potent pleasure in experiencing fears, anxieties, pleasures and desires Hintz and Tribunella, 2013:11.
3. The Pleasure of Finding Mirror for Oneself
To see many interactions among characters and the environment in the story are helpful as the depiction of reality. Those interactions help the children to
identify their position in the society and discover their true self. Along the journey, the intense interaction between children helps each child to grow. In
finding mirror for oneself, Nodelman and Reimer 2003:25 state that the pleasure of finding mirror for oneself is the ability to identify and discover the true self.
Children are able to find the mirror of their selves in the other children’s characteristic.
Being able to relate to people’s perspective is a form of understanding which needs a long process to gain the understanding. The pleasure of having
one’s emotion evoked is Nodelman
and Reimer’s 2003:25 view in seeing interactions among children. To evoke someone’s emotion is not simply by feeling the
sadness of other people but going deeper than the superficial feelings. Being able to relate to the pain or the joy with certain actions is the highest pleasure in being
able to relate to others. The relation between children and the actual characters in the story is not something to be underestimated. Children see themselves in
characters created in the story. Children could feel what the characters feel even
learn something from the problems faced by the characters. Examining pleasures experienced by the characters also have a significant mirror to have a projection
of children having the same difficulties. Thus, pleasures are fundamental things to children and often represented by the characters in the story.
C. The Previous Studies
There are some previous studies which have been done before this research on Plea
sure in John Boyne’s Dark-themed Novel Entitled The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is conducted
. The previous research are on the same topic of children’s literature under the same novel orand use the same theory of
children’s literature to analyze a certain text. The first previous study is a research by Kartika
Nurhandayani entitled An Analysis of Themes and Sub-Themes in J udy Blume’s
Are You There God? It’s me, Margaret which was done in 2014. The research objectives are to find the themes and sub-themes of the novel. On her research,
Nurhandayani aims to unveil the themes and sub-themes in the novel by using New Criticism study.
She also uses children’s literature theory as the basic foundation of her research in finding the elements of the themes.
The second previous study was conducted by Gideon Widyatmoko in 2011. His research entitled Telling Institutional Cruelty to Children through Literature:
a Study on John B oyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas focuses on how the
writer tells the institutional cruelty through his book. Widyatmok o’s research
objectives are to find characters which closely related to institutional cruelty and
to analyze the author’s technique in describing institutional cruelty. In his research, Widyatmoko aims to relate between the characters and the institutional
cruelty, on how the characters could represent it. The research on Plea
sure in John Boyne’s Dark-themed Novel Entitled The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
is different from Nurhandayani’s and Widyamoko’s. It differs from the previous research because it analyses the most important aspect
of children’s learning process which is pleasure. Furthermore, the topic of the
research is also different because this research focuses on the dark themes of the novel
. This research differs from Nurhandayani’s because it analyses the specific dark themes of the novel and the pleasure embodied in the novel which
represented by the main characters. This research also differs from Widyatmoko’s
because it took different approach to the novel. It focuses on finding the pleasure of the main characters and it does not relate any of the topics with
the author’s point of view. Thus, this research is different compared to the previous studies
because it has different approach upon the dark themed novel. In addition, the researcher could propose the novelty of this research from the previous studies.
D. Theoretical Framework
The theoretical framework is needed to guide and understand the researcher’s way of thinking in doing the research of
Pleasure of John Boyne’s Dark-themed Novel Entitled The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. The research starts from the idea