Object of the Study

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CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY

There are three parts to be discussed in this chapter. The first is the object of the study that is going to be discussed. The second is the approach of the study, the theory used to analyze the study. The third is method of the study as the steps taken in analyzing the novel and how the approaches were applied to answer the questions formulated in the problem formulation.

A. Object of the Study

In this study, the writer analyzes Bernhard Schlink‘s The Reader. It was written in 1997. It consists of 218 pages and is divided into 3 parts. The first part consist of 17 chapters which tell about the romance of the two main characters. Part two consists of also 17 chapters which narrate about the trial that convict Hanna, the main character, guilty for an holocaust. There are 12 chapters in the last part, relating to the ―re-connection‖ of the two main characters. The New York Times reviewed The Reader : ―Arresting, philosophically elegant, morally complex.... Marvelo us‖, also ―Moving, suggestive and ultimately hopeful... Speaks straight to the heart‖. The novel begins with the first part when the male main character, fifteen- year-old Michael Berg accidentally meets and helped by the female main character, thirty-six-year-old Hanna Schmitz, in his way home being ill in a West German city in 1958. For additional information, known from the time and place PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 30 taken, we would know that the people living there is the second generation of Nazi regime. Hanna is a streetcar conductor in Neustadt, and Michael Berg is a student. After a couple of Michael‘s visit to Hanna‘s apartment, they are finally trapped in lust. Here in their relationship the peculiarity emerges, Hanna is fond of having Michael reading aloud to her when they are having sex, especially classical literature. Even though they have physical closeness, they emotionally have distance from one another. Moreover, Hanna abuses Michael physically and verbally for couples of times. After months of affair, Hanna suddenly leaves Michael without a trace. Hanna‘s departure makes believe that there must be something wrong he did and make her leave. The second part jumps into year 1966 and it is about a trial where Hanna and Michael ―re-connect‖. Seven years after Hanna‘s departure, she becomes an SS guard at Auschwitz, Michael attends law school and at that time observing a war crimes trial where Hanna becomes one of the defendants. That is the first meeting of them after being separated for years. Hanna and the other SS guards of Auschwitz are accused for a holocaust of 300 Jewish women in a fire in the concentration camp. Here in the trial, the secret that Hanna keeps finally revealed – she is illiterate. The trial ends with the conviction that Hanna is sentenced to life in prison. The third part concerns with the story of Hanna‘s imprisonment. Hanna keeps receiving audio tapes from Michael, he records his reading aloud of books and send it to her without any other way of communicating with Hanna. Hanna then teaches herself to read and write. She borrows the books from the prison library and follows the tapes along PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 31 in the text. After eighteen years in prison, Hanna is then about to be released and in the other side. Michael agrees to find her place to stay and work to do, but on the day of her release in year 1988 she commits suicide. The Reader studies the elements of relationships and social and mental behaviors of the two main characters. Some are unsolvable conflicts, some forms of Oedipus complex, and inferiority complex which lead Hanna Schmitz to do socially unacceptable behaviors. This study attempts to reveal the inferiority complex of Hannah Schmitz. Since the Reader is a first-person-point-of-view novel, here the writer analyzes the answers from the expositions told by Michael Berg, the first main character.

B. Approach of the Study