The search for ethnic and cultural self-identity of the main character Pearl's. Buck's 'Letter form Peking'

Literature develops intellectual and emotional skills of his readers because it broadens and stimulates the readers' mind and makes them have wider human sympathy. The writer is interested to study a novel because it represents a resemble of real life or imaginary story. Reading novel gives many advantages to the reader. It leads the reader to see the reality of life and know the moral value. The writer chooses Pearl S. Buck's 'Letter from Peking ' and focuses on searching for the main character's ethnic and cultural self-identity. Pearl S. Buck's novel is suitable as the object for the study. It contains a picture of life and gives more details of self-identity. Everybody wants to discover his or her self-identity Knowing his or her self-identity makes him or her appreciate himself or herself more than before. Designed as a qualitative study, this study applies literary criticism approach to analyze the novel under investigation. In conducting this thesis the writer has two questions that become the statement of the problem, they are 1) why is Gerald trying to find his ethnic and cultural self-identity? 2) how does Gerald find his ethnic and cultural self-identity?. The three elements of novels - character, setting and plot- are used as viewpoints in the analysis driven to find the major character's self-identity. Gerald, the main character, wants to find his ethnic and cultural self-identity because he confuses with his identity is he American or Chinese? He has two bloods, American and Chinese. When he stays in America, he feels queer because he looks like a Chinese and then he moves to China and continues to search for his ethnic and cultural self-identity. After he finds that he is an American, it is too late for him to move to America. He was shot when he tried to escape. From this analysis the writer concludes that, if someone has mixed blood in his vain, he never askes for it. Searching for ethnic and cultural self-identity is important and common in adolescence period. If the condition is like that it is better to find the similarity than to find the differences between two ethnics and to take the good side and to equip each other. Finally, the writer suggests those who want to sharpen their understanding and improve the1r knowledge of discourse analysis to take literature as their subject of their study because literature gives more lessons of life