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Hearn’s Across the Nightingale Floor. English teachers can use this literary work to enrich students
’ understanding through reading passages or even in form of cross cultural understanding, it is because there are some practical Japanese
traditions in this novel which lead to the understanding of Japanese tradition.
E. Definition of Terms
The following part is to define the keywords that are used in this study. The purpose is to avoid common misunderstanding in transferring some important
information in this study.
1. Motivation
Motivation is the concept we use when we describe the forces acting on or within an organism to initiate and direct behavior. Petri, 1981. According to
Beck 1978, motivation is broadly concerned with the contemporary determinants of choice direction, persistence, and vigor of goal-directed
behavior. When two or more behaviors are equally possible, one is chosen and the organism persists in this behavior with more or less vigor until some
anticipated goal is either achieved or some other goals become more dominant. The word contemporary is used to distinguish immediate and
fluctuating causes of behavior from more enduring “structural” factors such as learning. McClelland 1985 defines motivation as a recurrent concern for a
goal state based on a natural incentive the way motives develop out of sign stimuli and the behavior they release a concern that energizes, orients, and
selects behavior. The use of word concern in the motive definition refers
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directly to the fact that motives are best measured by coding concerns in associative thought or fantasy. It doesn’t imply the conscious goal-directed
striving which is part of many definitions of motives.
2. Characters
According to Abrams 1981: 20 characters are the persons presented in a dramatic or narrative work who are interpreted by the reader as being endowed
with moral and disposition qualities that are expressed in what they say through dialogue, and by what they do through action. Thus, in the novel,
the persons who are presented in the story with moral and disposition qualities are the characters. To be more specific, the character who is analyzed in this
thesis is Shigeru.
3. Needs
According to Murray, need is a hypothetical construct which stands for force in the brain region, a force either internally or externally instigated which
organizes other psychological processes as cited in Larry Danielle, 1981. Theories of personality based upon needs and motives suggest that
personalities are a reflection of behaviors controlled by needs.
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CHAPTER II THEORETICAL REVIEW
