26 Friendship also takes its contours from other achieved relations that exist
between mates and comrades, voluntary partnerships, neighborliness, and the special connection between foreign friends Konstan, 1997: 7. A friend is one
who knows you as a person and regards you for what you are and does not expect you to be anyone but who you choose to be.
d Religion
Both religion and literature spring from a common impulse to explore and explain the fundamental mystery of human existence
—of humankind‘s place in the world and our relationship to the created universe, to the Divine, and to our
fellow human beings McClinton-Temple, 2011: 91. Literature, in its extraordinary power to mirror and mediate these passions and conflicts, finds both
its source and its substance in religion, in the shape of themes, images, symbols, and the very languange it uses to appeal to us McClinton-Temple, 2011: 93.
C. Previous Research Findings
There are some theses having similar research object with this research. The first one is sarjana degree thesis from Sanata Dharma University by Alstonia
Epafras 004214053, an English Department student, entitled “Message That
Conveyed in The Blind Pig Related to Jackson‘s View on Crime World: A New
Criticism Study” 2008. Epafras discussed about the message revealed in the story. Furthermore, he focuses on the action of the characters and the setting of
27 the story. Other thesis is still a sarjana
degree thesis entitled “An Analysis of Main Characters in Stephen Mayer‘s New Moon” 2010 written by Umi Fauziah
080721019 from University Of North Sumatra. This research focuses on the main characters in Mayer‘s New Moon. She analyzed the main characters more
detail based on the problem of the analysis which are; how are the main characters potrayed in the novel, what are the differences identified through the main
characters, and what are the moral values of the main characters potrayed in the novel.
The other research is conducted by Tyler Edward Anderson from University of Nebraska
as his master degree thesis entitled “Examaning Early And Recent Criticism Of The West Land:
A Reassessment” 2010. The aim of his work is to broader conclusions about the nature of literary criticism and how the
ideas are proliferated, forgotten, or ignored within academia which has a central tenet of thesis about ideological characterizations of the earlier critics should
never subtitute actual close readings of the texts themselves. Those previous researches have the difference in the focus of the research
compared to this research. This research focuses on analyzing the novel deeply through elements of literature to find out the themes and sub-themes and. The
other difference between this research and the previous ones is that this research uses Ar
e You There God? It’s Me Margaret by Blume which is well known as a controversial children literature books for children.
28
D. Conceptual Framework
