Saturday, April 19, 2008
Point of view
According to Abrams, (1985:165) point of view is the way which a story tells the mode established by an author by means of whom the reader is presented with the characters, dialogue, actions, setting, and events, which constitute the narrative in a work of fiction; it can be said that point of view is perspective in a work of fiction. It can be said that point of view is perspective on events of a narrative and the position (which may change) from which the story is told.
Corroly (in Koesnobroto, 1988:87-88) states that there are four of points of view:
1) the omniscient point if view
The story told by the author using the third person and his knowledge and prerogative are unlimited.
2) the limits omniscient point of view
The author tells the story in the third person, but he tells it from the viewpoint of one character in the story. The author places himself at the elbow of this character, so to speak and to look at the events of the story through his eyes and through his mind.
3) the first person point of view
The author disappears into one of the character who tells the story in the first person. The character may be a major or minor character, protagonist or observer and it will make considerable difference whether the protagonist tells his own story or someone else tells it.
4) the objective point of view
The author disappears into a kind of roving sound camera, which can go anywhere but can record only what has seen and heard. It cannot comment, interpret, or enter a character’s mind with this point of view. Sometimes the authors calls the dramatic point of view. The reader is placed in the position of a spectator at a movie or play.
References:
Abrams, M.H. 1985. A Glossary of literary Term. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston.
Koesnobroto, Sunaryo Basuki. 1988. The Anatomy of Proses Fiction. Dept.P&K Dirjen Dikti.
Setting
The term of setting is usually, applied in literature to the local or period in which the action of play takes place. Pickering (1983:37) says that setting encompasses both the physical local that frames the action and the time of day or year, the climatic conditions, and the historical period during which the action takes place. Kenney (1966:39) distinguishes setting as the element of fiction that reveals the where and when of events.
Setting is divided into two kinds: spiritual and physical setting. Physical setting is classified into setting of place and setting of time. Setting of place includes the name of city, village, hotel, room, etc. While setting of time includes date, morning, day, full, moon, etc. Spiritual setting contents of rules, belief and norm (Nurgiyantoro, 1998:218).
Setting is the general local, historical time and social circumstance in which. Its action occurs; the setting of an episode of scene within a work is the particular location in which it takes place (Abrams, 1985:175).
References:
Abrams, M.H. 1985. A Glossary of literary Term. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston.
Kenney, William. 1966. How to analyze the fiction. New York: Monarch Press.
Nurgiyantoro, Burhan. 1998. Teori Pengkajian Fiksi. Yogyakarta: Gajah Mada University Press.
Pickering, James H & Jeffery D. Hopper. 1983. Concise Companion to Literature. New York, Macmillan Publishing Co.Inc
Plot
Plot can be defined as the necessary chosen order of a fiction. The definition based on the face that the story (novel) consists of many events and it becomes coherent, meaningful and interesting.
According to Abrams, (1993:159) plot in dramatic or narrative work is constituted of its event and action, as these rendered and ordered toward achieving particular emotional and artistic effect.
Tennyson (1967:21) says that the plot has a structure. The structure of the plot usually contains five parts:
1. Exposition is the beginning on the section in which the author provides the necessary background information such as sets of the scene, the established situations and dates of section. It also contains the introduction of the characters and the potent ion.
2. Complication sometimes refers to the rising action and the existing equilibrium or balance. The conflict is the developed gradually.
3. Crisis is also called as the climax of the story occurs now of emotional intensity and usually that involves in decision, a decisive or an open conflict between protagonist and antagonist.
4. Falling action refers to the turning point at which the plot of the novels toward its appointed conclusion.
5. Denouement or resolution refers to the situation at which gives the situation at which gives the solution of the conflict and how the story ended.
Plot must have beginning middle, and end in a beginning, the problem and the characters are exposed or introduced, followed by rising action and move towards a climax or major crisis then moves down in falling action and concludes in and end.
References:
Abrams, M.H. 1985. A Glossary of literary Term. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston.
Tennyson, GB. 1987. An Introduction to Drama. Los Angeles: Holt Rinehart and Winston, Inc.
The Characteristics of Structuralism
Structural analysis is an approach to understand a literary work which has several characteristics. Sapardi Djoko Damono (1978:38) in his book Sosiologi Sastra:
Sebuah pengantar Ringkas, writes four characteristics of structuralism as follows:
1. A literary work is viewed as a unity as a totality. The totality of its elements is the most important in this approach. It is not the elements of the totality, which becomes the analysis but the relationship among the elements.
2. structuralism does not analyze surface structure and the deep structure what is seen and what is heard are not the real structure but only the evidence exist.
3. The analysis done by the structuralism involves synchronic structure not a diachronic one. The analysis involves synchronic structure not a diachronic one. The attention focused on the existing relationship in a certain time and not in a chronological time. The synchronic structure is not base on the structural analysis.
4. Structuralism is an anti causal approach. In analyzing, the structuralism never uses the meaning of cause and effect. They do not believe in because affect’s law and only believe in structural relationship.
Reference:
Damono, Sapardi Djoko. 1979. Sosiologi Sastra. Jakarta: Depdikbud.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
The Synopsis of “The Scarlet Letter”
“The Scarlet Letter” was opened with an introductory sketch of the Custom House. Here, is the explanation about how the book came to be written. In the Custom House’s attic, the nameless narrator who has a job position as a surveyor in Salem Custom House discovered a number of documents. One of them is a manuscript that was bundled with a scarlet, gold-embroidered patch of cloth in the shape of an “A”. This manuscript contains detailed events that were occurred some two hundred years before the narrator’s time. The narrator finally decided to write a fictional account of the events that is recorded in the manuscript. “The Scarlet Letter” is the final product (http://www.sparknotes.com.lit/scarlet/).
“The Scarlet Letter” has a setting of the New England Puritans in the 17th century. The story begins with Hester Prynne who was just released from Boston prison to the town scaffold where she was going to be publicly shamed for what she had conducted. She is a young beautiful woman who had married to Roger Chillingworth, but she was left by her husband for much of time. Due to this reason, she had committed adultery with a young respected Puritan’s clergyman named Arthur Dimmesdale. This adultery caused her pregnant and given birth a child with no father. In the town scaffold, Hester was questioned by the two town fathers named Reverend John Wilson and Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, about the name of her illegal partner, but she refused to answer it. Hester carried also her infant daughter, Pearl, in the town scaffold. Hester was forced to wear the letter “A” on her gown all the times as a badge of shame. In a large crowd of Puritans, Hester surprisedly recognized her husband, Roger Chillingworth, who sent her to America before him but he never arrived in Boston. The rumor was Roger Chillingworth had been lost at sea. During the absence of her husband, Hester Prynne met Arthur Dimmesdale and committed adultery. This affair given birth to a child. She made a decision to keep silent of her lover’s identity and accepted the punishment of the sin by herself. Hester felt agitated of her husband arrival after she was returned to the prison cell. And this condition had made Pearl upset and cried hardly. Therefore the jailer of the Boston prison allowed a physician to enter Hester’s prison cell in order to calm them down. Roger Chillingworth taken this opportunity and he pretended to be a physician for Hester and Pearl. During his medical treatment of Pearl, Roger Chillingworth made a long conversation with Hester Prynne. He forced her to make a confession about the name of the one who had made her pregnant, but once again she refused it. Here, Roger Chillingworth asked Hester Prynne to conceal his true identity from the public and declared that he will try hard to make a revenge to a person who had made his wife pregnant.
Hester was ostracized by the society because of her shameful sin that caused her moved into a small cottage on the outskirts of Boston in order to set up her new life. She supported herself and Pearl by doing stitch work for local dignitaries, and often spent some of her money helping the poor and sick. Hester Prynne becomes an autonomous and pure woman because of this hard condition. Seven years passed, Pearl grew up to be wild and impish child. Governor Bellingham, a community official, attempted to separate Pearl away from her mother’s care in order to give her a better life in a more Christian household. In this case, Hester succeed to defend her daughter with the help of Arthur Dimmesdale. Dimmesdale, however, has a poor health which was seemingly caused by his secrecy. Due to this reason, Roger Chillingworth offered himself to be Dimmesdale’s physician, which eventually made them live in the same roof. Roger Chillingworth suspected that may be there is a connection between Arthur Dimmesdale’s suffering and Hester Pynne’s secret. Roger Chillingworth eventually discovered that Dimmesdale is the true father of Pearl through his discovery of a mark on Dimmesdale’s chest, a physical mark of the scarlet letter, which convinced him that his suspicion is correct.
One night Dimmesdale sought absolution for his crime that he left his house and walked to the town scaffold where Hester was publicly humiliated seven years prior. He stood on it and tried to punish himself for his sin, in the way of imagined many of things that Hester went through and imagined also that the whole town watching him with a physical mark of the scarlet letter which was emblazoned on his chest. While he stood there alone, Hester and Pearl were on their way home from Governor Winthrop’s deathbed in order to take a measurement for a robe. Dimmesdale then asked them to join with him standing on the scaffold. In this moment, Pearl also asked Dimmesdale to stand with them on the scafffold at the noontide of the next day. Dimmesdale refused Pearl’s request that he acknowledging her as his daughter publicly tomorrow noontide. At that moment, a meteor marked a dull red “A” in the night sky. It illuminated everything, including Dimmesdale with his hand over his hearth and the scarlet letter on Hester’s gown. When they looked down again, they realized that Roger Chillingworth watched them across the street. Here, Dimmesdale told Hester that truly he is afraid of Roger Chillingworth’s existence near to him. Dimmesdale then was taken home by Roger Chillingworth. Hester naturally realized that Chillingworth is killing Dimmesdale slowly, and that she had to safe him from Roger Chillingworth quickly.
A few weeks later Hester and her daughter, Pearl, met Chillingworth in the forest and told him that she is going to reveal his true identity to Dimmesdale. This encounter was intended to warn Dimmesdale about Chillingworth’s true identity. At the first time, Dimmesdale felt furious with the revelation, but then Hester’s mistake was forgiven by Dimmesdale and he finally agreed with Hester’s argument that they should run away together. They made a decision to go to Europe with a ship that is going to be sailed from Boston one day after Dimmesdale’s Election Sermon. At the end of the story, Arthur Dimmesdale made a confession of his big sin publicly and then died soon after he opened his cloth to expose a scarlet letter which was seared into the flesh of his chest.
“The Scarlet Letter” has a setting of the New England Puritans in the 17th century. The story begins with Hester Prynne who was just released from Boston prison to the town scaffold where she was going to be publicly shamed for what she had conducted. She is a young beautiful woman who had married to Roger Chillingworth, but she was left by her husband for much of time. Due to this reason, she had committed adultery with a young respected Puritan’s clergyman named Arthur Dimmesdale. This adultery caused her pregnant and given birth a child with no father. In the town scaffold, Hester was questioned by the two town fathers named Reverend John Wilson and Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, about the name of her illegal partner, but she refused to answer it. Hester carried also her infant daughter, Pearl, in the town scaffold. Hester was forced to wear the letter “A” on her gown all the times as a badge of shame. In a large crowd of Puritans, Hester surprisedly recognized her husband, Roger Chillingworth, who sent her to America before him but he never arrived in Boston. The rumor was Roger Chillingworth had been lost at sea. During the absence of her husband, Hester Prynne met Arthur Dimmesdale and committed adultery. This affair given birth to a child. She made a decision to keep silent of her lover’s identity and accepted the punishment of the sin by herself. Hester felt agitated of her husband arrival after she was returned to the prison cell. And this condition had made Pearl upset and cried hardly. Therefore the jailer of the Boston prison allowed a physician to enter Hester’s prison cell in order to calm them down. Roger Chillingworth taken this opportunity and he pretended to be a physician for Hester and Pearl. During his medical treatment of Pearl, Roger Chillingworth made a long conversation with Hester Prynne. He forced her to make a confession about the name of the one who had made her pregnant, but once again she refused it. Here, Roger Chillingworth asked Hester Prynne to conceal his true identity from the public and declared that he will try hard to make a revenge to a person who had made his wife pregnant.
Hester was ostracized by the society because of her shameful sin that caused her moved into a small cottage on the outskirts of Boston in order to set up her new life. She supported herself and Pearl by doing stitch work for local dignitaries, and often spent some of her money helping the poor and sick. Hester Prynne becomes an autonomous and pure woman because of this hard condition. Seven years passed, Pearl grew up to be wild and impish child. Governor Bellingham, a community official, attempted to separate Pearl away from her mother’s care in order to give her a better life in a more Christian household. In this case, Hester succeed to defend her daughter with the help of Arthur Dimmesdale. Dimmesdale, however, has a poor health which was seemingly caused by his secrecy. Due to this reason, Roger Chillingworth offered himself to be Dimmesdale’s physician, which eventually made them live in the same roof. Roger Chillingworth suspected that may be there is a connection between Arthur Dimmesdale’s suffering and Hester Pynne’s secret. Roger Chillingworth eventually discovered that Dimmesdale is the true father of Pearl through his discovery of a mark on Dimmesdale’s chest, a physical mark of the scarlet letter, which convinced him that his suspicion is correct.
One night Dimmesdale sought absolution for his crime that he left his house and walked to the town scaffold where Hester was publicly humiliated seven years prior. He stood on it and tried to punish himself for his sin, in the way of imagined many of things that Hester went through and imagined also that the whole town watching him with a physical mark of the scarlet letter which was emblazoned on his chest. While he stood there alone, Hester and Pearl were on their way home from Governor Winthrop’s deathbed in order to take a measurement for a robe. Dimmesdale then asked them to join with him standing on the scaffold. In this moment, Pearl also asked Dimmesdale to stand with them on the scafffold at the noontide of the next day. Dimmesdale refused Pearl’s request that he acknowledging her as his daughter publicly tomorrow noontide. At that moment, a meteor marked a dull red “A” in the night sky. It illuminated everything, including Dimmesdale with his hand over his hearth and the scarlet letter on Hester’s gown. When they looked down again, they realized that Roger Chillingworth watched them across the street. Here, Dimmesdale told Hester that truly he is afraid of Roger Chillingworth’s existence near to him. Dimmesdale then was taken home by Roger Chillingworth. Hester naturally realized that Chillingworth is killing Dimmesdale slowly, and that she had to safe him from Roger Chillingworth quickly.
A few weeks later Hester and her daughter, Pearl, met Chillingworth in the forest and told him that she is going to reveal his true identity to Dimmesdale. This encounter was intended to warn Dimmesdale about Chillingworth’s true identity. At the first time, Dimmesdale felt furious with the revelation, but then Hester’s mistake was forgiven by Dimmesdale and he finally agreed with Hester’s argument that they should run away together. They made a decision to go to Europe with a ship that is going to be sailed from Boston one day after Dimmesdale’s Election Sermon. At the end of the story, Arthur Dimmesdale made a confession of his big sin publicly and then died soon after he opened his cloth to expose a scarlet letter which was seared into the flesh of his chest.
Psychology of Literature
Psychology is actually derived from Greek words, “psyche” (the soul) and “logos” (study). Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental process (Papalia and Wendkos Olds, 1985:4). Other sources said that, Psychology is the study of the mind and human and animal behavior (Hornby, 1995:936). While according to Munn (1961:7), Psychology is a science and the reason for this is that its observations relate to living organisms. Though there are many definitions of psychology, but all have one similarity for the essence, that is about human and its behavior. According to Subhan (2003:57), Psychology (the science or study of mind and its processes) can be used to help a literary critic or a literary researcher to explain, interpret, and evaluate literary works. In relation to the quotation above, the writer can draws a conclusion that psychology can explain the creative work of the author.
By ‘psychology of literature’, we may mean the psychological study of the writer, as type and as individual, or the study of the creative process, or the study of the psychological types and laws presents within works of literature, or, finally, the effects of life nature upon its readers (audience psychology) (Wellek and Warren, 1978: 81). Psychology and literature have a functional relationship each other.
By ‘psychology of literature’, we may mean the psychological study of the writer, as type and as individual, or the study of the creative process, or the study of the psychological types and laws presents within works of literature, or, finally, the effects of life nature upon its readers (audience psychology) (Wellek and Warren, 1978: 81). Psychology and literature have a functional relationship each other.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Synopsis of the novel Palomino
Samantha is a beautiful woman. Her long shining hair was whitening in the sun, and her face was getting tanned a rich honey-brown as beautiful as palomino. Palomino is a kind of horse.
Samantha Taylor is also a talented woman. She is the assistant creative director’s success advertising in New York. She has good career and she often gets award from her advertisements. Her partners are Charlie and Harvey. They always work together well. She considers Charlie and Harvey as her own family.
One time she is shattered when her husband, John leaves her for another woman. They have married for seven years but do not get child. John met Liz in the election coverage a year before. Liz has something he desperately wants; she has a quality that he needs, a kind of low profile that pleased him. He and Samantha are too much alike in some ways, too visible, too spectacular, too quick, and too beautiful. He likes Liz’s sensible plainness,
her less-dazzling intelligence, her quiet style, her willingness to take a backseat, to be obscure, while helping him to be more of what he was. She is the perfect foil for him; it was why they worked so well as a team. He does not feel anxious when he was with her, he does not have to complete. He is automatically the star.
And there is more to it, she is pregnant and it is his child, he knows it. It is the one thing he wants more than all else. It is what he always wants, and what Samantha can not give him. It had taken the doctors three years to discover what the problem is, and when they do, they are sure. Samantha is sterile. She really loses John.
Pain has given way to fury, which lead to sorrow, which grew to grief, which reverts once again to anger. It is as though there is no one, no one to whom she belongs, no one who cares. Her father had died when she was in college, her mother lives in Atlanta with a man she found charming but whom Samantha does not. He is a doctor, and pompous and self-satisfied as hell. But at least her mother is happy. Anyway, Sam is not close to her mother, and it is not to her that she could turn.
She decides to put her advertising career on hold and seeks refuge at a friend’s California ranch, where she loses herself in the daily labor of ranch life. She lives with Caroline who has a large ranch. Here, she discovers the healing powers of trusted friends, simple joys, and hard work. She meets Tate Jordan, the ranch foreman, and a tumultuous relationship ensued. They love each other. She feels that she gets real love from him. None knows their special relationship. Samantha is the rancher but Tate is the ranch foreman. In a ranch, the relationship between the ranchers and the ranch foreman is prohibited. Tate always refuses to marry her. Tate also leaves her because they had different level. Tate has to do it although he loves Samantha so much.
Samantha is hurt and sad. She looks for him for a month but he is not found. Then she decides to go back to New York and going to work in her firm. She gets a new project to make an advertisement related to the horse. She goes to the ranch in Arizona. Unluckily, when she rides a horse, she falls. It changes Samantha’s life forever. She is confined to a wheelchair and may look deep inside herself to find the courage to begin again. Now, fighting the battles of the handicapped, she finds sound new challenges, new loves, and even the adopted child she is always longed for. She gets Tate again and adopts Timmie as her child.
Samantha Taylor is also a talented woman. She is the assistant creative director’s success advertising in New York. She has good career and she often gets award from her advertisements. Her partners are Charlie and Harvey. They always work together well. She considers Charlie and Harvey as her own family.
One time she is shattered when her husband, John leaves her for another woman. They have married for seven years but do not get child. John met Liz in the election coverage a year before. Liz has something he desperately wants; she has a quality that he needs, a kind of low profile that pleased him. He and Samantha are too much alike in some ways, too visible, too spectacular, too quick, and too beautiful. He likes Liz’s sensible plainness,
her less-dazzling intelligence, her quiet style, her willingness to take a backseat, to be obscure, while helping him to be more of what he was. She is the perfect foil for him; it was why they worked so well as a team. He does not feel anxious when he was with her, he does not have to complete. He is automatically the star.
And there is more to it, she is pregnant and it is his child, he knows it. It is the one thing he wants more than all else. It is what he always wants, and what Samantha can not give him. It had taken the doctors three years to discover what the problem is, and when they do, they are sure. Samantha is sterile. She really loses John.
Pain has given way to fury, which lead to sorrow, which grew to grief, which reverts once again to anger. It is as though there is no one, no one to whom she belongs, no one who cares. Her father had died when she was in college, her mother lives in Atlanta with a man she found charming but whom Samantha does not. He is a doctor, and pompous and self-satisfied as hell. But at least her mother is happy. Anyway, Sam is not close to her mother, and it is not to her that she could turn.
She decides to put her advertising career on hold and seeks refuge at a friend’s California ranch, where she loses herself in the daily labor of ranch life. She lives with Caroline who has a large ranch. Here, she discovers the healing powers of trusted friends, simple joys, and hard work. She meets Tate Jordan, the ranch foreman, and a tumultuous relationship ensued. They love each other. She feels that she gets real love from him. None knows their special relationship. Samantha is the rancher but Tate is the ranch foreman. In a ranch, the relationship between the ranchers and the ranch foreman is prohibited. Tate always refuses to marry her. Tate also leaves her because they had different level. Tate has to do it although he loves Samantha so much.
Samantha is hurt and sad. She looks for him for a month but he is not found. Then she decides to go back to New York and going to work in her firm. She gets a new project to make an advertisement related to the horse. She goes to the ranch in Arizona. Unluckily, when she rides a horse, she falls. It changes Samantha’s life forever. She is confined to a wheelchair and may look deep inside herself to find the courage to begin again. Now, fighting the battles of the handicapped, she finds sound new challenges, new loves, and even the adopted child she is always longed for. She gets Tate again and adopts Timmie as her child.
The Moral Lessons in a Literary Work
In Oxford Learner’s Dictionary (1995:548) moral is described as standard of behavior principles of right and wrong. It is also a practical lesson that a story and event or an experience teaches. Human naturally have unique positions. The uniqueness lays on the dualism of moral they have. On one hand, they want someone good, positive and integrative. On the other hand, they tend to do bad, negative and disintegrative deed. In Islam, this case is described in Holy Qur’an:
“By the soul, and the proportion and order given to it; and its enlighten as to its wrong and its right”. (Al Syam, 7-8)
According to Nurgiyantoro (1995:321) moral is something which the author wants to carry on the readers to the meaning which is implied in a work, and the meaning which is suggested through the story. Moral of the literary work usually reflects the authors’ way of their life, their view about rightness values, and those are what the author wants to carry on to the readers. From a story, besides getting knowledge, information, and enjoyment, the readers also get moral lessons that can be adopted in their life, if they are good things and ignored if they are bad things. Moral lessons are presented by the researcher directly or indirectly by the researcher through telling the readers. Readers will easily find them in the story if it is presented by the researcher directly. While the moral is showed indirectly need certain care to find the moral lesson because the writer presents implicitly in the story.
“By the soul, and the proportion and order given to it; and its enlighten as to its wrong and its right”. (Al Syam, 7-8)
According to Nurgiyantoro (1995:321) moral is something which the author wants to carry on the readers to the meaning which is implied in a work, and the meaning which is suggested through the story. Moral of the literary work usually reflects the authors’ way of their life, their view about rightness values, and those are what the author wants to carry on to the readers. From a story, besides getting knowledge, information, and enjoyment, the readers also get moral lessons that can be adopted in their life, if they are good things and ignored if they are bad things. Moral lessons are presented by the researcher directly or indirectly by the researcher through telling the readers. Readers will easily find them in the story if it is presented by the researcher directly. While the moral is showed indirectly need certain care to find the moral lesson because the writer presents implicitly in the story.
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