3. THE ANALYSIS 3.1
The Analysis of the Theme
If I Stay novel tells about how Mia Hall who has an out of body experience and catches between life and death has to choose between a happy past
and an unknowable future. The main character is Mia Hall. Mia is a teenager who is very musically
gifted, kind and quiet girl. She loves her family, her cello, her boyfriend Adam, and friends.
Mia has a boyfriend who loves rock music, Adam Wilde. He is a vocalist of his band, “Shooting Star” and he adores Mia and Mia’s family. So, the theme
of this novel is about love. When Adam showed up in a sharkskin suit and Creepers an ensemble
that wholly impressed Dad, I realized that this really was a date. Of course, Adam would choose dress up for the symphony and a 1960s
sharkskin suit could have just been his cool take on formal, but I knew there was more to it than that. He seemed nervous as he shook hands with
my dad and told him that he had his band’s old CDs. “To use as coasters, I hope,” Dad said. Adam looked surprised, unused to the parent being
more sarcastic than the child, I imagine. “Your parents are so cool,” Adam said, opening the car door for me. “I know,” I replied. If I Stay,
page 37 I’d never expected to fall in love. I was never the kind of girl who had
crushes on rock stars or fantasies about marrying Brad Pitt. I sort of vaguely knew that one day I’d probably have boyfriends in college, if
Kim’s prediction was anything to go by and get married. I wasn’t totally immune to the charms of the opposite sex, but I wasn’t one of those
romantic, swoony girl who had pink fluffy daydreams about falling in love. If I Stay, page 198
2.3 The Analysis of Plot
The novel If I Stay uses the flashback plot mixed plot because the author tells the story chronologically while displays the events in the past. The
Universitas Sumatera Utara
story begins when Mia and her family drives to Portland, to visit Henry and Willow, Mia’s parent’s friends.
“Indeed. But we might take advantage of this unexpected boon and go somewhere,” Dad says. “Take a drive. Visit Henry and Willow.” Henry
and Willow are some of Mom and Dad’s old music friends who’d also had akid and decided to start behaving like grown-ups. They live in a big
old farmhouse. If I Stay, page 9 Then, in the second chapter, it tells that they get a car accident in the
middle of their trip. All of the family are dead in that accident, but different thing happens to Mia. She has an out-of-body experience.
The car is broken. The impact of a four-ton pickup truck going sixty miles an hour plowing straight into the passenger side had the force of an
atom bomb. It tore off the doors, sent the front-side passenger seat through the driver’s-side window. It flipped the chassis, bouncing it
across the road and ripped the engine apart as if it were no stronger than a spiderweb. It tossed wheels and hubcaps deep into the forest. It ignited
bits of the gas tank, so that now tiny flames lap at the wet road. If I Stay, page 15
I approach closer and now I know that it’s not Teddy lying there. It’s me. The blood from my chest has seeped through my shirt, skirt, and sweater,
and is now pooling like paint drops on the virgin snow. One of my legs is askew, the skin and muscle peeled away so that I can see white streaks of
bone. My eyes are closed, and my dark brown hair is wet and rusty with blood. If I Stay, page 17
Then, for the next 16 chapters, it tells about how Mia Hall who has an out-of-body experience and catches between life and death has to choose between
a happy past and an unknowable future. I wonder if every dying person gets to decide whether they stay or go. It
seems unlikely. After all, this hospital is full of people having poisonous chemicals pumped into their veins or submitting to horrible operations all
so they can stay, but some of them will die anyway. If I Stay, page 180
Universitas Sumatera Utara
But, while the author tells the story chronologically in these 16 chapters, there is a few separated chapters which displays the events in the past.
When Mom had Teddy, Dad was still playing drums in the same band he’s been in since college. They’d released a couple of CDs; they’d gone
on a tour every summer. The band was by no means big, but they had a following in the Northwest and in various college towns between here
and Chicago. If I Stay, page 182
And finally, after a long fight, Mia gets her life back. She chooses to stay alive with their loving people, like her boyfriend, Adam and her bestfriend, Kim.
But then I feel Adam’s hand. Not sense it, but feel it. I’m not sitting huddled in the chair anymore. I’m lying on my back in the hospital bed,
one again with my body. If I Stay, page 233
3.3 The Analysis of Character
