Harriet Tubman's Heroic Struggle to Break Free of Slavery in Dorothy Sterling's Freedom Train: The Story of Harriet Tubman

Abstract: The writer analyzes a literary work that takes an interest in Freedom Train: The Story of Harriet Tubman, a novel written by Dorothy Sterling. The interesting thing of the novel is a story about a bold struggle of African American female slave who wants to obtain uneasy freedom. She struggles to break free of slavery because of her master and mistress who always oppress and exploit her to do everything. In this study, the writer focuses to answer three problem questions of analyzing this study. They include (1) What kind of oppressions experienced by Harriet Tubman? (2) What is the impact of white folk and her husband’s oppressions towards Harriet Tubman? And (3) How does Harriet Tubman’s struggle to break free of slavery? Hence, black feminism is used as the theoretical framework. By using the qualitative design, the narrator’s narrative and characters’ utterances that have connection to the research problem questions are the data of this study. As the key instrument, the writer analyzes and interprets the data. In this activities, the writer will be seeking and collecting the data before analyzing or creating the findings and discussions. After analyzing the research problem question and the data of this study, the writer finds out that Harriet gets unjust treatment from her Mistress and Master, as the slaveholder. She undergoes the situation of economic and ideological dimensions of oppression in the real world. In addition, her husband also oppresses her because of her strong ambition to struggle her freedom. However, because of being a dauntless and ambitious woman, she raises her status become a free woman after deciding to run away by joining to the Underground Railroad and having relation with the conductor.