009, p. 1674).

Besides it holds a strong and firm connotation, the narrator also tells that “it

glowed, reflecting an inner virtue”. This phrase, when it is rephrased can become

“it shined, reflecting the goodness of the colonized people”. In the other word, this

phrase wants to stress on the goodness, the good nature, of the colonized.

Furthermore, the narrator also says that Aaron Crawford “looked like

something out of a book of ancient history…looked as if he was left over from

that magnificent era before the machine age came and marred the earth’s natural

beauty” (Clarke, 1940, p. 1). This quotation implies a critique toward colonization

that has ruined the good nature of the colonized’s world. Aaron Crawford is


46

described as a remnant of the colonized’s golden age before the colonizer comes

and destroys both the lives and the cultures of the colonized. He is considered as a

leftover purity in the era of disruption.

Besides the description of the black as the colonized, the description of the

white man as the colonizer also can be obtained from the story:

He was a tall white man with solid gray hair that made his lean face seem

even paler than it actually was. His eyes were the clearest blue I have ever

seen, They were the only life-like things about him (Clarke, 1940, p. 2).

This second quotation shows the physical description of the white

supervisor, Professor Danual. The narrator tells us the physical details of this

white man include his build, his skin-color, his hair, his face and his eyes. The

description can be regarded as the way on how the colonized people look and

comment on their colonizer. “His lean face seem even paler than it actually was”,

the adjective “paler” here has a negative connotation. According to Encarta

Webster’s College Dictionary (2nd Ed), the word pale is defined as:

Unusually light in skin complexion because of illness, shock, or worry; to

become whiter or lose brilliance; to be or become less important,

remarkable, or intense, especially in comparison with something more

important or serious (p. 1045).

From this explanation, the contradiction between the adjective “solid black”

and “paler” is shown vividly. The adjective “solid black” has a positive

connotation, while the adjective “paler” has a negative connotation. Furthermore,

the narrator also said that the blue eyes of the white supervisor were “the only

life-like things about him”. It means that the colonized people judge their


47

colonizer lack essences of life. In other words, the colonizer is considered having

the physical appearance of death. Thus, the colonizer is resembled to death.

Both of the quotations above are the description given by the narrator “I” in

the story. As the researcher has stated before that the narrator is also a black boy

since she/he is one of Aaron friends, therefore the description of the Aaron

Crawford and Professor Danual can be considered as a description of the

colonized by the colonized and a description of the colonizer by the colonized.

2. Colonizer and Colonized Revealed by Character as Seen by Another

The second characterization method proposed by Murphy in analyzing the

characters in the story is character as seen by another. The eyes and opinions of

another character in the story are very important to reveal the position of the

certain characters in both of the stories. By using this method, we can get an

obvious different position between colonizer and colonized.

In this story, the ways on how the narrator “I” and the teacher comment on

Aaron Crawford give us the idea about the unequal position between the White

and Black people.

He was the smartest boy in the Muskogee County School - for colored

children. Everybody even remotely connected with the school knew this.

The teacher always pronounced his name with profound gusto as she

pointed him out as the ideal student. Once I heard her say: “If he were white

he might, someday, become President.” Only Aaron Crawford wasn’t white;

quite the contrary. His skin was so solid black that it glowed, reflecting an

inner virtue that was strange, and beyond my comprehension (Clarke, 1940,

p. 1).


48

By reading this quotation, we can easily recognize the superiority of the

White people. The narrator, “I”, gives us a clear description of Aaron Crawford.

Aaron is considered as a smart boy. Not only smart, but he is also the smartest boy

in a school for colored children. His teacher is very proud of him. She regards

Aaron as an ideal student. “If he were white he might, someday, become

President,” this short quotation implies that it is impossible for a black American

to be a president at that time, during the American Jim Crow era.

The Boy Who Painted Christ Black is set in the American Jim Crow era.

This era is considered as “one of the ugliest and most shameful chapters in

American history” (The Truth About Jim Crow, 2014, p. 1). There was a huge

racial discrimination toward the Black people and it was dehumanizing. The black

is portrayed as the “Other”, who does not have the same chance as the “Self” for

presidency. Thus, the quotation above wants to state that no matter how smart a

person was, she/he would never be a president just simply because she/he was

black, not white.

Not only they did not have the chance for presidency, the colonized black

American was also, even worse, denied to vote in election. They were “oppressed

and deprived of their constitutional rights” (The Truth About Jim Crow, 2014, p.

3). This voter denial was applied in order to maintain white political dominance. It

also highlighted the inferiority of the black. The voter denial was usually done by

violence.

Blacks who tried to vote were threatened, beaten, and killed. Their families

were also harmed. Sometimes their homes were burned down. Often, they


49

lost their jobs or were thrown off their farms. Whites used violence to

intimidate blacks and prevent them from even thinking about voting. Still,

some blacks passed the requirements to vote and took the risk. Some whites

used violence to punish those “uppity” people and show other blacks what

would happen to them if they voted (The Truth About Jim Crow, 2014, p.

9).

From this quotation we may understand the great burden of the black

American in that era. The intimidation toward them was huge and horrible. They

were neither having the same chance as the white, nor being treated as equal.

Aaron in the story is said to be the smartest boy in the school for colored

children. This statement actually can be interpreted ironically that Aaron is a

smartest boy only in the school for colored children, but not in the other school

(including schools for white children). Besides the ironic interpretation, we can

also acquire the issue of school segregation in the story. The various segregations

between white and black, includes the school segregation, are the “very heart”

(The Truth About Jim Crow, 2014, p. 6) and soul of Jim Crow era. In the book

The Truth About Jim Crow, there are two intimidating laws about school

segregation stated:

Schools: “Separate rooms [shall] be provided for the teaching of pupils of

African descent, and [when] said rooms are provided, such pupils may not

be admitted to the school rooms occupied and used by pupils of Caucasian

or other descent.” (New Mexico law)

Schools: “[The County Board of Education] shall provide schools of two

kinds; those for white children and those for colored children.” (Texas law)

(2014, p. 6).

From all the explanation in this sub part, it can be concluded that Aaron

Crawford is characterized as a colonized. The position of Aaron Crawford as a


50

colonized is depicted clearly from the description given by the narrator “I” and the

comment from Aaron’s teacher.

3. Colonizer and Colonized Revealed by Speech

Another way in portraying the character is by speech. The researcher can

identify the position of certain characters in the story by observing their speech.

The conversation in which the characters are involved can also give us clue to

their position. Moreover, the way on how the characters speak out their opinion

also indicates their different position between one to another. We can distinguish

the position of the characters from the conversation between Nick and his father

in Indian Camp:

Just then the woman cried out. 'Oh, Daddy, can't you give her something to

make her stop screaming?' asked Nick.

'No. I haven't any anesthetic,' his father said. 'But her screams are not

important. I don't hear them because they are not important' (Hemingway,

2003, p. 68).

From the quotation above, we learn that there is an Indian woman who is in

an extreme pain for delivering her baby. Nick in the story shows his attention or

sympathy toward the woman. He asks his father to “make her stop screaming”.

Screaming can be considered as a common reaction whenever someone endures a

great pain. Thus, besides showing his sympathy, the way on how Nick tries to

make the Indian woman stop screaming also can be considered as a role of the

colonizer to “shut-up” his colonized. Instead of embracing the scream as a

common reaction of human suffering, Nick is showing his unwillingness to cope


51

with other’s pain. The young Nick, thus, holds the seeds of colonizer inside

himself.

Besides Nick, we can also distinguish the position of other characters.

Nick’s father is portrayed as the oppressor while the Indian woman is the

oppressed. Nick’s father does not care about the pain faced by the woman. He just

simply answers that the woman’s screams are not important and continued his

crude operation on the Indian woman. It is very unusual for a doctor to ignore his

patient’s critical condition, especially whenever a patient is screaming out loud

enduring a great pain. The indifference of Nick’s father depicts his position as the

colonizer.

Moreover, in the story Nick’s father repeats twice that the “Indian woman’s

screams are not important”. By repeating these embittered phrases twice, Nick’s

father wants to strengthen his oppression toward his colonized. Ironically, the

colonized Indian woman remains passive and helpless. She even does not produce

a word and speaks up to the doctor. She can only screams encountering the

doctor’s unjust treatment. This situation shows the Indian woman’s position as a

colonized who cannot speak.

Furthermore, Uncle George in the story also shows his role as the oppressor

toward his oppressed Indian.

Later when he started to operate Uncle George and three Indian men held

the woman still. She bit Uncle George on the arm and Uncle George said,

'Damn squaw bitch!' and the young Indian who had rowed Uncle George

over laughed at him (Hemingway, 2003, p. 68).


52

Uncle George’s swearing “Damn squaw bitch!” want to show his

superiority toward the Indian woman. George is depicted as the colonizer. He

shouts out the curse to the woman in order to show his superiority over the Indian.

Here, the woman is portrayed to be doubly-oppressed, as an Indian and as a

woman. According to Encarta Webster’s College Dictionary Second Edition, the

word “squaw” is defined as “an offensive term for a Native Indian American

woman or wife” (2005, p. 1400), next the word “bitch” is defined as “a highly

offensive term that deliberately insults a woman’s temperament” (2005, p. 142).

By learning these definitions, we can draw conclusion that Uncle George shows

his real oppression toward the Indian woman. Uncle George can be considered as

a racist and also a sexist. Both of these qualities signify Uncle George’s role as a

colonizer who tries to intimidate his colonized.

Other speech that also represents the position of the character can be found

in the second story, The Boy Who Painted Christ Black. What the White

supervisor says reflect his position as the colonizer.

The supervisor was behind me. I heard him murmur to himself: “Damn, if

niggers ain’t getting smarter” (Clarke, 1940, p. 3).

The white supervisor positions himself higher (more civilized) than the

Negro. He puts himself in the higher level than the Negro. Thus, he needs to

civilize the “barbaric” Negro. In the quotation, we can learn that he was very

angry when he discovers the Negroes do not seem to be getting smarter.


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4. Colonizer and Colonized Revealed by Reactions

The next method in identifying the position of the characters is by studying

how the characters reacts to the situations or events in the story. In Indian Camp,

the white doctor, Nick’s father treats his patient, the Indian woman indifferently.

The doctor does not really care about the critical condition faced by the Indian

woman in delivering her baby. He keeps explaining to Nick about the procedures

in making an operation, and ignoring the woman who is waiting for his help.

'Listen to me. What she is going through is called being in labour. The baby

wants to be born and she wants it to be born. All her muscles are trying to

get the baby born. That is what is happening when she screams.'

(Hemingway, 2004, p. 68).

The woman is in a great suffering and she is waiting for the doctor to help

her. Nevertheless, the doctor does not take notice on it. This reaction depicts the

position of the doctor as the colonizer who treat the colonized apathetically.

Further, Nick’s father continues to explain to his son about the operation without

considering the woman who needs a surgical operation soon:

'You see, Nick, babies are supposed to be born head first, but sometimes

they're not. When they're not they make a lot of trouble for everybody.

Maybe I'll have to operate on this lady. We'll know in a little while.'


The apathetic reactions of the white doctor imply his indifference toward his

colonized patient. The frivolous or trifling talks are given, instead of a quick

surgery performed toward the suffering Indian woman. Furthermore, in the story

the author also describes the slow reactions done by Nick’s father.

'Those must boil,' he said, and began to scrub his hands in the basin of hot

water with a cake of soap he had brought from the camp. Nick watched his


54

father's hands scrubbing each other with the soap. While his father washed

his hands very carefully and thoroughly, he talked.

When he was satisfied with his hands he went in and went to work.


The Indian woman has been trying hard to have her baby or two days.

However, the doctor just stalls for time and leaves the woman in pain. He washes

his hands very slowly and thoroughly until he is satisfied with them. The white

doctor’s abandonment toward the helpless Indian woman signifies his position as

the colonizer who neglects his colonized.

The other proof that shows the reactions in presenting the characters is also

found in the second story. In the following incident from The Boy Who Painted

Christ Black, the white supervisor was searching the boy’s painting, and he was

very shocked to find out Aaron’s picture.

Suddenly his face underwent a strange rejuvenation. His clear blue eyes

flickered in astonishment. He was looking at Aaron Crawford’s picture and

stood gazing fixedly at it, curious and undecided, as though it were a

dangerous animal that would rise at any moment and spread destruction

(Clarke, 1940, p. 2).

The reaction of the white supervisor when he discovered the picture of

Christ painted black gives us a clue of his position. The white supervisor situates

himself in the higher position than the Negro. He is very sure that Christ should

have to be white, therefore, he is very surprised and worried to find out the picture

of Christ painted black. The white supervisor considers Aaron’s picture as “a

dangerous animal that would rise at any moment and spread destruction”. Instead

of as an art work, he considers the picture as a harmful threat. The white

supervisor considers the picture as seeds of rebellion from the black toward the


55

white. Thus, we can say that the white supervisor indeed positions himself as a

colonizer who resists any art work from his colonized which is considered to be

harmful for his position. Any different ideas or beliefs of the colonized that come

from outside the colonizer’s acknowledgement are certainly regarded as menaces

by the colonizer.

Besides the position of the colonizer, the position of the colonized is also

shown through reactions in The Boy Who Painted Christ Black. In his teacher’s

birthday, Aaron Crawford painted a picture as the present for his teacher. This

sensational present is a picture of Christ painted in black. When Aaron’s teacher

receives and sees the picture, she is very shocked.

Already the teacher sensed that Aaron had a present for her. Still smiling, he

placed it on her desk and began to help her unwrap it. As the last piece of

paper fell form the large frame, the teacher jerked her hand away from it

suddenly, her eyes flickering unbelievingly. Amidst the rigid tension, her

heavy breathing was distinct and frightening (Clarke, 1940, p. 1).

The reactions performed by the teacher portray her position. She jerks her

hand away from the picture at once and blinks her eyes unbelievingly of what she

has seen. Further, she is frightened as she breathes heavily. All of these reactions

are in accordance with what Aimé Césaire, a postcolonial critic, has mentioned in

his interview with René Depestre:

The atmosphere in which we lived, an atmosphere of assimilation in which

Negro people were ashamed of themselves has great importance. We lived

in an atmosphere of rejection, and we developed an inferiority complex

(Depestre as cited in Sarwoto, 2004, p. 25).

The teacher’s reactions show her inferiority. The assimilation of white value

toward the black that Christ should be white is adopted successfully by the


56

teacher. She is startled and undecided when she receives Aaron’s painting.

Further, she is not brave enough to look closely to the picture. She even does not

look, she only takes a glimpse. “Occasionally stealing quick glances at the large

picture propped on her desk, as though doing so were forbidden amusement”

(Clarke, 1940, p. 1). Thus, by looking at the teacher’s reactions, we can say that

Aaron’s teacher positions herself as the colonized.

5. Colonizer and Colonized Revealed by Thoughts

Besides reactions, thought is another way in presenting the character in the

story. This method describes a character through what the character is thinking

about. In the second story, Aaron states the reason why he painted Christ black.

“It was like this,” he said, placing full emphasis on every word. “You see,

my uncle who lives in New York teaches classes in Negro History at the

Y.M.C.A. When he visited us last year he was telling me about the many

great black folks who have made history. He said black folks were once the

most powerful people on earth. When I asked him about Christ, he said no

one ever proved whether he was black or white. Somehow a feeling came

over me that he was a black man, ‘cause he was so kind and forgiving,

kinder than I have ever seen white people be. So, when I painted his picture

I couldn’t help but paint it as I thought it was” (Clarke, 1940, pp. 1-2).

From this quotation, we learn that Aaron painted Christ black just simply

because he thinks Jesus Christ is similar to a black man who is so kind and

forgiving. Aaron compares the quality of black and white people. He considers

black people as kind and forgiving, kinder than any white people he ever seen.

From Aaron’s thought, we can then identify how the black people see their

colonizer through their position as the colonized people. The way Aaron painted

Christ black shows the fight back of the colonized people toward their colonizer.


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6. Colonizer and Colonized Revealed by Mannerisms

The last method used in identifying the position of the characters in the

story is mannerisms. The characters’ ways of behaving and their attitudes can give

us a clue of their position in both of the stories. In Indian Camp, the Whites and

the Indians’ ways of behaving and attitudes reflect the ideas of colonizer and

colonized.

Nick and his father got in the stern of the boat and the Indians shoved it off

and one of them got in to row. Uncle George sat in the stern of the camp

rowboat. The young Indian shoved the camp boat off and got in to row

Uncle George. The Indian who was rowing them was working very hard


In this quotation, we can learn the different positions between two parties.

The Whites are represented as the master/boss; on the contrary, the Indians are the

servant. Nick, Nick’s father and Uncle George just sit in the stern of the boat,

whie the Indians, however, work very hard. They have to shove and row the boat

to their destination. By studying this quotation, then we can understand the ideas

of master-slave relation that the author aimed to show the reader.

The master-slave relation is also shown by the attitudes and manners

performed by the white (represented by Nick, Nick’s father, and Uncle George)

and the Indian (represented by a young Indian woman, her husband, the two

Indians, an old Indian woman). In the story, the verbal communication only takes

place among the white. The overall conversation in the story only takes place

between Nick and his father. The Indians, however, remain silent or being

“silenced”. They barely even produce a single word. The Indians can only scream,


58

motion, and smile. “Nick’s father ordered some water to be put on the stove” and

“The woman in the kitchen motioned to the doctor that the water was hot”

(Hemingway 2004, pp. 67-68). The way on how Nick’s father “ordered” can be

considered as the way on how a master commands or instructs his servant. The

Indian woman, such an obedient servant, does what the master has commanded.

When the water is hot, the Indian woman “motioned” but not “spoke” to the

doctor. The Indian woman is silenced, therefore she cannot talk.

In The Boy Who Painted Christ Black, the author also gives us a vivid

description on the manners of the characters which show the dissimilar position

between the black and white.

On this day we were always favored with a visit from a man whom all the

teachers spoke of with mixed esteem and fear. Professor Danual, they called

him, and they always pronounced his name with reverence. He was

supervisor of all the city school, including those small and poorly equipped

ones set aside for colored children (Clarke, 1940, p. 2).

It is very ironic that the visit of the white supervisor is considered as a favor

for the Colored even though the supervisor does not really care about the poor

condition of the school. The black teachers always speak about the supervisor

with “mixed esteem and fear”. It means the line between respect and fear becomes

blurred. On the other words, the teachers revere the white supervisor with a high

reverence is more because they are frightened of him rather than appreciate him.

The teachers are fearful of the white supervisor’s authority and also cruelty.

The great man arrived almost at the end of our commencement exercises.

On seeing him enter the hall, the children rose, bowed courteously, and sat

down again, their eyes examining him as if he were a circus freak. As he

made his way to the front of the room the Negro principal, George Du Vaul,


59

was walking ahead of him, cautiously preventing anything from getting in

his way. As he passed me, I heard the teachers, frightened, sucking in their

breath, felt the tension tightening. A large chair was in the center of the

rostrum. It had been daintily polished and the janitor had laboriously

recushioned its bottom. The supervisor went straight to it without being

guided, knowing that this pretty splendor was reserved for him (Clarke,

1940, p. 2).

In this quotation we learn that the White supervisor is considered as the

superior. The black children “rose and bowed courteously”, the Negro principal

“cautiously preventing anything from getting in his way”, the teachers

“frightened, sucking in their breath, felt the tension tightening,” all of these show

how the Black people treat the White supervisor with high-courtesy. The blacks

position themselves as the lower level people that should have to show respect to

their majestic superior. Their attitudes toward the White Supervisor represent

obedience and devotion to their colonizer. On the other hand, the white supervisor

regards himself as the superior. He is in a privileged position. The white

supervisor is pretty sure that the “pretty splendor was reserved for him”.

In conclusion, the first research question about the authors’ ways in

presenting the position of the characters in both of the stories is answered by

applying Murphy’s theory on characterization. The authors used six ways in

presenting the position of the characters, namely: personal description, character

as seen by another, speech, reactions, thoughts, and mannerisms. Finally, the

position of the characters is revealed. The position of the character is presented in

a dichotomy between colonizer-colonized, superior-inferior, and master-slave.


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B. The Ideas of Colonizer and Colonized Reflected through the Position of

the Characters

The previous explanation about the characterization of the characters

conveys the dichotomic position of the characters. Through the position of the

characters, we can recognize some ideas of colonizer and colonized in both of the

stories. Some ideas of colonizer and colonized here means the notions or concepts

of postcolonialism which emerge through the colonizer-colonized relation. These

two stories are indeed depicting various concepts of colonizer and colonized,

namely: Colonizer-Colonized Binary Opposition, Eurocentrism of the Colonizer

and Othering the Colonized, Dependency Complex of the Colonized and

Domination Complex of the Colonizer, and Counterattack from the Colonized

toward the Colonizer. Thus, the discussion of this part consists of four sub-parts

as follows:

1. Colonizer-Colonized Binary Opposition

Binary opposition/binarism between the colonizer and colonized is

discussed in the previous part of analysis on the dichotomic position of the

characters in the stories. The depictions of colonizer and colonized are portrayed

obviously in the two stories. According to Al-Saidi (2014), binary opposition is

defined as:

The principle of contrast between two mutually exclusive terms which

argues that the perceived binary dichotomy between civilized\ savage has

perpetuated and legitimized Western power structures favoring “civilized”

white men (p. 95).


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Binarism develops a tendency of Western thought in general to see the

world in terms of binary oppositions that establish a relation of dominance

(Ashcroft et al, 2007, p. 19). Furthermore, Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin (2007)

also argued that:

post-colonial theory also disrupts the structural relations of the binary

system itself, revealing the fundamental contradictions of a system that can

include, for instance, the binaries civilized/primitive or human/bestial along

with doctor/patient or enlightener/enlightened (Ashcroft et al, 2007, p. 20).

The quotation above is very relevant with the first story, Indian Camp.

Ernest Hemingway’s Indian Camp narrates a story about the oppression of a

White doctor toward his patient, an Indian woman. The concept of binarism in the

doctor – patient relation, White – Indian, Oppressor – Oppressed, in Indian Camp

reflects vividly the colonizer – colonized dichotomy.

A relation of dominance as a result of binarism also can be found in the

Indian Camp. The colonizer, represented by Nick, Nick’s father (the doctor) and

Uncle George, dominate the colonized which is represented by the Indians. When

they arrive at the Indian Camp, Nick’s father (the doctor) plays his role as the

colonizer who takes control over the whole situation and everyone in the camp

has to follow his instruction.

The inferiority of the Indian as the colonized people can be found when the

doctor “helps” the Indian woman in delivering her baby. The doctor performs a

cesarean operation without using any anesthetic on the Indian woman, but “with a

jack-knife and sewing it up with nine-foot, tapered gut leaders” (Hemingway

2004, p. 69). During her labour, the Indian woman endured an extreme pain, that


62

makes her scream out loud. However, the doctor simply replies “But her screams

are not important. I don’t hear them because they are not important” (Hemingway

2004, p. 68). The doctor treats the Indian woman cruelly. The woman is not

considered as a human but as an object. Thus, the line between helping and

hurting becomes blurred.

Furthermore, when we read the Indian Camp closely, we can find out that

the verbal communication performed only by the Whites. The Indians, on the

other hand, remain silent or they are silenced. There is no evidence which shows

the Indian talks. Nick’s father, the white doctor, commands the Indian woman to

boil some water. When the water is ready, “the woman in the kitchen motioned to

the doctor that the water was hot” ((Hemingway 2004, p. 68). The Indian woman

can only motion but not talk. Further, when the young Indian woman endures a

great pain in delivering her baby, she can only scream out loud. She cannot speak

in order to express her agony. She is unable to speak, even to produce a single

word. Therefore, when the doctor performs his crude operation toward her, the

Indian woman just screams loudly instead of speaks out her protest against the

doctor’s action. All of these evidences are in accordance with what proposed by

Gayatri Spivak in her 1983 essay entitled Can the Subaltern Speak?, that the

subaltern cannot speak.

In “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1985b), Spivak suggests that it is impossible

for us to recover the voice of the subaltern or oppressed colonial subject.

Even a radical critic like Foucault, she says, who so thoroughly decentres

the human subject, is prone to believing that oppressed subjects can speak

for themselves, because he has no conception of the extent of the colonial

repression, and especially of the way in which it historically with patriarchy.

Spivak turns to colonial debates on widow immolation in India to illustrate


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her point that the combined workings of colonialism and patriarchy in fact

make it extremely difficult for the subaltern (in this case the Indian widow

burnt on her husband’s pyre) to speak or be heard (Loomba, 2005, pp. 194-

195).

The white colonizer in Indian Camp succeeds in silencing the colonized

Indians. Therefore, there is nil occurrence that states the voice of the Indians.

Instead of searching the voice of the colonized people, Spivak suggests that the

postcolonial intellectuals to reposition the marginalized position in order to make

them visible by stating:

The subaltern cannot speak. There is no virtue in global laundry lists with

'woman' as a pious item. Representation has not withered away. The female

intellectual as intellectual has a circumscribed task which she must not

disown with a flourish (Spivak, 1988, p. 308).

The colonizer-colonized binary opposition also emerges in the second

story, The Boy Who Painted Christ Black. Binarism is depicted vividly between

two distinctive parties, the White Supervisor as the colonizer and the Negroes as

the colonized.

The binary constructs a scandalous category between the two terms that will

be the domain of taboo, but, equally importantly, the structure can be read

downwards as well as across, so that colonizer, white, human and beautiful

are collectively opposed to colonized, black, bestial and ugly (Ashcroft et

al, 2007, p. 19).

This quotation is very relevant and correlated with the construction of the

story The Boy Who Painted Christ Black. The story narrates contradictions

between the white colonizer and black colonized. The very first line of the story

already depicts this fundamental opposition: “He was the smartest boy in the

Muskogee County School-for colored children” (Clarke, 1940, p. 1). The

segregation of school becomes the first issue of binarism in this story. The school


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is a school specifically designed for colored children. That is to say, the school

separation between colonizer children and colonized children reinforces the idea

of binary opposition in the realm of postcolonialism. “He was supervisor of all

city school, including those small and poorly equipped one set aside for colored

children” (Clarke, 1940, p. 2). From this short quotation, the school segregation is

vividly portrayed. The schools for the Negro children are not as big as the schools

for the white children. Moreover, the facilities and equipment provided in the

school for the Negro are bad. They are the school that “set aside” for the

colonized colored children.

The next issue of binarism is the difference of race, between Caucasoid and

Negroid. The extreme distinctions between the White and the Black are presented

explicitly throughout the story. Aaron Crawford is described as a boy whose skin

is so “solid black that it glowed” and whose nose and lips “seemed a trifle too

large for his face”. On the other hand, Professor Danual is described as “a tall

white man with solid gray hair that made his lean face seem even paler than it

actually was. His eyes were the clearest blue” (Clarke, 1940, pp. 1-2). The

obvious contrast of the physical description shows the binary opposition of race

between them.

The other issue of binary opposition is on the superior position of the White

as colonizer and the inferior position of the Negro as colonized. The White in the

story is presented as a supervisor of all city school including the set-aside small

and poorly equipped schools for colored children. It means that the White

supervisor has power and authority. Contrarily, the Black in the story, George Du


65

Vaul is presented as a black principal of a school for colored children. Even

though he is in the position of a principal, George Du Vaul has less power

compared to the white supervisor. In the story, the black principal shows his

inferiority by trying to favor the white supervisor.

As he made his way to the front of the room the Negro principal, George Du

Vaul, was walking ahead of him, cautiously preventing anything from

getting in his way. As he passed me, I heard the teachers, frightened,

sucking in their breath, felt the tension tightening (Clarke, 1940, p. 2).

The Negro principal realizes that he is under the supervision of the White

supervisor. Aware of his inferiority, the black principal tries to give the best

service for his supervisor. The Negro principal is “cautiously preventing anything

from getting in” the white supervisor’s way. Furthermore, the other Negro

teachers in the story also show “strange respect” toward the white supervisor. As

the white supervisor passed them, the teachers are “frightened, sucking in their

breath, felt the tension tightening”. Then, the notion between respect and

frightened is blurred. Moreover, the power of the white superior is also shown by

the supervisor when he fires the black principal for allowing Aaron to paint Christ

in black:

The supervisor coughed. His eyes bulged menacingly as he spoke. “You are

not being paid to teach such things in this school, and I am demanding your

resignation for overstepping your limit as principal.” (Clarke, 1940, p. 3).

2. Eurocentrism of the Colonizer and Othering the Colonized

Eurocentrism and Othering are the other ideas of colonizer and colonized

that can be identified in both of the stories. These two ideas, Eurocentrism and

Othering, are actually interrelated one another. According to Ashcroft, Griffiths,


66

and Tiffin (2007), Eurocentrism is defined as “the conscious or unconscious

process by which Europe and European cultural assumptions are constructed as,

or assumed to be, the normal, the natural or the universal” (p. 84). On the other

words, the white culture is regarded “as the standard to which all other cultures

are negatively constructed” (Tyson, 2006, p. 420). Furthermore, Othering is “the

process by which imperial discourse creates its others” (Ashcroft et al, 2007, p.

156). Othering then splits the world into two parties: “us” (the “civilized”) and

“them” (the “others” or “savages”) (Tyson, 2006, p. 420). Thus, from the

explanation above we can see clearly that those two ideas are interconnected each

other. Eurocentrism centers on the European culture as the benchmark which all

other cultures are “othered” or judged negatively.

In Indian Camp and The Boy Who Painted Christ Black, the position of the

characters in both of these stories reflected the idea of Eurocentrism and Othering.

In Hemingway’s Indian Camp, the American Indians are portrayed as the “other”

or “savages” while the White Americans are portrayed as the “civilized.” Nick’s

father, the white man, is presented as a doctor. He is a “civilized” man who is

respectful and dependable. That is the reason why the Indian bark-peelers asked

the doctor to help one of the Indian women in delivering her baby. “All the old

women in the camp had been helping her” (Hemingway, 2003, p. 67), however it

is to no avail. Therefore, the Indians ask the White doctor since they expect that

the white man, as a “civilized” doctor, will be able to help her.

Ironically, the doctor’s help is more like torturing rather than helping. The

white doctor operates the woman without using any anesthetic. Further, instead of


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using proper surgical instruments, the doctor uses “a jack-knife and sewing it up

with nine-foot, tapered gut leaders” (Hemingway, 2003, p. 69). The Indian woman

is treated as a subhuman “savage” or “other”. When the doctor finished his crude

operation, “he was feeling exalted and talkative as football players are in the

dressing room after a game”. He shows no empathy at all and he even considers

his crude operation as a great medical discovery. “That’s one for the medical

journal, George,” he said (Hemingway, 2003, p. 69).

The other proof that reflects the ideas of Othering is the description of the

Indian Camp, the place where the Indians live. The Indian Camp was described as

a primitive area that is devoid from the modern world’s attributes.

They came around a bend and a dog came out barking. Ahead were the

lights of the shanties where the Indian bark-peelers lived. More dogs rushed

out at them. The two Indians sent them back to the shanties. In the shanty

nearest the road there was a light in the window. An old woman stood in the

doorway holding a lamp (Hemingway, 2003, p. 67).

From the quotation above, we can get the vivid description of the Indian

Camp. Instead of using the word “houses”, the author prefers to use the word

“shanties” in order to signify the remoteness of the area. “An old woman stood in

the doorway holding a lamp”, this short quotation implied that the area has no

access to electricity. By depicting the remoteness of the Indian Camp, it reveals

the ideas of Othering between the Native Indian and White Americans.

In the second story, The Boy Who Painted Christ Black, the ideas of

Eurocentrism and Othering also can be obtained through the presentation of the

character’s position. In the story, the author presents the Negro (Aaron Crawford


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and George Du Vaul) as “them” and the White (Professor Danual) as “us.” The

story tells about the separation or segregation between the White and Black. Even

the school is differentiated between the school for colored children and the school

for white children. The White Supervisor’s mad reaction toward the painting of

Christ black reveals the ideas of Eurocentrism.

“Who painted this sacrilegious nonsense?” he demanded sharply

The supervisor’s eyes followed him until he was out of focus. Then he

murmured under his breath: “There’ll be a lot of fuss in this world if you

start people thinking that Christ was a nigger” (Clarke, 1940, pp. 2-3).

The White supervisor was really angry when he found out the boy’s picture.

He even considers the picture as a “sacrilegious nonsense.” Sacrilegious is an

adjective for “the act of treating a holy place or thing without respect” (Longman

Dictionary of English Language and Culture, 1992, p. 1161). Further, nonsense is

defined as “ideas, opinions, statements etc that are not true or that seem very

stupid” (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 2009, p. 1185). The

definitions from the dictionary convey that the white supervisor considers the

painting as “sacrilegious nonsense” because he thinks that the idea that Christ is

black is a stupid and untrue idea that humiliates the holiness of Jesus Christ. From

the Supervisor spectacles of view, Christ should be White and will always be

White. The white supervisor embraces Eurocentrism strongly that he considers the

European belief that Christ is white is absolute and undeniable truth. Thus, that is

highly unacceptable to paint Christ in black as done by Aaron Crawford. It is

considered as sacrilegious nonsense that against the ultimate truth.


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Furthermore, the use of the term “nigger” also plays an important role in

representing the Eurocentrism and Othering. According to Longman Dictionary of

Contemporary English (2009), nigger is defined “taboo a very offensive word for

a black person. Do not use this word” (p. 1178). Because it is extremely offensive,

so it is even stated in the Dictionary that to not use this word. Furthermore, it is

explained in Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture (1992) that

the word nigger is “not considered acceptable when used by white people,

showing a dislike of black people and lack of awareness of the racist nature of this

word” (p. 899). The word nigger is a derogatory racial humiliation against black

people. It is an insulting and contemptuous term for a black person. Yet, the white

Supervisor intentionally uses this word. The supervisor argues that there will be a

lot of fuss, not only in America, but in this entire world when people start thinking

that Christ was a nigger (Clarke, 1940, p. 3). This statement certainly shows the

Eucocentrism of the white supervisor to “othering” the Negroes as the “others” or

“savages”. In short, the Supervisor argues that there will be a lot of chaos in this

world when people start thinking that Christ is a part of the “others” or “savages”.

3. Dependency Complex of the Colonized and Domination Complex of the

Colonizer

Dependence and inferiority are two psychological complexes of the

colonized people proposed by Octave Mannoni, a French psychoanalyst, in his

work entitled Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization. In his

work, Mannoni states that:


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Dependence and inferiority form an alternative; the one excludes the other.

Thus, over against the inferiority complex, and more or less symmetrically

opposed to it, I shall set the dependence complex. And these two different

psychological climates serve to characterize two different types of

personality, two different mentalities, two different civilizations (Mannoni,

1990, p. 40).

Mannoni proposes that there are only two available options for the

colonized, either develop an inferiority complex or become dependent on the

colonizer. These two options are very dilemmatic. Both of them are undesirable

and unpleasant choices. In both of the stories, however, the colonized do not have

their own right to choose between those two options. They are forced into

dependency on their colonizer, both because of their inferiority and also because

of the domination complex of the colonizer.

The dependency complex is depicted vividly in Indian Camp. The story tells

about the Indians who ask for help toward the White. The Indians suffered from a

dependency complex, they are retarded in many aspects of life.

That was soaking wet with dew, following the young Indian who carried a

lantern. Then they went into the woods and followed a trail that led to the

logging road that ran back into the hills. It was much lighter on the logging

road as the timber was cut away on both sides. The young Indian stopped

and blew out his lantern and they all walked on along the road (Hemingway,

2004, p. 67).

From the description above, we may perceive the backwardness of the

Indian’s life. They are still living far behind advancement. “They walked up from

the beach through a meadow”, it means there is still no decent road available. The

area was very remote. Further, the Indian woman suffers two days extreme pain in

delivering her baby, yet, she does not get a proper treatment since the Indians do

not have access to medical care. The dependency complex reveals when the


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Indians ask the White doctor to save the Indian woman. The Indians assume that

the White doctor will be able to help the Indian woman in delivering her child. It

is in line with the Mannoni’s notion:

Wherever Europeans have founded colonies of the type we are considering

it can safely be said that their coming was unconsciously expected – even

desired – by the future subject peoples. Everywhere there existed legends

foretelling the arrival of strangers from the sea, bearing wondrous gifts with

them (Mannoni, 1990, pp. 85-86).

The quotation above is very relevant to the story of Indian Camp. The white

doctor’s arrival is desired by the Indians. The Indians even willingly to pick him

up and row him across the lake toward the Indian camp. The Indians regard that

the doctor, as proposed by Mannoni, is “bearing wondrous gifts” that can help the

young Indian woman in delivering her baby. Unfortunately, instead of helping the

dependent colonized Indian, the doctor starts to dominate her. He treats the Indian

woman savagely. He operates the woman using a jack-knife instead of using a

proper medical utensil and offers no anesthetic. Furthermore, after he finished the

inhumane surgery, the white doctor intends to publish a medical journal about the

operation. All of these show his desire as a colonizer to dominate his dependent

colonized.

By looking at the description of the environment, the infrastructure, and the

medical access, all of these show the unequal living between the colonizer and the

colonized. All of these depictions show the underdevelopment and dependency

complex of the colonized Indian people as well as the domination complex of the

White colonizer.


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In the second story, The Boy Who Painted Christ Black, the dependency

complex of the colonized is portrayed implicitly. The colonized, represented by

the Negroes, are dependent to the White. They are the civitas of a small and

poorly equipped school for colored children. They are under the supervision of a

white Supervisor. On the other words, all the activities in the school are under the

tutelage and support of the white Supervisor. Once, there is a commencement

program in this school. The White, as a school Supervisor, is surely invited to join

the celebration. As the researcher has discussed in the first part analysis, the

mannerisms shown by all the civitas of the school, from the children, the teachers,

and even the principal when they meet the white principal convey the inferiority

complex of them. The black children “rose and bowed courteously”, the Negro

principal “cautiously preventing anything from getting in his way”, the teachers

“frightened, sucking in their breath, felt the tension tightening,” (Clarke, 1940, p.

2).

Furthermore, the domination complex of the colonizer is shown by the

White principal when he said: “Damn, if niggers ain’t getting smarter” (Clarke,

1940, p. 3). The white supervisor positions himself more superior than the Negro.

That is to say, the white supervisor suffered from a domination complex. Thus,

he sees himself having a responsibility to civilize the “barbaric” Negro. The white

supervisor thinks that the Negroes need his guidance for betterment. In this

quotation, we can learn that he was very angry when he discovers the Negroes do

not seem to be getting smarter.


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In The Boy Who Painted Christ Black, the emergence of the colonizer is

only represented by a single White man. He opposes the civitas of a school for

colored children. Even though he may be considered as a “minority” in term of

numbers, the white Supervisor never feels inferior. He instead successfully plays

his role as a colonizer in dominating the colonized. It is in concordant with what

stated by Frantz Fanon:

A white man in a colony has never felt inferior in any respect; as M.

Mannoni expresses it so well, “He will be deified or devoured.” The

colonial, even though he is “in the minority,” does not feel that this makes

him inferior. In Martinique there are two hundred whites who consider

themselves superior to 300,000 people of color (Fanon, 2008, p. 68).

4. Counterattack from the Colonized toward the Colonizer

Counterattack is an idea of colonizer-colonized that proposed by a well-

known French postcolonial critic, Aimé Césaire, “one of the founders of the

négritude movement” (Encyclopedia of Latin American and Caribbean

Literature, 1900-2003, 2004, p. 169). Further, Sarwoto, in his master’s thesis

states that:

Césaire, for example, refuted any views proposing the naturalness of black

inferiority, believing instead that race is a social construct, one that causes

“black” to be understood within white values and therefore white

domination. Césaire counterattacked the construct by proposing another

construct that he called negritude. Striving to regain the great treasures of

blacks who had been annihilated by racism and colonialism, Césaire

proclaimed negritude as a counterbalancing movement. Negritude calls for

the affirmation of what was originally black, valuing it as something to be

proud of (Sarwoto, 2004, p. 35).

This quotation provides a vast understanding on Aimé Césaire’s Négritude.

From the quotation, thus we can say that Négritude movement is the foundation of

the counterattack against the white domination and the idea of gaining self-esteem


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or pride of being black. This movement opposes and rejects the colonization of

the white toward the black.

The Boy Who Painted Christ Black reveals the idea of Négritude. It

indicates the opposition to colonialism and the struggle in finding an identity.

From this story, we can identify many ideas of counterattack toward the white

domination. Furthermore, the story also portrays the continual struggles of the

black toward the white colonization.

In the beginning of the story, the narrator provides the description of the

main character of the story, Aaron Crawford. He is described as a smart boy in a

school for colored children. The narrator also describes Aaron’s skin color, nose

and lips. Further, the narrator comments on Aaron that “he looked like something

out of a book of ancient history… looked as if he was left over from that

magnificent era before the machine age came and marred the earth’s natural

beauty” (Clarke, 1940, p. 1). This quoted description shows a critique toward the

impact of colonization that has “marred the earth’s natural beauty”. It implies that

the heyday of the black people had been destructed and replaced by the

colonization of the white people.

By drawing a picture of Christ-painted black, Aaron Crawford already

shows the counterattack toward his colonizer. Aaron also explains his reasons of

painted Christ in black. The idea for painted Christ black is triggered by Aaron’s

feeling that Christ is a black man “cause he was so kind and forgiving, kinder than

I have ever seen white people be” (Clarke, 1940, pp. 1-2). By painted Christ in


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black, Aaron reinforces the opposition and rejection toward the white domination

and white idea that Christ should be white. Aaron’s action implies the way of

searching for equality between Black and White as well as the pride of being

black. Thus, the picture of Christ in black symbolizes the idea of Négritude.

In the middle part of the story, when the white supervisor finds out Aaron’s

picture, he is very angry. Aaron admits that it is his work and gives explanation

that: “Th’ principal said a colored person have jes’ as much right paintin’ Jesus

black as a white person have paintin’ him white. And he says….” (Clarke, 1940,

p. 2). Aaron becomes afraid; however Professor Danual keeps demanding Aaron

for giving him a satisfied explanation. Shortly after that, the Black principal tries

to defend Aaron, the school’s prize student.

“I encouraged the boy in painting that picture,” he said firmly. “And it was

with my permission that he brought the picture into this school. I don’t think

the boy is so far wrong in painting Christ black. The artists of all other races

have painted whatsoever God they worship to resemble themselves. I see no

reason why we should be immune from that privilege. After all, Christ was

born in that part of the world that had always been predominantly populated

by colored people. There is a strong possibility that he could have been a

Negro” (Clarke, 1940, p. 3).

From this quotation, we can learn that the principal embodies the idea of

resistance toward the subjugation of the colonizer. It is the antithesis of

colonialism. The principal is certain that the boy has done no wrong in painting

Christ black. He permitted the boy to do so. Furthermore, the principal also said

that:

“I have been teaching them that their race has produced great kings and

queens as well as slaves and serfs,” the principal said. “The time is long

overdue when we should let the world know that we erected and enjoyed the


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benefits of a splendid civilization long before the people of Europe had a

written language” (Clarke, 1940, p. 3).

From the quotations of the story above we can learn that there is a struggle

from the principal (colonized) toward the supervisor (colonizer). The resistance is

concordant to Aimé Césaire’s Négritude. Césaire once in his address delivered in

Geneva on June 2nd 1978 declared that:

When it appeared the literature of Négritude created a revolution: in the

darkness of the great silence, a voice was raising up, with no interpreter, no

alteration, and no complacency, a violent and staccato voice, and it said for

the first time: “I, Nègre.”

A voice of revolt

A voice of resentment

No doubt

But also of fidelity, a voice of freedom, and first and foremost, a voice for

the retrieved identity (Thébia-Melsan, 2000, p. 28).

What the Negro principal has said is in line with the address given by Aimé

Césaire. The Negro principal said that “I have been teaching them that their race

has produced great kings and queens as well as slaves and serfs”. This is the

“voice of revolt”, “voice of resentment”, “voice of freedom”, and “a voice of the

retrieved identity”. The Black Principal is protesting against the idea of inferiority

of the ‘Other’ as well as proclaiming a counterattack toward the ideas of

colonialism.

C. The Authors’ View On Colonialism

Based on the second sub part of the analysis regarding the ideas of colonizer

and colonized, the researcher finds out that there are four ideas/ notions that occur

through the colonizer-colonized relation. These four ideas are interrelated with the

authors’ ideology and they reflect the authors’ stance toward colonialism. It is in


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accordance with the notion proposed by M.H Abrams that there is a close

relationship between the text and the author. Because of that, through this part of

analysis, the researcher provides clear explanation of the authors’ view on

colonialism that affects their literary production of both short stories.

M.H Abrams, an American literary critic, proposes four different groups of

literary theories in his book entitled The Mirror and the Lamp. Abrams argues that

a literary work always has four elements, namely: universe, text, artist, and

audience (Abrams, 1971, p. 6). Based on these elements, Abrams then divides

literary theories into four groups, namely mimetic, pragmatic, expressive, and

objective theory (Abrams, 1971, pp. 7-29). By adopting Abrams’ classifications,

the researcher chooses one of the classifications which is expressive theory in

discussing the authors’ view on colonialism for this third part of discussion.

Expressive theory concerns with the text and author relationship. This theory

argues that, in creating his works, authors can be affected by their own ideology

or belief on certain ideas (Abrams, 1971, p. 22). It can be the reflection of the

authors’ viewpoint on certain ideas.

It is also stated in The Empire Writes Back that many people’s life in the

world today are shaped by the experience of colonialism and one of the ways to

express this experience is through literature (Ashcroft et al, 1989, p. 1). Therefore,

it is possible that both of the short stories analyzed in this research reflect the

authors’ experience on colonialism. Furthermore, as a postcolonial study, this

research also aims to discover the effects of colonization on literary production

and to reveal its colonialist ideologies and processes (Ashcroft et al, 2007, p.


78

173). Thus, in this part of discussion, the researcher wants to identify both of the

authors’ view, Ernest Hemingway’s and John Henrik Clarke’s view, on

colonialism that are reflected in the ideas of colonizer and colonized found in both

of the stories.

1. Ernest Hemingway and Indian Camp in the Discourse of Colonialism

Ernest Hemingway is a famous American novelist and a short story writer.

Indian camp is one of the best stories of Ernest Hemingway in his short story

collection, In Our Times, published in 1925. Indian Camp narrates about the

arrival of White Americans toward a Native American camp in order to help an

Indian woman in delivering her baby. This story is closely related to

Hemingway’s boyhood experience in Michigan.

Near the family’s summer cottage in Michigan, he would visit the camps of

Ojibway bark-peelers and play with their children and learn the art of

paddling a birch bark canoe from Albert Wabanosa, who claimed to be the

grandson of Longfellow’s Indian guide (Miller 25-27). Hemingway’s fiction

would be deeply informed not only by the era’s sentimental vision of the

Native American tragedy, but also by early intimacy with its reality

(Wagner-Martin, 2000, p. 64).

Hemingway’s childhood experience makes him interested in the primitive

life of Indian people. Hemingway also ever witnessed a baby’s birth by Caesarean

section that later adopted in his Indian Camp (Wagner-Martin, 2000, p. 54). In his

essay, Hemingway's Primitivism and “Indian Camp”, Jeffrey Meyers argues that

“Indian Camp reflects Hemingway's ambiguous attitude to primitivism and shows

his notable success in portraying the primitive” (Meyers, 1988, p. 211).


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Primitivism is considered as one of the closely-related terms in the

postcolonial study. Primitivism often leads to the derogative comparisons of the

“value” of different culture, and one of them is the Native American Indian which

often portrayed as “primitive” (Ashcroft et al, 2007, p. 179). Furthermore,

primitivism also can lead to the “danger of exoticizing these cultures and othering

them” confirming the dichotomy between “primitive (savage) and modern

(civilized)” (Ashcroft et al, 2007, p. 179).

Back to Hemingway’s attitude to primitivism, one should consider that the

story of Indian Camp can be interpreted as a White American author’s attitude in

portraying the Native American Indian. Hemingway, through his Indian Camp,

perpetuates the inferiority of the Native Indian people and superiority of the White

American in justifying the colonization toward the primitive Indian American. On

the other word, Hemingway embodies the ideology as a colonialist. Through

Indian Camp, Hemingway embraces the colonialist culture and portrays his view

on the White American superiority which is extraordinarily dominant.

There are some evidences in the story that show the colonialist ideologies

and processes in Indian Camp. First is narrating the binary opposition between the

civilized and primitive in establishing the colonialist power. Hemingway depicts

the dichotomy between White Americans as the civilized and the Native Indian as

the primitive. Two startling events in the story narrated by Hemingway, namely a

crude operation of an Indian woman and the suicide of the woman’s husband,

portray the mortal effects of the colonialist force. Furthermore, Hemingway also


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“silences” the Indian characters in the story in reinforcing the power of dominance

of the White Americans.

Second is Hemingway’s Eurocentric view toward the Native American.

Hemingway presents the Indians as the Other and undervalues them as savages.

The Indian Camp is described as a remote area, slummy and with no electricity.

Hemingway prefers to use the term “shanties” rather than “houses” in describing

the isolated shelter of the Indians.

The third is depicting the dependency of the Indians. Hemingway creates

the Indian characters as the dependent people. They are dependent on the White

American due to the retardation in many aspects of life. The proof is that the

Indians ask the White doctor to help the young Indian woman in delivering her

baby. The Indians believe that the Whites will help them. Ironically, it turns out

that the White doctor treats the Indian woman savagely by using jackknife for the

surgery, offering no anesthetic, and sewing it up with fishing line.

In order to get a clearer justification of Hemingway’s colonialist ideology,

Orientalism can be the perfect concept in discussing it. Orientalism is interrelated

with the colonialist ideology. Edward Said argues that:

Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for

dealing with the Orient-dealing with it by making statements about it,

authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it

(Said, 1979, p. 3).

The quotation above is very relevant in the context of Hemingway in

writing his Indian Camp. The Indian people are considered as the Orient by

Hemingway. There are many evidences in the story which show the ways on how


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Hemingway “making statements, authorizing views, and describing” the Native

Indians as the Other. Hemingway portrays the backwardness of the Indians very

vividly. Fantina, in her book entitled Ernest Hemingway: Machismo and

Masochism, states the attitude of Ernest Hemingway in dealing with the primitive

people:

His daily contact with the Masai and other Kenyan people appears to have

had little effect on his basically apolitical position regarding Africa, a

position that tacitly endorses colonialism. In his role as Great White Hunter,

Hemingway viewed Africa as a playground to which he had a perfect right

(Fantina, 2005, p. 134).

Adopting Fantina’s argument toward Hemingway’s attitude, it can be

considered that Indian Camp represent Hemingway’s indifferent attitude in

portraying the Native Indians’ life. Hemingway regards the Indians’ life as “a

playground to which he had a perfect right” to write anything (as bizarre as

possible) about the Indians as he wants.

Africa serves Hemingway as an imaginative space onto which he can

project white characters and conflicts without considering the ethics of their

occupation of Africa or the humanity of the black people who stand before

them (Moddelmog as cited in Fantina, 2005, p. 134).

The quotation above confirms that Hemingway often regards, not only the

African’s life but also the Indian’s, as his imaginative world onto which he can

construct the notion about the savage and backward native people. The pejorative

world of the Indian people is created by Hemingway through his Indian Camp.

From all evidences above, we can conclude that Hemingway, in writing his

Indian Camp, is affected by the colonialist ideology. Even though it is not stated

in the story explicitly that Hemingway accepts and supports colonialism, by close

reading the story and identifying his view toward colonialism, it can be concluded


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that he did. Hemingway portrays the helplessness of the Indians as the colonized

people. It is considered as just to civilize (colonize) the Indians because they are

not independent and cannot stand on their own. On the other hand, the Whites,

due to the dominance of power, think that it is necessary for them to “help” the

Indians. Therefore, it can be concluded that Indian Camp fits in the discourse of

colonialism.

2. John Henrik Clarke and The Boy Who Painted Christ Black in the

Discourse of Postcolonialism

John Henrik Clarke was a leading Pan-Africanist, professor, and scholar in

African American study. The Boy Who Painted Christ Black is one of his most

famous short stories published in an academic journal in the United States

September 1940. This famous work has been translated into more than a dozen

languages and distributed in the United States and abroad (Jahannes, 2010, p. 3).

This short story narrates about a black boy named Aaron Crawford who painted

Christ black as a birthday present for his teacher and later he is blamed by a White

Supervisor in discovering this piece of work. The story portrays a racial

segregation and huge discrimination toward the Black African American.

Furthermore, the story also depicts the counterattack toward the White

discrimination and it embodies the anti-colonial ideology.

The Boy Who Painted Christ Black is closely related with the background

and also the ideology of the writer itself. In his autobiographical article entitled A

Search For Identity (May 1970), John Henrik Clarke gives us an overview of


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about his background that is very relevant and closely related with the short story

he had written. Clarke states that his great grandmother, a former slave in Georgia

and later in Alabama where Clarke was born, was his first teacher who teaches

him about the slavery and the resistance toward it (Clarke, 1970, p. 1). Further,

Clarke also narrates about his father:

Growing up in Alabama, my father was a brooding, landless sharecropper,

always wanting to own his own land; but on my father's side of the family

there had been no ownership of land at all. One day after a storm had

damaged our farm and literally blown the roof off our house, he decided to

take his family to a mill city - Columbus, Georgia (Clarke, 1970, pp. 1-2).

Clarke was born in a poor landless family. Clarke’s father always wants to

have his own land. Ironically, Clarke explains that “Of course, he never did. But

thanks to a ten cents a week policy, the only free land he ever knew was the grave

we buried him in. That was paid for, free and clear” (Person-Lynn, 2014, p. 73).

Clarke mentions the name of a place called Columbus, Georgia, where he and his

family live on after a storm wrecked their former house in Alabama. Clarke’s

story, The Boy Who Painted Christ Black is also situated in Columbus, Georgia.

The young John Henrik Clarke went to a county school similar to that in the story,

Aaron Crawford, the boy who painted Christ black, also study in a county school,

“the Muskogee County School- for colored children” (Clarke, 1940, p. 1).

Clarke is the only person in his family who is able to read. Nine-year-old

Clarke used to work as a teacher for the junior class in Sunday school and he

would stop at different houses nearby to read the Bible for the old ladies. (Clarke,

1970, p. 2). One thing that distracts Clarke’s mind is that he is not able to find any


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single images of his own people in the Bible. This is the starting point when the

young Clarke begins to quest about his and his people’s identity.

I began my search for my people first in the Bible. I wondered why all the

characters—even those who, like Moses, were born in Africa—were white.

Reading the description of Christ as swarthy and with hair like sheep's wool,

I wondered why the church depicted him as blond and blue-eyed. Where

was the hair like sheep's wool? Where was the swarthy complexion? I

looked at the map of Africa and I knew Moses had been born in Africa.

How did Moses become so white? If he went down to Ethiopia to marry

Zeporah, why was Zeporah so white? Who painted the world white?

(Clarke, 1960, p. 2).

John Henrik Clarke criticizes about the abolishment of the black identity.

The black identity had been vanished in the dominance of the white identity. One

day during his first year in high school, Clarke was doing chores in helping a

guest lecturer to hold his books and papers because there was no cloakroom

available in this new school. Clarke unintentionally found out one of the lecturer’s

books entitled The New Negro and inside the book he read a good essay entitled

The Negro Digs Up His Past by Arthur A. Schomburg edited by Alan Locke. New

York: Albert and Charles Bone, 1925, pp. 231–37 (Clarke, 1960, p. 4). Clarke

considers that it was the key moment in his life when he found out that their

people (African American) did have a great history, one that even older than that

of their oppressors (Clarke, 1960, p. 4). Driven by his desperate curiosity and

great passion, Clarke decided to meet the author of the essay, Mr. Schomburg, in

New York years later after his first introduction with this great essay. Thanks to

his persistence, Clarke finally could meet Mr. Schomburg himself even though he

had to travel a far distance.


85

He said, "Sit down, son. What you are calling African history and Negro

history is nothing but the missing pages of world history. You will have to

know general history to understand these specific aspects of history." He

continued patiently, "You have to study your oppressor. That's where your

history got lost." (Clarke, 1960, p. 5).

The quotation above is the wise explanation from Mr. Schomburg to John

Henrik Clarke. Since then, John Henrik Clarke became eager to learn a lot about

the history of Europe. He also studied much about the African history and the

story of black people all over the world. It took years for Clarke to learn all of it

and made him to become a great teacher, historian, professor and writer who

experts in the field of African and black study.

John Henrik Clarke also wrote another autobiographical article entitled

Portrait of a Liberation Scholar. In this article, he shares his experience during

the Jim Crow era and he also puts forward an opinion against it. His mother died

in 1922 when he was seven years old. Clarke’s mother was a washerwoman for

the white family. Clarke recounts his mother’s past life:

She did whole bundles from one white family for one dollar—wash and

iron. Sometimes they would throw in the soap. Now, these same white

people would call us "lazy people" on welfare. Yet for 300 years during our

slavery and during "Jim Crow," white people were on welfare, and we paid

for it (Clarke, 1976, p. 29).

John Henrik Clarke is an African American that actively criticizing and

opposing the Jim Crow practice. He also condemns the racial discrimination

toward the African American. This following excerpt is John Henrik Clarke’s

viewpoint and attitude toward the Jim Crow and also the racial discrimination:

It is understandable why I would grow up to fight Jim Crow and racial

prejudice and the separation of races. I have literally risked my life fighting

these things because I knew racial hatred and ignorance was so damned


86

unnecessary. I also knew one other thing: if there is a superior race in the

world, it damned well is not white people. I have always been clear on this

point from early in my life (Clarke, 1976, p. 40).

In 1933, eighteen-year-old Clarke decided to leave Jim Crow Columbus,

Georgia, and he moved to Harlem, New York in order to satisfy his passion in

learning history. In this new place, Clarke began his career as a teacher and later

he became a lecturer and also a famous Pan-Africanist writer. After seven years in

New York, in 1940, he published his most famous short story, The Boy Who

Painted Christ Black.

When the European emerged in the world in the 15th and 16th centuries, for

the second time, they not only colonized most of the world, they colonized

information about the world, and they also colonized images, including the

image of God, thereby putting us into a trap, for we are the only people who

worship a God whose image we did not choose! (Clarke, 1998, p. 2).

The quotation above is taken from other Clarke’s autobiographical article

entitled From SBA to SIA: A Great And Mighty Walk. Clarke himself intentionally

italicizes the quotation above in order to highlight its importance. John Henrik

Clarke further said that “I had to respond to this behavior. I could not live with

this nonsense and contradiction and I challenged these insidious concepts and

theories” (Clarke, 1998, p. 2). He explicitly fights against the European

colonization toward the Black people. Furthermore, Clarke claims that The Boy

Who Painted Christ Black is one of his strategies in fighting against the White

colonization.

I have utilized several avenues: I wrote songs and while most of you are

familiar with the Boy Who Painted Christ Black, I wrote some two hundred

short stories. I question the political judgment of those who would have the

nerve to paint Christ white with his obvious African nose, lips and wooly

hair (Clarke, 1998, p. 2).


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Therefore, in The Boy Who Painted Christ Black, we can find many notions

against colonization. This short story indeed successfully reveals the idea of

Négritude, a postcolonial theory that counterattacks against the white domination

and establishes the self-pride of being black. The title of this short story is already

designed as a challenge and also a rejection of the white notion that Christ should

have to be white. The black principal, one of the characters in the story, shows

many resistances against the ideas of colonialism. He encourages Aaron Crawford

to paint Christ in black. Furthermore, he is also the one who defends the boy from

the White principal’s anger. In the story, the Negro principal, George Du Vaul,

said that:

I encouraged the boy in painting that picture. I don’t think the boy is so far

wrong in painting Christ black. I have been teaching them that their race has

produced great kings and queens as well as slaves and serfs (Clarke, 1940,

p. 3).

By studying the background of John Henrik Clarke and relating it with his

short story, The Boy Who Painted Christ Black, it can be concluded that John

Henrik Clarke, in fact, is an anti-colonialist. By writing The Boy Who Painted

Christ Black, he opposes the colonialist ideologies and constructions.

Furthermore, The Boy Who Painted Christ Black, is indeed a postcolonial text

because it fits in the discourse of Postcolonialism. In short, The Boy Who Painted

Christ Black is a postcolonial literature by a postcolonial writer.


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CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

This chapter provides the conclusion for the three aforementioned research

questions that are needed to be answered. Firstly, related to the position of the

characters in the both of the stories, Indian Camp and The Boy Who Painted

Christ Black, the researcher finds out that both of the authors, Ernest Hemingway

and John Henrik Clarke, always position the characters in a dichotomy between

colonizer and colonized. In Indian Camp, Ernest Hemingway presents the

characters into two groups, the Indians, represented by a young Indian woman and

her husband, two young Indians, and an old Indian woman, as the colonized and

the Whites, represented by Nick, Uncle George, and Nick’s father (the doctor), as

the colonizer. In The Boy Who Painted Christ Black, John Henrik Clarke also

presents the characters into two categories, the Negroes, represented by Aaron

Crawford, George Du Vaul, Aaron’s teacher, and the narrator, as the colonized

and the White, represented by Professor Danual, as the colonizer.

By adopting Murphy’s theory of Characterization, the researcher finds out

that there are six ways on characterization can be applied in order to justify the

dichotomy position of the characters in both of the stories. These six ways in

analyzing the position of the characters are personal description, character as seen

by another, speech, reactions, thoughts, and mannerisms. Both of the authors

present the position of the characters through these six ways. Thus, the position of


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the characters is revealed and it is presented in a dichotomy between colonizer-

colonized, superior-inferior, and master-slave.

Secondly, regarding the ideas of colonizer and colonized, there are four

ideas or concepts of colonizer and colonized reflected through the characters’

position in the story. The first idea is colonizer-colonized binary opposition. This

idea shows the dichotomy between the two parties, colonizer-colonized, white-

black, oppressor-oppressed, civilized-primitive, or superior-inferior. The second

idea is eurocentrism of the colonizer and othering the colonized. This second idea

centers on the White culture as the benchmark which the other cultures (Indian

and Negro) are “othered” or judged negatively. The third idea is dependency

complex of the colonized and domination complex of the colonizer. This idea

argues that the colonized people are dependent to their colonizer, on the other

hand, the colonizers have the tendency to dominate their colonized. The fourth

idea is counterattack from the colonized toward the colonizer. This last idea

portrays the continual struggles of the black against the white colonization. It also

conveys the counterattack against the white domination and the idea of gaining

self-esteem or pride of being black.

Thirdly, regarding the authors’ view on colonialism, Ernest Hemingway and

John Henrik Clarke have different ideologies or perspectives in writing their

stories. Ernest Hemingway, in writing his Indian Camp, embodies the colonialist

ideology. The Indian Camp itself is considered as a colonial literature because it

fits in the discourse of colonialism. The story narrates about the “silenced”

colonized people’s suffering in dealing with the colonizer’s dominant power. On


90

the other hand, John Henrik Clarke, in writing The Boy Who Painted Christ Black,

embraces the anti-colonialist ideology. Therefore, The Boy Who Painted Christ

Black, can be considered as postcolonial literature since it fits the discourse of

postcolonialism. This story portrays the fight back or counterattack toward the

white domination.

To end this thesis, the researcher concludes that both of the stories, Ernest


Christ Black, indeed represent the dichotomy between colonizer and colonized.

There are various concepts or notions of postcolonialism which emerge through

the relation between colonizer and colonized. Furthermore, the authors, in writing

their stories, are influenced by their own ideology as a colonialist and as an anti-

colonialist and they succesfully depict their view on colonialism. Thus, both of the

stories, Indian Camp and The Boy Who Painted Christ Black, provides vast ideas

of colonizer and colonized in the postcolonial study.


91

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APPENDICES

Appendix 1: Ernest Hemingway’s Indian Camp

At the lake shore there was another rowboat drawn up. The two Indians

stood waiting. Nick and his father got in the stern of the boat and the Indians

shoved it off and one of them got in to row. Uncle George sat in the stern of the

camp rowboat. The young Indian shoved the camp boat off and got in to row

Uncle George.

The two boats started off in the dark. Nick heard the oar-locks of the other

boat quite a way ahead of them in the mist. The Indians rowed with quick choppy

strokes. Nick lay back with his father's arm around him. It was cold on the water.

The Indian who was rowing them was working very hard, but the other boat

moved farther ahead in the mist all the time.

'Where are we going, Dad?’ Nick asked.

'Over to the Indian camp. There is an Indian lady very sick.'

'Oh,’ said Nick.

Across the bay they found the other boat beached. Uncle George was

smoking a cigar in the dark. The young Indian pulled the boat way up on the

beach. Uncle George gave both the Indians cigars. They walked up from the beach

through a meadow that was soaking wet with dew, following the young Indian

who carried a lantern. Then they went into the woods and followed a trail that led

to the logging road that ran back into the hills. It was much lighter on the logging

road as the timber was cut away on both sides. The young Indian stopped and

blew out his lantern and they all walked on along the road.


96

They came around a bend and a dog came out barking. Ahead were the

lights of the shanties where the Indian bark-peelers lived. More dogs rushed out at

them. The two Indians sent them back to the shanties. In the shanty nearest the

road there was a light in the window. An old woman stood in the doorway holding

a lamp.

Inside on a wooden bunk lay a young Indian woman. She had been trying to

have her baby for two days. All the old women in the camp had been helping her.

The men had moved off up the road to sit in the dark and smoke out of range of

the noise she made. She screamed just as Nick and the two Indians followed his

father and Uncle George into the shanty. She lay in the lower bunk, very big

under a quilt. Her head was turned to one side. In the upper bunk was her

husband. He had cut his foot very badly with an axe three days before. He was

smoking a pipe. The room smelled very bad.

Nick's father ordered some water to be put on the stove, and while it was

heating he spoke to Nick.

'This lady is going to have a baby, Nick,' he said.

'I know,' said Nick.

'You don't know,' said his father. 'Listen to me. What she is going through is

called being in labour. The baby wants to be born and she wants it to be born. All

her muscles are trying to get the baby born. That is what is happening when she

screams.'

'I see,' Nick said. Just then the woman cried out. 'Oh, Daddy, can't you give her

something to make her stop screaming?' asked Nick. 'No. I haven't any


97

anaesthetic,' his father said. 'But her screams are not important. I don't hear them

because they are not important.'

The husband in the upper bunk rolled over against the wall. The woman in

the kitchen motioned to the doctor that the water was hot. Nick's father went into

the kitchen and poured about half of the water out of the big kettle into a basin.

Into the water left in the kettle he put several things he unwrapped from a

handkerchief.

'Those must boil,' he said, and began to scrub his hands in the basin of hot water

with a cake of soap he had brought from the camp. Nick watched his father's

hands scrubbing each other with the soap. While his father washed his hands very

carefully and thoroughly, he talked.

'You see, Nick, babies are supposed to be born head first, but sometimes they're

not. When they're not they make a lot of trouble for everybody. Maybe I'll have to

operate on this lady. We'll know in a little while.'

When he was satisfied with his hands he went in and went to work. 'Pull

back that quilt, will you, George?' he said. 'I'd rather not touch it.'

Later when he started to operate Uncle George and three Indian men held

the woman still. She bit Uncle George on the arm and Uncle George said, 'Damn

squaw bitch!' and the young Indian who had rowed Uncle George over laughed at

him. Nick held the basin for his father. It all took a long time.

His father picked the baby up and slapped it to make it breathe and handed it

to the old woman. 'See, it's a boy, Nick,’ he said. 'How do you like being an

interne?'


98

Nick said, 'All right'. He was looking away so as not to see what his father was

doing.

'There. That gets it,' said his father and put something into the basin.

Nick didn't look at it.

'Now,' his father said, 'there's some stitches to put in. You can watch this or not,

Nick, just as you like. I'm going to sew up the incision I made.'

Nick did not watch. His curiosity had been gone for a long time. His father

finished and stood up. Uncle George and the three Indian men stood up. Nick put

the basin out in the kitchen.

Uncle George looked at his arm. The young Indian smiled reminiscently.

'I'll put some peroxide on that, George,' the doctor said.

He bent over the Indian woman. She was quiet now and her eyes were

closed. She looked very pale. She did not know what had become of the baby or

anything.

'I'll be back in the morning,' the doctor said, standing up. 'The nurse should be

here from St. Ignace by noon and she'll bring everything we need.'

He was feeling exalted and talkative as football players are in the dressing

room after a game.

'That's one for the medical journal, George,' he said. 'Doing a Caesarian with a

jack-knife and sewing it up with nine-foot, tapered gut leaders.'

Uncle George was standing against the wall, looking at his arm.

'Oh, you're a great man, all right,' he said.


99

'Ought to have a look at the proud father. They're usually the worst sufferers in

these little affairs,' the doctor said. 'I must say he took it all pretty quietly.'

He pulled back the blanket from the Indian's head. His hand came away wet.

He mounted on the edge of the lower bunk with the lamp in one hand and looked

in. The Indian lay with his face toward the wall. His throat had been cut from ear

to ear. The blood had flowed down into a pool where his body sagged the bunk.

His head rested on his left arm. The open razor lay, edge up, in the blankets.

'Take Nick out of the shanty, George,' the doctor said.

There was no need of that. Nick, standing in the door of the kitchen, had a

good view of the upper bunk when his father, the lamp in one hand, tipped the

Indian's head back.

It was just beginning to be daylight when they walked along the logging

road back toward the lake.

'I'm terribly sorry I brought you along, Nickie,' said his father, all his post-

operative exhilaration gone. 'It was an awful mess to put you through.'

'Do ladies always have such a hard time having babies?' Nick asked.

'No, that was very, very exceptional.'

'Why did he kill himself, Daddy?'

'I don't know, Nick. He couldn't stand things, I guess.'

'Do many men kill themselves, Daddy?'

'Not very many, Nick.'

'Do many women?'

'Hardly ever.'


100

'Don't they ever?'

'Oh, yes. They do sometimes.'

'Daddy?'

'Yes.'

'Where did Uncle George go?'

'He'll turn up all right.'

'Is dying hard, Daddy?'

'No, I think it's pretty easy, Nick. It all depends.'

They were seated in the boat, Nick in the stern, his father rowing. The sun

was coming up over the hills. A bass jumped, making a circle in the water. Nick

trailed his hand in the water. It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning.

In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his

father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.

Appendix 2: John Henrik Clarke’s The Boy Who Painted Christ Black

He was the smartest boy in the Muskogee County School-for colored

children. Everybody even remotely connected with the school knew this. The

teacher always pronounced his name with profound gusto as she pointed him out

as the ideal student. Once I heard her say: “If he were white he might, some day,

become President.” Only Aaron Crawford wasn’t white; quite the contrary. His

skin was so solid black that it glowed, reflecting an inner virtue that was strange,

and beyond my comprehension.

In many ways he looked like something that was awkwardly put together.

Both his nose and his lips seemed a trifle too large for his face. To say he was


101

ugly would be unjust and to say he was handsome would be gross exaggeration.

Truthfully, I could never make up my mind about him. Sometimes he looked like

something out of a book of ancient history…looked as if he was left over from

that magnificent era before the machine age came and marred the earth’s natural

beauty.

His great variety of talent often startled the teachers. This caused his

classmates to look upon him with a mixed feeling of awe and envy.

Before Thanksgiving, he always drew turkeys and pumpkins on the

blackboard. On George Washington’s birthday, he drew large American flags

surrounded by little hatchets. It was these small masterpieces that made him the

most talked-about colored boy in Columbus, Georgia. The Negro principal of the

Muskogee County School said he would some day be a great painter, like Henry

O. Tanner.

For the teacher’s birthday, which fell on a day about a week before

commencement, Aaron Crawford painted the picture that caused an uproar, and a

turning point, at the Muskogee County School. The moment he entered the room

that morning, all eyes fell on him. Besides his torn book holder, he was carrying a

large-framed concern wrapped in old newspapers. As he went to his seat, the

teacher’s eyes followed his every motion, a curious wonderment mirrored in them

conflicting with the half-smile that wreathed her face.

Aaron put his books down, then smiling broadly, advanced toward the

teacher’s desk. His alert eyes were so bright with joy that they were almost


102

frightening. The children were leaning forward in their seats, staring greedily at

him; a restless anticipation was growing.

Already the teacher sensed that Aaron had a present for her. Still smiling, he

placed it on her desk and began to help her unwrap it. As the last piece of paper

fell form the large frame, the teacher jerked her hand away from it suddenly, her

eyes flickering unbelievingly. Amidst the rigid tension, her heavy breathing was

distinct and frightening. Temporarily, there was no other sound in the room.

Aaron stood questioningly at her and she moved her hand back to the

present cautiously, as if it were a living thing with vicious characteristics. I am

sure it was the one thing she least expected.

With a quick, involuntary movement I rose up from my desk. A series of

submerged murmurs spread through the room, rising to a distinct monotone. The

teacher turned toward the children, staring reproachfully. They did not move their

eyes: from the present that Aaron had brought her….It was a large picture of

Christ-painted black!

Aaron Crawford went back to his seat, a feeling of triumph reflecting in his

every movement.

The teacher faced us. Her curious half-smile had blurred into a mild

bewilderment. She searched the bright faces before her and started to smile again,

occasionally stealing quick glances at the large picture propped on her desk, as

though doing so were forbidden amusement.

“Aaron,” she spoke at last, a slight tinge of uncertainty in her tone, “this is a

most wonderful present. Thanks. I will treasure it.” She paused, then went on


103

speaking, a trifle more coherent than before. “Looks like you are going to be quite

an artist….Suppose you come forward and tell the class how you came to paint

this remarkable picture.”

When he rose to speak, to explain about the picture, a hush fell tightly over

the room; and the children gave him all of their attention…something they rarely

did for the teacher. He did not speak at first; he just stood there in front of the

room, toying absently with his hands, observing his audience carefully, like a

great concert artist.

“It was like this,” he said, placing full emphasis on every word. “You see,

my uncle who lives in New York teaches classes in Negro History at the

Y.M.C.A. When he visited us last year he was telling me about the many great

black folks who have made history. He said black folks were once the most

powerful people on earth. When I asked him about Christ, he said no one ever

proved whether he was black or white. Somehow a feeling came over me that he

was a black man, ‘cause he was so kind and forgiving, kinder than I have ever

seen white people be. So, when I painted his picture I couldn’t help but paint it as

I thought it was.”

The teacher, knowing nothing else to do under prevailing circumstances,

invited the children to rise from their seats and come forward so they could get a

complete view of Aaron’s unique piece of art.

When I came close to the picture, I noticed it was painted with the kind of

paint you get in the five and ten cent stores. Its shape was blurred slightly, as if

someone had jarred the frame before the paint had time to dry. The eyes of Christ


104

were deep-set and sad, very much like those of Aaron’s father, who was a deacon

in the local Baptist Church. This picture of Christ looked much different from the

one I saw hanging on the wall when I was in Sunday School. It looked more like a

helpless Negro, pleading silently for mercy.

For the next few days, there was much talk about Aaron’s picture.

The school term ended the following week and Aaron’s picture, along with

the best handwork done by the students that year, was on display in the assembly

room. Naturally, Aaron’s picture graced the place of honor.

There was no book work to be done on commencement day, and joy was

rampant among the children. The girls in their brightly colored dresses gave the

school the delightful air of Spring awakening. In the middle of the day all the

children were gathered in the small assembly. On this day we were always

favored with a visit from a man whom all the teachers spoke of with mixed

esteem and fear. Professor Danual, they called him, and they always pronounced

his name with reverence. He was supervisor of all the city school, including those

small and poorly equipped ones set aside for colored children.

The great man arrived almost at the end of our commencement exercises.

On seeing him enter the hall, the children rose, bowed courteously, and sat down

again, their eyes examining him as if he were a circus freak.

He was a tall white man with solid gray hair that made his lean face seem

even paler than it actually was. His eyes were the clearest blue I have ever seen,

They were the only life-like things about him.


105

As he made his way to the front of the room the Negro principal, George Du

Vaul, was walking ahead of him, cautiously preventing anything from getting in

his way. As he passed me, I heard the teachers, frightened, sucking in their breath,

felt the tension tightening.

A large chair was in the center of the rostrum. It had been daintily polished

and the janitor had laboriously recushioned its bottom. The supervisor went

straight to it without being guided, knowing that this pretty splendor was reserved

for him.

Presently the Negro principal introduced the distinguished guest and he

favored us with a short speech. It wasn’t a very important speech. Almost at the

end of it, I remember him saying something about he wouldn’t be surprised if one

of us boys grew up to be a great colored man, like Booker T. Washington.

After he sat down, the school chorus sang two spirituals and the girls in the

fourth grade did an Indian folk dance. This brought the commencement program

to an end.

After this the supervisor came down from the rostrum, his eyes tinged with

curiosity, and began to view the array of handwork on display in front of the

chapel.

Suddenly his face underwent a strange rejuvenation. His clear blue eyes

flickered in astonishment. He was looking at Aaron Crawford’s picture and stood

gazing fixedly at it, curious and undecided, as though it were a dangerous animal

that would rise at any moment and spread destruction.


106

We waited tensely for his next movement. The silence was almost

suffocating. At last he twisted himself around and began to search the grim faces

before him. The fiery glitter of his eyes abated slightly as they rested on the Negro

principal, protestingly.

“Who painted this sacrilegious nonsense?” he demanded sharply.

“I painted it, sir.” These were Aaron’s words, spoken hesitantly. He wetted

his lips timidly and looked up at the supervisor, his eyes voicing a sad plea for

understanding.

He spoke again, this time more coherently. “Th’ principal said a colored

person have jes’ as much right paintin’ Jesus black as a white person have paintin’

him white. And he says….” At this point he halted abruptly, as if to search for his

next words. A strong tinge of bewilderment dimmed the glow of his solid black

face. He stammered out a few more words, then stopped again.

The supervisor strode a few steps toward him. At last color had swelled

some of the lifelessness out of his lean face.

“Well, go on!” he said, enragedly, “…I’m still listening.”

Aaron moved his lips pathetically but no words passed them. His eyes

wandered around the room, resting finally, with an air of hope, on the face of the

Negro principal. After a moment, he jerked his face in another direction,

regretfully, as if something he had said had betrayed an understanding between

him and the principal.

Presently the principal stepped forward to defend the school’s prize student.


107

“I encouraged the boy in painting that picture,” he said firmly. “And it was

with my permission that he brought the picture into this school. I don’t think the

boy is so far wrong in painting Christ black. The artists of all other races have

painted whatsoever God they worship to resemble themselves. I see no reason

why we should be immune from that privilege. After all, Christ was born in that

part of the world that had always been predominantly populated by colored

people. There is a strong possibility that he could have been a Negro.”

But for the monotonous lull of heavy breathing, I would have sworn that his

words had frozen everyone in the hall. I had never heard the little principal speak

to boldly to anyone, black or white.

The supervisor swallowed dumfoundedly. His face was aglow in silent rage.

“Have you been teaching these children things like that?” he asked the

Negro principal sternly.

“I have been teaching them that their race has produced great kings and

queens as well as slaves and serfs,” the principal said. “The time is long overdue

when we should let the world know that we erected and enjoyed the benefits of a

splendid civilization long before the people of Europe had a written language.”

The supervisor coughed. His eyes bulged menacingly as he spoke. “You are

not being paid to teach such things in this school, and I am demanding your

resignation for overstepping your limit as principal.”

George Du Vaul did not speak. A strong quiver swept over his sullen face.

He revolved himself slowly and walked out of the room towards the office.


108

The supervisor’s eyes followed him until he was out of focus. Then he

murmured under his breath: ”There’ll be a lot of fuss in this world if you start

people thinking that Christ was a nigger.”

Some of the teachers followed the principal out of the chapel, leaving the

crestfallen children restless and in a quandary about what to do next. Finally we

started back to our rooms. The supervisor was behind me. I heard him murmur to

himself: “Damn, if niggers ain’t getting smarter.”

A few days later I heard that the principal had accepted a summer job as art

instructor of a small high school somewhere in south Georgia and had gotten

permission from Aaron’s parents to take him along so he could continue to

encourage him in his painting.

I was on my way home when I saw him leaving his office. He was carrying

a large briefcase and some books tucked under his arm. He had already said good-

by to all the teachers. And strangely, he did not look brokenhearted. As he headed

for the large front door, he readjusted his horn-rimmed glasses, but did not look

back. An air of triumph gave more dignity to his soldierly stride. He had the

appearance of a man who had done a great thing, something greater than any

ordinary man would do.

Aaron Crawford was waiting outside for him. They walked down the street

together. He put his arms around Aaron’s shoulder affectionately. He was talking

sincerely to Aaron about something, and Aaron was listening, deeply earnest.


109

I watched them until they were so far down the street that their forms had

begun to blur. Even from this distance I could see they were still walking in brisk,

dignified strides, like two people who had won some sort of victory.


the ideas of colonizer and colonized as seen in ernest

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