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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
There are five parts in this chapter. They are background of the study, problem formulation, objectives of the study, benefits of the study and definition of
terms. The first part describes background of the study. The second part formulates the problem to solve. The third part is objectives of the study. It states the purpose
of writing this thesis. The fourth part explains the benefits of the study that explain the significance of this study. The last part in this chapter is definition of terms. It
explains the important terms in the title to avoid misunderstanding or misinterpreting.
A. Background of the Study
People always deal with conflicts in their daily life. Conflicts or problems can direct people into unhappiness or happiness. Sometimes conflicts may create
crisis in someone’s relationship with other. For example, a son screams to his parents, and then his father slaps him. The father thinks that his son is impolite to
the parents. Yet, the son gets angry to his father. This situation creates conflict between the son and his father. In this case, the son feels unhappy because he is
scolded by his father. On the other hand, the father also feels unhappy because he knows that his son is impolite.
Conflict is something that everyone does not want to have because conflicts are able to ruin someone’s relationship with other people. According to Worchel
and Cooper conflict is a state that requires a person to make two or more mutual
incompatible action 460. While Noller and Fitzpatrict state that conflicts happen when the family members disagree about the events or situation in their lives 99.
Conflicts happen when people try to defend their own opinion, idea and thought toward other people. When conflict happens, it disturbs
someone’s relationship with others especially when conflicts happen in a family.
Worchel and Cooper categorize conflicts into two 460-462. Those are intrapersonal conflict and interpersonal conflict. The first conflict, the intrapersonal
conflict, is a conflict within an individual when he or she makes a decision between two or more alternatives while other people do not behave as what the individual
expects them to do. The second conflict is interpersonal conflict. It is a conflict that happens between two or more people when they are involved in achieving a
contrary goal. Facing conflicts and resolving them are very important because people will
improve their knowledge about conflicts and the conflicts resolution. Conflicts can destroy everything, yet it does not mean that people cannot resolve or handle the
conflict. There are some steps of resolving the conflict. First is concerning of how to face the conflict, think wisely, and resolve the conflict. Second is avoiding the
conflict. People usually tend to avoid conflicts or sometimes ignore them when they think they cannot have a good resolution for the conflict.
Conflicts happening in real life are portrayed in literary work such as poem, short story, novel and drama. Hudson 10 explains that literature is the expression
of life through the medium of language. This means that a novel as a work of literature can be used to reflect someone’s life, thought, opinion, experience and
someone’s feeling about hisher life. Wellek and Warren 27 state that literary
work is not only the language but also the human experiences in a complex situation that is created by the novelist. It means we can find
a character of a human with hisher responsibility, image, thought, belief, feeling, problems or conflicts in a
novel. The chosen novel, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, is an example of novel that
portrays conflicts because the novel talks about a seagull’s experience that represents a human’s life. In this novel, a seagull named Jonathan, lives with his
flock. As a representation of a human, the seagulls in this novel represent as a
human, Jonathan faces a conflict within himself, with his parents, his flock, and
Sullivan. The conflicts begin when Jonathan is thinking about perfection. Jonathan is really eager for being able to reach a perfection of flying and yet his parents do
not agree with his thought. His parents say that a seagull does not deserve to reach a level of perfection to fly. Considering his parents’ statement, he stops learning to fly
and then join his flocks to find food. During a week with the flock, Jonathan still does not find happiness. His want to reach the perfection of flying cannot be
stopped. Therefore, he decides to go and learn to fly again. Few days after learning to fly, Jonathan comes back to his flock in the
seashore. There Jonathan realizes something. The flock gathers in group and they make a circle. There must be something wrong happening among the flock and it
must be a serious problem. When Jonathan arrives there, the leader of the flocks shouts to Jonathan and asks him to stand in the centre of the flocks. That is terrible
for him. The leader suspects him of doing something that is learning to fly to reach perfection. It makes the leader feel humiliated. By doing this, Jonathan breaks the
rule, and he is punished. The punishment for a seagull that breaks the rule is being
an outcast. As a result, Jonathan must go out and leave his flocks and live alone in his life. It is not easy for him, because leaving his flocks means he has to live apart
with his parents. It becomes another conflict for him. Jonathan life experience represents human life. When a person has hisher
willingness to be different and heshe tries something new that totally contradicts with the society heshe lives, then the society will outcast the person since heshe is
different. People always judge other people and then drive himher away when this person has different thought, idea, or opinion. The author portrayed human’s
lifeproblem and the real condition of a society through Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
This novel, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, is a fable. The novel tells about life experience of Jonathan, a seagull that gets a punishment from his leader of the
flocks because he breaks the rule among seagulls. Jonathan is trying to learn perfection of flying because he gets bored with the routine activity as a seagull. He
wants something new and believes that there is still another way to live besides finding some food with the simplest way of flying. He thinks that he can fly like an
eagle, flying so high, fast, and being perfect. This novel is interesting to analyze since the author, Richard Bach, describes human life through the experience life of
a seagull. From the main character, Jonathan, people can learn how conflicts can
appear and how to face the conflicts then resolve them. That is what the study is about.
B. Problem Formulation
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