Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

This chapter consists of Background of the Study, Aim of Study, Problem Formulation, Problem Limitation, Benefit of the Study and Definition of Terms. Background of the Study explains topic of the Study. Aim of the Study gives the information about the writer’s objectives in conducting the study. Problem Formulation consists of two questions that generally describe the problems that will be answered. The Benefits of the study give the explanation of the benefit for people who read this study. The last part is the Definition of Terms. It explains some terms that are used in the study.

A. Background of the Study

Loving and to be loved are two things that cannot be separated from man’s life. A love can exist between a man and a woman, a parent and a child, a husband and a wife, and so on. A love has a magical power that can make people do what is called an impossible thing. A love can make people laugh and cry. Everyone have experienced to love or to be loved by someone. If someone lives without love, he feels emptiness in his heart. The emptiness appears because he feels lonely. As Alberoni n,d states that a 1 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 2 person is falling in love sees everything transfigured-nature, the air, rivers, light, colors are all brighter and more intense 11. When a man is falling in love, everything around him is beautiful. Psychologically, happy feeling influences a man to think many things which are good and beautiful. This positive thinking tends to be a motivation that can produce a positive energy to do things which make him pleasant, such as to sing and to smile. However, when a man is suffering a broken heart or losing his beloved one, the situation will be the opposite of when a man is falling in love. Psychologically, he will feel sadness. We often realize we need people when we risk losing them, e.g. when they leave us, or when some negative power, such as illness, violence or death, wrests them from us. When someone feels sad, physically he may express the sad feeling with negative behaviors, such as close himself from other people around him, cry, romancing, or the worst thing is behave rude. Normally, the sad feeling will slowly disappear and a motivation to start a new life with a new hope comes. However, if the sad feeling stays in one’s heart for a long time, it influences his whole life. The condition of losing a beloved one happens in Saeki, one of the major characters of Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore. Kafka on the Shore is the translated version. The original version of Kafka on the Shore is in Japanese Language, namely Umibe no Kafuka. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 3 According to Hays 2009, Haruki Murakami was born on January 12 th , 1949. He was a very famous Contemporary Japanese. Many people describe him as a Japan’s best living writer. Murakami graduated from Waseda University, Tokyo. He got many awards as a writer; there were Yomiuri Literary Prize 1995, Kuwabara Takeo Academic Award 1998; Frank O’Connor International International Short Story Award Irlandia, 2006; Franz Kafka Prize Cekoslovakia, 2006; Asahi Prize Japan, 2006 and Kiriyama Prize 2007. His works have been translated into 40 languages. In Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore, Saeki, one of the major characters of the novel, is a woman in her fifties who has lost her sweetheart since she was twenty. The death took the soul of her first love. Saeki had a sweetheart since she was in grade school. They were separated because the boy continued his study in Tokyo. Both of them could not see each other for a long time. When she was nineteen, she wrote a poem which expressed her feeling to the boy. The meaning of the poem is like the painting which was painted by her sweetheart when both of them were fourteen. She set the poem to music, played the piano and sang it. The title of her poem is Kafka on the Shore. When she was twenty, she had to lose her sweetheart, the one she loved with all her heart. The death takes his soul to the Creator. It was hard for her. She stops to sing, drops from college, and nobody knows where she PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 4 had been, even her parents and friends. She also does not go to his sweetheart’s funeral. Many rumors come about her. Some people say that she is committed to mental hospital after a failed suicide. The others say that she works in Tokyo, gets married and has a child. Twenty five years later, she came and talked to Komura Private Memorial Library, the family of her sweetheart. Then she becomes the head of Komura Private Memorial Library. Even though she comes back and becomes the head of Komura Private Memorial Library, the death of her sweetheart still influences her. She becomes a mysterious woman. She is always polite and kind, but really closes herself. She seldom talks about herself, especially her past. She hides her true feeling from other people. The mystery of the life is revealed after a 15-year-old boy who is naming himself as Kafka finds her with the theory that she is his mother who is abandoned him since he is a kid with an unknown reason. The love for her sweetheart is so deep as if he is her soul. When the soul goes, she loses the willing to live. This study is triggered by the incidents experienced by Saeki. It must be something that influences Saeki’s life. This study, thus deals with PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 5 psychological factors that affect Saeki’s life, in this case, how she manifests her love. The aim is to see Saeki’s love. The theories used in this study are the theory of character and characterization, the theory of personality, the theory of motivation, and the theory of love. This study applies the psychological approach.

B. Problem Formulation