ABSTRACT
The objectives of this research are to describe the representation of native people in “The Man Who Would Be King” by Rudyard Kipling, “The Revenge of Her Race” by Mary Beaumont, and “An Outpost of Progress” by Joseph Conrad and to find the reflection of colonialism based on the representation of native in the short stories.
This research uses Postcolonial studies as approach and applies Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics as the methodology. This research is classified as qualitative research. The data are divided into main data and secondary data. Three short stories written by different authors are used as the main data. They are “The Man Who Would Be King” by Rudyard Kipling, “The Revenge of Her Race” by Mary Beaumont, and “An Outpost of Progress” by Joseph Conrad. The first two stories are taken from anthology Stories by English Author: Orient (1902) published by Project Gutenberg. The last short story is taken from anthology entitled Tale of Unrest (1888) published by Free Classic e-book. The secondary data are taken from other sources related to this research, both printed and online resources.
The three short stories analyzed in this study contain the representation of native people. The authors construct two contradictory places to show the white men’s superiority to the native people. The native people are presented as a primitive race while the white people pictured as a civilized race. This representation is not accurate because the authors only have partial knowledge of the native people. The native people are placed as second class in class division. The ambivalence occurs within the native people both negative and positive. The ambivalence in “The Man Would Be King” and “The Revenge of Her Race” are negative while it has positive atmosphere in “An Outpost of Progress”.
Keywords: British short story, Postcolonial, Hermeneutics