Personal Description Theory of Characterisation

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3. Theory of Psychology

Psychology is the science that attempts to understand, predict, describe and influence the behaviour especially the human behaviour Kalish, 1997, p.4. Supporting the theory, Huffman and Vernoy 2000 also defines psychology as a scientific study of behaviour and mental processes which describe the reasons human and animal do, feel, and think para.2. Departing from those definitions, it can be said that psychology studies somebody‟s behaviour that is developed from time to time in order to find out the motivation that underlies the behaviour itself. Therefore, it is needed to understand psychology in literature. The reason is that it will enable a person to observe the behaviour of the characters and try to find out the motivation behind their thought, feeling and action written in the story.

a. Theory of Psychological Approach

In order to get the values and beauty that lie in the literary work, a person should use a critical approach to literature. In this study, the critical approach that is used by the researcher is psychological approach. The reason is because by applying the psychological approach, the researcher will know how to analyse the motivation changing in Nyai Ontosoroh in the novel This Earth of Mankind. According to Kennedy and Gioia 2005, psychological approach normally focuses on the analysis of the character‟s motivation or behaviour in the work. In addition to that, Peter Barry 2009 states that a psychological approach focuses 20 on unconscious motives and feelings which come from the author or the characters depicted in the work. p.100. Therefore, it can be concluded that psychological approach is used to find out the motivations of characters in performing particular behaviours and expressing certain feelings in the story. It is because the person described in the novel is considered like human who has a feeling, senses, motivation and emotion. In order to understand them all, the theory of psychological approach will be needed.

b. Theory of Motivation

In order to make the novel more interesting, the characters in the novel should possess a motivation. Huffman and Vernoy 2000 believe that motivation is elements within an individual which consist of needs, desires, and interests to encourage behaviour t oward a goal. It emerges emotion as the „feeling‟ response para.1. It also means that without possessing them, people‟s life is going to be boring and people will be unmotivated to live their life and fulfil their satisfaction. Adair 2006 also states that people will have motivation when they want to do or to have something. Motivation embodies the reasons which encourage people to act either positively or negatively p.89. It can be stated that motivation is the foundation for people to do or act positively or negatively. According to Ryan and Deci 2000, there are two types of motivation. They are intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is the doing of an activity for his satisfaction rather than for any other purposes. If a person is