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She was still trying to compose herself when the door from the vestibule to the waiting room swung open. A man in a brown tweed overcoat hesitated
in the doorway for a moment, his hat in his hand, taking in the yellow textured wallpaper, the fern in the corner, the metal rack of worn
magazines. He had brown hair with a reddish tinge and his face was lean, his expression attentive, assessing. He was not distinguished, yet there was
something in his stance, his manner
―some quiet alertness, some quality of listening
―that set him apart. Caroline’s heart quickened and she felt a tingling on her skin, both pleasurable and irritating, like the unexpected
brush of a moth’s wing. His eyes caught hers ―and she knew. Before he
crossed the room to shake her hand, before he opened his mouth to speak his name, David Henry, in a neutral accent that placed him as an outsider.
Before all this, Caroline was sure of a single simple fact: the person she’d been waiting for had come. 34
When she is asked to take David Henry’s daughter far away from her mother, Caroline is doubt. He convinces her of what he decides is right. He just wants to
protect his wife from sorrow that she would get if she still keeps for the baby. The baby with down syndrome is indicated to have heart complications and he does
not want his wife spending her life to mourn this baby’s death. She knows there is still a mistake in this case, but remembering all the good things that David Henry
did to the patients who could not afford the fee. “This was why she had come to love him, for his goodness” 38. This memory easily erases all of the bad things
she has thought about him. Someone who has affiliative motivation tends to prioritize in socializing with other people Murray, p. 102. Caroline has already
had the picture of David Henry in her mind. She knows all the good things made by him. In her opinion, one bad thing cannot change the image of him.
She thought of that night, almost twenty years ago now, when he’d woken and lifted his head from the desk and caught her in the doorway,
naked in her love for him, the two of them as vulnerable to each other in that moment as it was possible to be. 309
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When she meets David Henry after all of these years, she confesses that she was in love with him. This confession is just for clearing everything. Caroline tells it
to make him understand her position when he asked her to take Phoebe away from his life. She decides to reveal her secret, even though it is already late. Obviously,
David Henry knows about it. “I was in love with you.” Caroline said in a rush, astonished at her
confession, for it was the first time she had ever voiced this, even to herself, though it was knowledge she had lived with for years. 312
Caroline cannot deny her need in having relationship with others. Her solitary past life stays still in her heart. From her experiences, she wants to change the way she
lives with people who get close to her. Starting from David Henry, she shows her feeling and expresses her need to affiliate with Phoebe, Al, Doro, and Leo March.
Since she left David Henry, those four people are the closest people whom she considers as her own family.
2. Carolines Achievement Motivation
McClelland 1985 noted that an action is only considered to be achievement motivated when the drive to perform emanates from within
individuals themselves, i.e.,when individuals feel committed to a standard of excellence and pursue achievement goals on their own initiative p. 137.
Achievement motivation is the minor motivation that is found in this study because this motivation appears after Caroline has the affiliative motivation. This
motivation is appropriate to be employed because Caroline, as the individual, always tries her best in her life, even though she often finds a lot of difficulties
and failures following her efforts. She is a person who never stops dreaming since
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she was a child. She also never gives up to get up from problems she meets. She realizes that she has a difficult past life. This experiences are really inspired her to
get a better future. Murray 1965 stated some specific characters found in every high-achiever. These characters are also found in Caroline’s characters.
They tend to have self-confidence, to like individual responsibility, and to prefer concrete knowledge of the result of their work. They get good
grades. They are active in college and community activities, choose expert rather than friends as working partners, and are resistant to outside social
pressure. They enjoy taking moderates risks in situations that depend on their own ability, but not when it comes to pure chance situations, such as
horserace betting. p. 100
When Phoebe comes to her life, she believes that this girl is precious to be struggled. Caroline’s sacrifice to move from her town, leave what she has had,
and start her new life in a place that she never imagines before. What she wants to achieve by being a foster mother for a down syndrome
girl is to get a better life which are happiness, togetherness, and warmth. For Caroline, these factors can only be found in a family. Since Phoebe came to her
life, Caroline believes that Phoebe will give her what a family can give. Caroline misses the time when her parents were still alive, but she does not want to come
back to her past. Her past life is not easy. Not even one of her dreams is reached. The condition gets worse after her parents passed away. She loses the motivators
who become the reason why she still survives on problems she finds. After she meets Phoebe, she knows that this girl will give a change into her life. This girl
really wakes Caroline up from her sorrow. Because of this reason, Caroline promises to be a foster mother for Phoebe and love her as if Phoebe is her own
daughter.
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This process of finding Caroline’s better life through a family is shown from her difficult past life and her life struggle after meeting Phoebe. This
technique of analyzing is employed to know how important the meaning of Phoebe to get involved in Caroline’s days and nights.
Murray 1964 stated that motivation is distinguished from other factors that also influence behavior, such as the past experience of the person, his
physical capabilities, and the environmental situation in which he finds himself, although these other factors may influence motivation p. 7. Caroline’s difficult
past life is one of the reasons why she wants to take care of Phoebe. Caroline lives her childhood with loneliness. Her parents have waited for the birth of a child for
a long time. The born of baby Caroline is a gift given to her parents who is already in their forties. They are too worried about Caroline’s health. The
protection given to Caroline becomes exaggerated. Because Caroline has no chance to socialize with other children, she feels so lonely. “Her childhood had
been solitary, sometimes very lonely, but still she had these memories: a special quilt held close, a rug with roses beneath her feet, the weave of voices that
belonged to her alone” p. 31. In addition, her love story is not so far from being unlucky. David Henry,
the man that she loves, married to a beautiful woman named Norah. For Caroline who has waited for so long to get the response of her love feeling, this news is the
worst nightmare in her life. She is broken hearted to know that all of her waiting is in vain.
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This dust, this snow. It was not fair, not fair at all, that Norah Henry should have so much, should have her seamless happy life. Shocked at this
thought, at the depth of her bitterness, Caroline let the curtains fall and walked out of the room, moving toward the sound of human voices. 36
Caroline is already thirty-one and none of her dreamed was accomplished. She lived her life with much hard times to pass. It is started from her teenage dream to
be a great pianist but she could not exist in her school. It also happens in her love story. She had found a young man to be admired but the man does not feel the
same. She almost gave up waiting with no result. Fortunately, she is not a woman who easily gives up every time she finds a dead end. Caroline is a person who has
a high achievement motivation and never surrenders until she gets what she wants. Murray 1965 stated that achievement motivation has the goal to
accomplish something difficult and to overcome obstacles and attain a high standard p. 97. This woman would create a new dream to reach. She would
never stop until she does not have a chance to continue. A failure could not restrain herself to keep trying and finding the other way to move on. She will
make another dream to reach and it will not stop. She’d dreamed of being a great pianist, but the lights of the high school
stage were too different from the lights at home, and she froze in their glare. Then, in her twenties, as her friends from nursing school began to
marry and have their families, Caroline too had found young men to admire, one specially, with dark hair and pale skin and a deep laugh. For a
dreamy time she imagined that he
―and, when he didn’t call, that someone else
―would transform her life. When years passed she gradually turned her attention to her work, again without despair. She had faith in herself
and her own capabilities. She was not a person who ever got halfway to a destination and paused, wondering if she’d left an iron on and if the house
was burning down. She kept on working. She waited. 31-32
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Being a nurse does not mean that she will stop dreaming. She dreams to have her own clinic, live peacefully in jungle or sea, the place which is far from the crowd.
She really wants to go out from her life. She is too bored living in a little apartment by herself, being old without having any experiences in adventure.
She read, too, Pearl Buck’s novels first and then everything she could find about life in China and Burma and Laos. Sometimes she let the books slip
from her hands and gazed dreamily out the window of her plain little apartment on the edge of town. She saw herself moving through another
life, an exotic, difficult, satisfying life. Her clinic would be simple, set in a lush jungle, perhaps near the sea. It would have white walls; it would
gleam like a pearl. People would line up outside, squatting beneath coconut trees as they waited. She, Caroline, would tend to them all; she
would heal them. She would transform their lives and hers. 32
After all of Caroline’s dreams which never come true, she wants to leave them and find another thing to catch. The life struggle of Caroline toward Phoebe is
started after she comes to the funeral of Phoebe. Before she brings Phoebe to Pittsburgh, she wants to attend the funeral because she needs to ensure herself that
in the eyes of the world, Phoebe is dead. She wants to make sure that she does not have to concern their past life.
All that sunny afternoon, traveling north and east, Caroline believed absolutely in the future. And why not? For if the worst had already
happened to them in the eyes of the world, then surely, surely, it was the worst that they left behind them now. 88
It is not easy for Caroline who just has the experience as a nurse to look for a job in a new place that she never visited before. Everything is started from the
beginning. Caroline does not know anyone in Pittsburgh. With the money she has, she lives in a cheap hotel and searches for a job in many places. A dozen different
interviews have made her come into a panic because no one can give her
