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Children’s Book “The Tales of Beedle the Bard”. Andini, on her research, focuses on the images of the hero, heroine, princesses, and irregular villain characters in
The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Although Andini analyzes the images of those characters, her research focuses more about the traits of the characters other than
their looks. Andini also takes general issues in fairy tales like the feminism notion, the nuance, and the setting of the story, while the researcher only takes the
deconstructed heroes and witches characters to be analyzed and how the author conveyed it to the readers.
Though the previous studies conducted in the same university using the same literary criticism and genre, the researcher believes that the research is
different. The focus of this research is not on the gender discrimination or the atmosphere of the story, but more of uncovering the fixed, conventional images of
heroes and witches described in conventional tales. By having new images of specific characters, the researcher believes that it will help the children to have
broader horizon and perspectives in seeing things as they will have alternative ways of thinking.
C. Conceptual Framework
To convey a message or spread an ideology in a story especially children’s story, a particular image of character is used as the vehicle to penetrate
the notion. An image holds a crucial role in delivering the notion and is strongly believed as an efficient medium, as it is not only show the physical form of a
character, but also their role in society, their behavior, their way of thinking, and
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their affect towards other characters. Some classical fairy tales have static images of characters and it ent
raps the readers’ minds into thinking that one character has only one dimension of personality. Those static images appear over and over
again in various classical fairy tales that they are considered as the truth and the standard of a particular character.
The conventional images of heroes and witches are articulated by a scholar named Hourihan 1997:57-95,175-192. Hourihan states that heroes usually come
from the White race and mostly are noblemen. If they are not noblemen, they usually are the rulers or Lords of particular areas. The heroes spend their young
ages learning how to fight and when the time has come, they go on a quest to conquer the evil. To be able to fight with their shining armor and long sword or
spear, a hero must be at least tall and well built. A hero is not afraid to use violence to accomplish their goal and would risk anything to finish their mission.
Hourihan also utters the conventional images of wicked witches. Wicked witches usually live alone in dark forest. They master the art of spells, hexes, and all kind
of witchcrafts. A wicked witch is portrayed as an ugly lady with either extremely skinny or excessively fat figure. One thing that makes them scary is their vicious
and murderous intention. In this study, the researcher employs the method to reveal the
deconstructed images suggested by Hourihan 1997:208-234. To show the deconstructed images, there are five methods mentioned by Hourihan. They are
subverting the gender dichotomy, subverting the public and private space dualism, subverting the civilization and wilderness dualism, denying the dualism, and
changing the point of view. However, Hourihan implies that there are more than
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just those five methods to deliver a deconstructed image. As long as there is a dualism that has been planted as the truth, the dualism can be subverted and
shattered into a new method to deliver a deconstructed image. Due to the conceptual framework, the researcher then uses Terry
Pratchett’s The Wee Free Men which successfully portrays the unusual kind of hero and witches. Concerning the idea of revealing the deconstructed conventional
images and how they are shown, the researcher employs deconstruction literary criticism to analyze The Wee Free Men. Deconstruction literary criticism tries to
break the logocentrism and to shake the binary opposition. Therefore, the theory can help the researcher to answer both of research questions: 1 What
conventional images are being deconstructed in Terry Pratchett’s The Wee Free
Men and 2 How are the deconstructed images revealed in The Wee Free Men.
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Figure 1. The Framework of Thinking of the Research
DECONSTRUCTION
Terry Pratchett’sThe Wee Free Men as the
book with unusual images of heroes and
witches Conventional images
in children’s literature
RQ 1. What conventional images
are being
deconstructed in Terry Pratchett’s The Wee Free
Men?
RQ 2. How are the
deconstructed images revealed in The Wee Free
Men? POST-
STRUCTURALISM
1. The perfect, noble heroes
1. Subverting moral dichotomy 2. Exposing the irony
3. Subverting the gender dichotomy 4. Exposing unusual diction
2. The wicked witches 1. Logocentrism
2. Binary Opposition Children’s Literature
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CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD
A. Research Instruments and Design
The researcher aims to identify the characters that are being deconstructed and convey the way the author deconstructs the characters in
Terry Pratchett’s The Wee Free Men. The researcher uses library research, descriptive qualitative research approach, and content analysis technique to
examine the issue. The researcher applies library research method to collect the related data that goes parallel with the topic of the research. Since the data is not
a numerical one, the researcher uses descriptive qualitative method to explain the result of the analysis in form of words, phrases and sentences. Stone in
Krippendorf 2004:11 says that content analysis is a research that focuses on the characteristic, description, and message in the work as a unified object.
The researcher uses deconstruction and children’s literature theories in this research. The sources of the theories come from literature text books.
However, the researcher also reads other sources like electronic journal and articles to gain in depth understanding about deconstruction, images, and
stereotypes in children’s literature. The data of the research are words, phrases, and sentences. All the
findings were classified based on the relevance, and then they were noted. The results then became the data for the research. The data either taken from the
text book or electronic sources are described in chapter 2 and are used to cross- check the theories of deconstruction, children’s literature, and conventional
