tradition. He and the other boys in the village have to catch a dragon for initiation.
The training is led by Gobber the Belch, a best friend of Hiccup’s father. After they
succeed in catching the dragons for themselves the training begins. Hiccup uses so many ways to train his dragon. However, the result is not good. His dragon does
not listen to him. Therefore, he uses his skill to talk in d
ragon’s language, he is finally able train a basic command
to his dragon. In the final exam, Hiccup’s dragon
namely Toothless, starts a fight with other dragons. As the result, the initiation is ruined by the dragons
and the boys will be exiled out of Berk. A huge storm comes to Berk, the elder postponed the exile for a day. In the next day, the storm brought
two giant dragons to Berk’s shore. Hiccup, as the only one who is able to speak
dragoness, commanded by his father to ask the dragons to leave Berk. The dragons do not want to leave and they intend to eat all the villagers. However, Hiccup has a
great idea to solve this problem. In the end, Hiccup succeeds in saving the village and the villagers.
B. Approach of the Study
Since this study focuses on psychological aspects, the psychological criticism approach is applied. To have a better understanding about the literary
works and its connection to psychology, it is better to take a look at nine critical approaches to literature. According to Kennedy and Gioia 2002, literary criticism
is a natural human response to literature works. Moreover, in literary criticism there
are nine critical approaches. The approaches are; formalist criticism, biographical criticism, historical criticism, psychological criticism, mythological criticism,
sociological criticism,
gender criticism,
reader-response criticism,
deconstructionist criticism and, cultural studies. Since this study focuses on psychological aspects, psychological criticism is applied in this study. According
to Kennedy and Gioia 2002, psychological criticism has three major areas. They are the investigation of the creative process of artists, a psychology study of certain
artists, and the analysis of fictional characters. Since this study analyzes fictional character, this study is included in the third major area of psychology criticism.
This study analyz es Hiccup’s personality development in his
preadolescence stage as the main character in How to Train your Dragon novel. The reason which makes
Hiccup’s personalities developed is discussed as well. It
means that this study deals a lot with Hiccup’s personalities in order to find his
personality development. Therefore, it is decent to apply psychology criticism approach to find the personality development because it can achieve a better
understanding about h uman’s personalities. In this study, psychology criticism
approach is synthesized by two theories which are the theory of tragic and the theory of four human temperaments. The theory of tragic is applying three parts namely
exposition, climax, and resolution. Theory of human temperament is applying four parts namely phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric, and melancholic. The analysis is used
to find clues which is going to be used to find Hiccup’s personality development.
C. Methods of Study
The method of this study was a library study. It means all the data needed in this study were obtained from books, written articles, or other references that
available at the library. The primary data of this study was How to Train Your Dragon novel.
There were several steps applied in conducting this study. The first step was reading the novel several times thoroughly and understanding the story, looking for
an information to support the study, taking notes of some information about the data that would be analyzed. After that, the writer was interested in analyzing personality
development on Hiccup as the main character. The next step was segmenting the novel in several stages. The novel was segmented by using some theories. The first
theory was the theory of plot, the theory was used to divide the story into exposition, conflict, and resolution in order to give clearer development on Hiccup
’s personality. The second was the theory of characterization. The theory was used to
gather the research data to find clues on Hiccup ’s characteristics. After finding the
clues from the characterization, those clues were tabulated and divided into personality
’s characteristics. The third was theory of four human temperaments.
The theory was used to divide the clues into each personality type to find the most dominant personality before and after the conflict based on the amount of
personality’s characteristics from the tabulated clues. After knowing the before and after most dominant personality in Hiccup, the writer used the theory of factor in
personality changes to find the factor that made Hiccup’s personality developed.
The next step was drawing conclusions of the study and applying them to answer the problem formulation which was Hiccup
’s personality development which depicted from psychological point of view. The last step was making the
conclusion, implications of the study and, giving suggestions for further studies about the novel.
