Background of the Study

1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

The existence of literature becomes a part of human life since the civilization and human culture appears in this world. Sastra adalah lembaga sosial yang menggunakan bahasa sebagai medium; bahasa itu sendiri merupakan ciptaan sosial . 1 Literature is a social institution that using the language as the media; language is social idea. Technically, anything spoken or written is literature. And there are some kinds of types of literature as the art work. In practice, works of literature fall into four categories or genres: 1 narrative, 2 drama, 3 poetry, and 4 non fiction prose . All these forms have many common characteristics and all these genres are art forms, each with its own internal requirements of structure and style. 2 Novel is one kind of thing that supports the existence of literature and art work itself. Based on that statement, the relation between art work and society which always has its changes is very important in giving the significance influence to the development of literature theory. Nowadays, the existence of novels as one of the art work has the contribution for the art work itself. Novel gives a lot of things discussable and to develop the art work, the developing of novels in earlier century has become the 1 Sapardi Djoko Damono, Sosiologi Sastra Sebuah Pengantar Ringkas Jakarta: Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa, 1984, p.1 2 Edgar V Robert, Writing Themes About Literature, New Jersey: Eglewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall Inc, 1983. p 4. great invention to the printing field of media and their business, even though it is not easy to write an excellent novels, but still the basic of this writing art is to expose what the author wants to tell the reader about what they feels, they have passed, or they imagine, whether it is fiction or non-fiction. Literary work is author’s imagination because everything that happened in the story is the writer’s willingness. But there are other factors that can influence writers in making their works, such as economical, political, social, historical, and cultural situation at the time when the writers are making their works. Novels is a story in prose about imaginary people long enough to cover a book. In other word a novel is an imaginative storybook. Novel is a fictitious prose narrative of considerable length, portraying characters, action, and scenes representative of real life in a plot of more or less intricacy. 3 Another reference that tells about the novel is written by Burhan Nurgiyantoro in Teori Pengkajian Fiksi, he wrote “novel merupakan karya fiksi yang menawarkan sebuah dunia, dunia yang berisi model kehidupan yang diidealkan, dunia imajiner, yang dibangun melalui berbagai unsur. Kesemuanya itu walau bersifat non-eksistensial, karena dengan sengaja dikreasikan oleh pengarang, dibuat mirip, diimitasikan, atau dianalogikan dengan dunia nyata” . 4 Novel is a fiction work which offering a world, a world which fulls of idealized life and imaginary that build 3 The English Language Institute of America, Inc. The New Grolier Webster international Dictionary of the English Language, 1976 printing. p.281 4 Burhan Nurgiyantoro, Teori Pengkajian Fiksi, Yogyakarta: 2003, FPBS IKIP, p.4 up by miscellaneous substances. All those things were non-existentially or a fiction story, but still close relating with the real world. The novel entitled “The Lord of The Ring” by J.R.R Tolkien consists of three part of books, “The Fellowship of The Ring” as the first part, the second part is “The Two Tower”, and the last part is “The Return of The King”. Those three novels support each part from the first part of the novel until the last sequel. The story tells about the journey of character Frodo and his servant Samwise to destroy the One Ring that has great evil power, the ruler of all the Rings of Power. The One Ring can only destroy in place where it was made, which is Mount Doom in Mordor. During the journey, Frodo and Samwise were accompanied by the Fellowship of the Ring that represent different kind of race in every character, Frodo, Samwise, Peregrin, and Meriadoc represents the Hobbits, Arragorn for the Men, Legolas representing the Elves, Gimli the Dwarves, and Gandalf the Wizard. “The Lord Of The Ring” can represent the complexity of fiction story, and because of that complexity, there are so many signs that appears in the story. To convey the meaning of sign, semiotic is one of the ways that can reveal the meaning of signs. One of the theories is called the triadic concepts of Charles Sanders Pierce which explain about three parts of the sign relation. The semiotic aspect based on Pierce’s semiotic theory consists of representament which falls into qualisign, sinsign, legisign, Object which falls into icon, index, symbol, and interpretant which falls into rheme, dicisign, and argument. Semiotic is one of the ways to revealed what is the meaning behind sign, and what is the message behind the novels or any kind of art works. Based upon the explanation above, the writer is interested in describing the semiotic aspect of Pierce in the novels “The Lord of The Ring” and convey the meaning of sign in the novels. Therefore, the writer would like to do the research under the title “Pierce’s Triadic Concepts in the Novels: “The Lord Of The Ring ” Trilogy” the Relation of Sign to Representament, Sign to Object, and Sign to Interpretant.

B. The Focus of the Study