Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

Reading a novel is sometimes the best activity for certain people to spend their free time. Through reading a novel, we can also reflect the contents of the story and make us learn the experience of life. The story in the novel, some when and somehow, can describe the life as we live in the daily life. It is like the novelist conveys the life pattern of the characters, and then the reader can absorb the messages and reflect them into our daily life. ―The novelist can teach you more about human‘s life than the psychologist can‖ Wellek, 1965:30. Like for example we can be taught from the reflection of life from the traumatic event that is expressed by Victor Frankenstein by creating a monstrous creature because he wants to represent the existence of someone he loves, which is his mother. If he finds the secret knowledge of nature, he may help others to make all people immortal. It all starts when he was still teenager; he found a volume of Cornelius Agrippa‘s work and was interested in it. It is a literature that is filled with something that is related with science which is full of creative imaginative works which arouse Frankenstein‘s heart. It is supposed to be a fiction work, but Frankenstein wants to make it happen. Before creating a monstrous kind of creature, he wants to construct an elixir of life that can make the dead live again, to learn the secrets of heaven and earth, blinded by the thirst of knowledge. He restlessly studies until forgetting his beloved family. Even after that, he is ready to take risk when collecting the parts of body that will be used for creating the unnatural creature. He creates a creature from the materials of dead bodies and it is in order to protect someone he loves to keep alive and shall not face the death. He does that unconsciously, without having intention, because he feels he is responsible. In the story, Frankenstein presents the dynamic of personality because of the unwanted events that keep haunting him. It affects his personality to become swinging. For some sort of events he feels the warmth of sun, the lovely summer breeze, a feel like he is the most joyful person in the world. It is also shown a change of personality from elegant, positive, and acts benevolently into someone who is very anxious and always filled with fear even he is in joyful circumstances. Human has three types of personality elements, which are id, ego, and superego. The combination of these three should balance each other to prevent us becoming a person who has mental disorder. Sometimes the id, our unconscious mind, is more powerful than the ego, our consciousness mind. We can manage our personality by knowing more the elements of personalities that exist in our mind. The changing from ego into id, then the superego is showing up, and then back again into ego again can be seen in Frankenstein‘s personality. This kind of behavior swing often happens in our daily life; therefore it is interesting to study this kind of daily occurrence and relating it to the Victor Frankenstein‘s case. The study of psychoanalytic is needed to know more about why he makes the unnatural creature and why he disgraces his own-made creature. This can be related to the dynamical personality that is shown in the novel.

B. Problem Formulation