Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

This study intends to analyze the meanings of a mother’s love to her dying daughter. To illustrate what the study is about, this chapter consists of five parts. They are background of the study, problem formulation, objectives of the study, benefits of the study, and definition of terms.

A. Background of the Study

According to Hudson 10, literature is an expression of life through the medium of language. The source of literature lies on what men have seen in life, what they have experienced of it, what they have thought and felt about those aspects of it and their imagination. Literature is one of several means of communication where we can share our experiences with other people. It reflects and expresses life. Marjourie Boulton 72 in The Anatomy of the Novel states that characters’ life experiences educate people to be wiser, humbler, more perspective or how it may break their problems. Through reading a literary work, we can learn many things and make it as our reflection to face the real world. Literature enriches human’s knowledge since human beings can communicate their experiences, ideas, hopes and point of view of their life through it. One of the interesting topics which are portrayed in the works of literature is love. Love has big roles and influences in our life. As we know, life cannot be separated from love because everyone experiences this feeling. We might sacrifice everything as well as our life to the one we love. Fromm in his book The Art of Loving 18 defines that “love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a standing in and not a falling for.” Love is a primary activity of giving, not receiving. It does not mean giving in the sense of reflecting it back, but giving of oneself in order to show what are alive in him or her to others such as strength, wealth, power, and humor. One enhances the other’s sense of aliveness by enhancing his or her own sense of aliveness. Love gives us strength to face unexpected things which happen in this life. Others’ love will support and give us courage to pass this life. It never lets us give up in everything we do. Love leads us to do and to give the best for people we love especially in getting happiness. It raises people’s awareness to help each other, to understand each other, to care each other and to do the best each other. Everyone has the feeling of love for others. It can be love of parents, love of children, love of siblings, love of friends, and love of boy or girlfriend. That love implies care is most evident in a mother’s love for her children. As described above, the mother will do everything to make her children’s life better. Fromm writes that love is the active concern for the life and the growth of the person we love 22. The more our love is the more our effort and struggle will be. This will make people mend their sorrow without considering what will happen to them and people around them. When it is about the active concern for saving one’s soul, it is the greatest thing we do because it will involve the biggest choice in someone’s life. Fromm defines that mother’s love to her child is the highest kind of love and the most sacred of all emotional bonds 42. There is inequality between a mother and a child because one needs all the help, and the other gives it without getting anything in return from the child. True motherly love lies on caring for the child’s growth. Since love is the power to raise and to maintain relationship with others, love of mother will influence her relationships with the children. Noller and Fitzpatrick 267 state that the strongest parent-child relationship seems to be between mother and her daughter. Every mother and daughter has a relationship that leads them so close to each other. Without this relationship, the mother cannot share anything to her daughter and the daughter cannot share hers to the mother. Mother is the one who has the most intimate contact with her child. A work of literature such as novel can portray such life experiences as mentioned above. A novel is a beautiful art that has a power to arouse our feelings and emotions because it trains us to explore the senses of life, such as happiness, sadness, goodness, badness, victory and failure. We can obtain many lessons through reading a novel. My Sister’s Keeper, a novel written by Jodi Picoult, is an example of the novels which portrays love within family. It tells about the Fitzgerald family who has a dying daughter, named Kate. She is diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia at age two. Sara, the mother, is a strong character trying to do everything possible to save her dying daughter even if it means risking the happiness of herself and the rest of her family. She also has the biggest role in taking decision to save Kate from her illness. Knowing that Jesse, the oldest child, does not have genetics matched with Kate, Sara and her husband, Brian, decide to have another baby with a perfect combination of genetic elements matched with the genetics of Kate. This is the best way to keep her dying daughter alive. Sara’s love to her dying daughter is proved by her care of Kate’s life and her struggle to provide a bodily organ even if it endangers her youngest daughter. All her decision lies on saving Kate. She uses Anna’s body to serve as spare parts to keep her dying daughter alive. She asks Anna to donate her blood, bone marrow, kidneys, and other bodily parts through medical procedure. As she devotes most of her attention to the suffering daughter, her other children feel envious and left out. This inequality leads their relationship to friction especially with Anna. Sara’s excessive love to her dying daughter leads her to struggle against her youngest daughter who hires an attorney to get the rights to her own body. Sara decides to be an attorney again for herself when Anna sues her in the court. It is clearly described that motherly love means loving for the growth of child without expecting anything return to herself. Sara always takes a purposeful action which lies on Kate’s side. She loves all her children but she pays more attention to her dying daughter. At the end, the court adjudges that Sara has no power to totally intervene Anna’s decision to donate her organ. She needs to make a compromise with Anna and her medical attorney. The adjudication is that the decision whether to donate or not lies on Anna’s word. But then, Anna gets a miserable accident which makes her brain die and she has no expectation to live again. Conducting with this situation, Alexander, Anna’s medical attorney, has the doctor take her kidney. Then Sara gives her husband a command to turn off the respiratory. Finally, Anna dies and Kate lives. However, Kate’s life cannot be separated from Sara’s sacrifice, care and responsibility, support and struggle to fulfill her health needs even if those things involve Anna’s bodily organ donor. This novel is interesting for me to analyze because it gives so many lessons about life. It is related to love, one’s existence and also a struggle of a mother who wants to give the best to the beloved child. As a woman who will be a mother, I am interested in mother’s love. A mother will always love her child through many impediments in life. Thus, she will do anything to ensure her child’s safety and happiness. In this study, Sara never gives up in trying to save her dying daughter although she has to battle against her youngest daughter. Her love to the helpless daughter makes her do everything possible to her dying daughter. That is why I will focus on analyzing the meanings of a mother’s love to her dying daughter.

B. Problem Formulation