18 is present tense
; this novel is the only Grisham’s novel which uses present tense for unfolding the story. The story goes at Memphis city, Memphis state starting around
April until somewhere after June 1990 for one year. The story tells about how a young graduate of Memphis State Law School,
Rudy Baylor confronts a large insurance company seeking justice for his leukemic client, Donny Ray. The story goes on how Baylor at the beginning, has to struggle
for his own life first before he can do anything for Donny Ray. The fact that he graduates from a law school does not instantly make his life easy and cherished.
After having his life composed, Baylor has to deal with Donny Ray’s case. Going through many difficulties and challenges, Baylor finally gets to prove that his client
deserves a bone marrow transplant from the company. However, the company successfully avoids the court’s decision after the death of Donny Ray. Feeling
disappointed, at the end of story, Baylor quits his job as a lawyer knowing that law no longer can be a place to give justice.
B. Approach of Study
Analysing the object of the study, the researcher used formalist approach. Guerin et al, in A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature, argue that this
approach assumes the autonomy of the work itself without even considering other elements
– the author’s life, time, sociological, political, economic or psychological implications 1979, p. 70. Nonetheless, formalist approach was chosen because
this approach regards literature as “a unique form of human knowledge that needs
to be examined on its own terms” Kennedy and Gioia, 1995, pp. 1790-1818. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
19 Further, the elements of form
– in which irony as one of the figurative language is included
– become the particular interest of this approach. In addition, the purpose of this approach is relevant to this study. The purpose of this approach is to
determine how the analysed certain elements work together with the content in shaping effect upon readers.
According to The Virtual Theorist 2013, the formalist approach focuses on
“grammatical, rhetorical, and logical connections within texts”. A formalist approach will generate technical terms to examine a piece of literary work.
“The form, tone, language, characterization, figures of speech, point of view, setting and
theme of a text ” constitute a really wide range of aspects within an internal order.
Formalists are well aware of the text or art-object or subject matter as a construction created to generate particular responses despite that the response of readers is
beyond the control of any artist. Thus, formalists prioritize the medium used to convey the meaning over the content or the meaning itself.
Since the researcher investigated intrinsic elements of the novel, which are irony and plot, without correlating the use of them into either the meaning or
content, formalist approach was a great help to determine the answers to the problems. Focusing on the plot structure, the researcher applied formalist approach
to isolate the scenes based on the classification, then to classify the scenes into the plot structure. The same also was applied to answer the questions related to irony,
where the researcher had to find the acceptable forms that fit in the definitions and types of irony. In classifying the types of irony which were found in the story as
well, the researcher had to classify them into the most appropriate one without PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
