earticle

영어

Sapphire’s Push depicts a black girl’s unbearable trauma from her uncaring parents. Like Pecola in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Precious, the main protagonist, is a victim of her father’s sexual harrassment and her mother’s violence and negligence. Due to her father’s rape, she becomes pregnant when she is very young and gives birth to two children. In addition, she doesn’t have an opportunity to have a decent education because of poverty. This novel focuses on learning and growth of Precious who meets a teacher named Ms. Rain and her fellow classmates at an alternative school. Precious and her classmates who don’t know how to write and read English learn to overcome their traumas by writing journals and telling their sorrows. Push distinctively shows the power of journal writing and in some veins, this novel is closely related with the works of Kathleen Adams and James Pennybaker who are specialists of journal writing. In this paper, several techniques of journal writing suggested by Adams and Pennybaker were discussed. Sapphire emphasized that Precious, who thinks her trauma can’t be healed, has high self-esteem and clarity by writing her pain on her journals, sharing her sorrows with others, and telling her trauma to make it bearable and understandable.