Background of The Study

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CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

In the first chapter, an overview of the whole thesis is provided in order to give a comprehensible description about the topic being discussed. The subject matter is about the hero’s journey of Percy Jackson as the main character in Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief . Therefore, it is necessary to provide an introduction consisting of the background of the study, research topic, research problems, research questions, and the goals of the study. Each of which will be presented as follows.

1.1 Background of The Study

Fantasy fiction is an imaginative work which has the responsibility of creativity in creating a literary work. Every fantasy fiction has its own heroes. Those heroes exist in that world are often considered as an ordinary or odd people by the other. The Heroes Journey is about growth and passage. The journey requires a separation from the comfortable, known world, and an initiation into a new level of awareness, skill, and responsibility, and then a return home said Joseph Campbell in his theory of Monomyth 1949:28. In the serial novel of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, it is the first book entitled Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief written by Rick Riordan. He wants to share his fantasy world about Greek mythologies which in Percy as the hero of his world. The book of Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief was adapted into a graphic and a motion picture novel in 2010. Rick Riordan is the award-winning, bestselling author of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians . For Rick Riordan http:www.hypable.comrick- riordan-percy-jacksons-greek-gods-interview, Percy has Riordan ’s sense of humor. Like Percy in the novel, Riordan was not always a good student on school. The characteristic of Percy is also based o n many Riordan’s students he taught before and partly on his son’s own struggle with ADHDdyslexia. This thesis discusses the journey of the main character, Percy Jackson. In his journey, he discovers a world bigger than he has ever imagined, but he 2 immediately hands a quest to redeem himself from a crime he has never committed. He has a relationship to other gods, or other gods call him by family names. Hades is repeatedly called Percy’s uncle, Poseidon refers to Zeus as Percys uncle, and Ares calls Percy his cousin. Percy Jackson is helped by his friends, a satyr a half donkey and half man called Grover and a daughter of Athena, Annabeth. Percy must journey across the United States to catch a thief who has stolen the original weapon of mass destruction – Zeus’ master bolt. Along the way, he must face a host of mythological enemies determined to stop him. Most of all, he must come to a relation with a father he has never known, and an Oracle that has warned him of betrayal by a friend. I am interested in analyzing Rick Jordan’s novel, Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief , because it offers the famous patterns of hero’s journey which are similar with the other great story like Star Wars, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Lord of The Ring , Matrix etc. Archetype in this thesis is reflected through how the author consciously or unconsciously writes the similar patterns of the hero’s journey. Riordan is able to develop a modern wonderful journey based on the Olympians or the old Greek gods and creatures in his novels, which have similar patterns of journeys with the other stories of the ancient myth heroes like Perseus and Hercules. According to the explanations above, in order to study the patterns of famous hero’s journey, this thesis entitled “An Analysis on the Monomyth through Rick Riordan ’s Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief.

1.2 Research Topic