The Relation between Literature and Psychology

The feeling of helplessness happens when someone has no one to rely on and to get help when heshe in trouble. The feeling that the world is empty or meaningless happens when someone loses hisher purpose in life, so heshe feels useless to live in this life. The feeling of being different is when someone is not similar with others in terms of way of thinking, life purpose, attitude, and habit. The difficulty to approach and speak with others exists when someone has no eagerness to make such interactions with other person. So, heshe tends to do anything by himherself alone. The refusal to obey rules is when someone has hisher own ideal of life purpose and unfortunately hisher life purpose is usually against the norms in society. The signs of depression can be found whenever someone fells depressed with hisher condition at that time. The excessive sleep or insomnia happens when someone is busy with hisher own thought on a certain matter and heshe thinks about it so deeply like heshe cannot leave that matter for a second. So, heshe always thinks about that matter. Furthermore, someone suffers from alienation not only because of hisher own will to be in the state of being alienated nor born alienated. As Davis says in Man in Crisis , “a person becomes alienated for heshe lacks of love, perceives powerless, and worthless, etc.” 1970: 296. As a result, heshe often looks hisher self as the third person and heshe will detach hisher self from the society. An alienated person lives a life alone since heshe is detached from the society. Heshe rarely has any interaction with other person; heshe only thinks about himherself life purpose. Therefore, it results on hisher unstable emotional condition. Heshe will be easier to get mad and depression particularly when heshe fails to attempt hisher goal. Then, it may lead into a criminal activity. It is because the alienated person tends to not obey the rules and norms in the society.

C. Theoretical Framework

Through this part, the writer explains the contribution of each theory in order to answer the problem formulations. There are two theories and a web-based review which are used to analyze Perfume: Story of a Murderer . The theories are theory of character and characterization, and also theory on relation between literature and psychology. Meanwhile, the review is a review on alienation in psychology and social psychology. First, the writer applies the theory of character and characterization to analyze the characteristic of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille since Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is the main character in Perfume: Story of a Murderer . The writer observes Jean- Baptiste Grenouille’s characteristics through his personal description , action and dialogue, through another character’s perspective upon him, an d through the author’s description. Second, the writer relates the theory on relation between literature and psychology and the review on alienation in psychology and social psychology to examine Jean- Baptiste Grenouille’s alienation symptoms as seen through his characteristics. After the writer observes the characteristics of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, the writer specifies the characteristics of Grenouille that is categorized as character of a person who suffers alienation by using the review on alienation in psychology and social psychology. In addition, the review of the studies on this topic is applied as reference for the writer to picture the alienation revealed by the main character of the literary work.