in life. This feeling can be seen from affection towards all human being and it is clear that humanity is needed to declare the human existence.
6. Faith
Faith is a belief or commitment towards the values of life. The conception of faith becomes a debating problem of existentialism.
This debate brings the study of human existence into 2 sides, religious existentialists and non religious atheist existentialists. The concept of faith is
defined by the question of God’s existence and the answer of the question separates these sides, contradictory.
Formal usage of the word faith is usually reserved for concepts of religion, as in theology, where it almost universally refers to a
trusting belief in a transcendent reality ergo a belief in a spiritual nature and in spiritual immortality, or else in a Supreme Being and
said beings role in the order of transcendent, spiritual things.WikipediaFaith
a. Religious existentialists The religious existentialists believe God as the source of all existence.
Faith becomes the representation of God existence and it is manifested into religions. The study of former existentialism can’t be separated from the
Christianity which affected most of existentialists. Some of them are Gabriel Marcel Roman Catholic, Nicolai Berdyaev Orthodox and Martin Buber Jew.
According to them, faith is the commitment towards God, as the source of values and it is represented in religion.
Personalisasi agama sebagai suatu keyakinan; bahwa tidak ada kekuasaan argument rasionil yang dapat mengambil tempat dari
commitment atau “ultimate concern” sebagai syarat memahami agama. Muzairi2002:53
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The personalization of religion as a faith; that there is no rational argument dominance which able to replace the commitment or
“ultimate concern” as the first rule in understanding the religion.
b. Non religious or atheist existentialists The non religious existentialist rejects the perspective above, that their
belief is the existence of human being only. Some of them are Jean Paul Sartre, Heidegger, Camus, and Maurice M. Ponty. According to them, man is dealing
with himself in an absolute freedom, planning his own future and creating his own values. Sartre, in his book Being and Nothingness, states that:
“Aku ini dihukum bebas, maka Aku bebas….Hanya tinggal pilih, manusia yang bebas atau mengakui Tuhan sebagai sumber
nilai…manusia tidak bisa menjadi budak dan pada saat yang sama bebas, dia bebas selamanya atau tidak bebas sama sekali”
Muzairi2002:83 “I am condemned to be free, then I am free Je suis condamne a
etre libre...It is only to choose, a free man or admit God as the source of values….man can’t be a slave while simultaneously he is
free, he is free forever or not at all”
This is the conception of faith. It reveals the different view of human being in dealing with existence. It is clear that human being lives
by faith, although it differentiates them into different perspective
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CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD
Conducting the analysis, the writer is performing the descriptive qualitative method. The method is applied by describing the data and analyzing
them, related to the focus of analysis. Descriptive research concerned with the condition for relationship
that exist opinion that are held, processes that are going on, effect that are evident or tread’s that are developing. Best1997:166
There are several steps in applying this method. The first step is collecting the books which relate to the human existence. The second step is reading the
collected books, including journals, notes and relevant sources to the thesis. The Old Man and the Sea novel is treated as primary source. The third step is marking
the text related to the idea of human existence and its characteristics as the main data of analysis. The next step is quoting the data and describing them into the
analysis. The analysis will be performed by explaining the characteristic of human existence as reflected in Santiago’s character in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old
Man and the Sea. According to Muzairi 2002, there are several characteristics of human existence which are subjectivity, the conscious being in the world,
contingency, anti materialism, humanity and faith. Santiago, as main character of novel, has all of these qualities. So, the analysis will be conducted by explaining
the characteristics of Santiago which represents the characteristics of human existence.
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III.1 SOURCE OF DATA
There are several books used as source of data. The books are including journals, notes, and commentaries related to the analysis. These source’s books
are classified into 2 categories, which are primary data and secondary data. Here they are:
III.1.1 Primary Data There are 2 books used as the primary data. The books are Ernest
Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea 1966 novel and Drs. H. Muzairi, MA’s Eksitensialisme Jean Paul Sartre 2002. These books contain the main data
analysis sources, including theory of human existence, the characteristics of human existence and its application on literature.
The characteristics of human existence will be treated as the main theory and the application of the theory will be conducted to the analysis of The Old Man
and the Sea novel. The characteristics of human existence are subjectivity, the conscious being in the world, contingency, anti materialism, humanity and faith.
The analysis of The Old Man and the Sea is conducted by describing Santiago’s character which fulfills these characteristics. Santiago’s fulfillment of
characteristics is the representation of human existence. III.1.2 Secondary Data
In order to support primary data, the writer uses several addition books as the secondary data. The books are journals, notes or commentaries related to the
analysis. Some of them are Solomon’s From Hegel to Existentialism 1987, Jean Paul Sartre’s Existentialism and Humanism 1960, Carey Gary’s The Old Man
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and the Sea’s Cliff Notes 1973 and commentaries from several existentialists such as Kierkegaard, Sartre or Descartes.
These books are used to support Muzairi’s formulated theory about the characteristics of human existence and complete the analysis of human existence
as reflected in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. An internet explorer source is also conducted as the supplement data for the analysis. All of
these are intended to fulfill a reliable source of data and achieve a precise analysis.
“I have always held that any method which could produce the meaning of a work of literature was a legitimate method… I came
to the conclusion that …the critic’s task was …to procure a viable meaning appropriate to the critic’s time and place. Practically, this
meant employing not any one method in interpreting a work of art but every method which might prove efficient. Guerin1987:21
III.2 DATA COLLECTING PROCEDURE
The beginning of thesis procedures is to collect the books related to the title of thesis. The focus of analysis is about human existence as reflected in
Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. The books are collected from several sources such as library, book store and internet.
The books which are collected contain vast information about analysis. Thus the writer tries to select the relevant books to the analysis only, which is the
study of human existence. These selected books are separated into primary and secondary books as explained above. The duration of data collecting process is
about a couple months from March, 2008 to April, 2008.
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III.3 DATA IDENTIFYING PROCEDURE
After deciding the relevant books as the reliable sources, the writer does data identifying procedure. The procedure is done by reading the selected books;
primary and secondary, then marking the texts related to the thesis, Human Existence as reflected in The Old Man and the Sea.
The selected marking text becomes the main data of analysis. Afterward, the texts become the analysis of the thesis by describing them and analyzing the
data. All of analysis data refers to the characteristics of human existence which are subjectivity, conscious being in the world, contingency, anti materialism,
humanity and faith. The explanation of these characteristics will be the analysis of the thesis. The duration of data identifying procedure is about 4 weeks, from June
to July 2008.
III.4 DATA ANALYZING PROCEDURE
This procedure is the process of describing the data and analyzing them into the thesis’s analysis. The data are including the characteristics of human and
The Old Man and the Sea’s selected texts. These characteristics are described by explaining Santiago’s characteristics which represents the human existence. The
characteristics are subjectivity, conscious being in the world, contingency, anti materialism, humanity and faith. Here are the sums of the analysis:
Ex: 1. Subjectivity
Subjectivity is always individual and it emphasizes the personal existence of human being. In accordance to the human nature, subjectivity always
recognizes the uniqueness of every human being.
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The Old Man and the Sea also provides the elements of subjectivity as reflected in Santiago’s character. We can see the uniqueness of Santiago, not only
as a man in a vast world, but also as a true fisherman. The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of
his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The
blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But
none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert. Everything about him was old except his eyes and
they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated. Hemingway1966:1
The beginning of novel shows the uniqueness of Santiago as a man. Hemingway introduces the main character, Santiago as a unique man. Santiago is
described as an old man with cheerful and undefeated eyes. From Santiago’s physical descriptions, it is a clear that Hemingway tries to introduce a strong
character to the readers. He introduces Santiago, who is old but still cheerful and undefeated. This description shows the uniqueness of Santiago’s character as a
strong man, although he is old now. Carey Gary, in his Critical Commentaries, states this:
Note also how Hemingway has created Santiago for us: he is thin, gaunt even; he has deep wrinkles, discolored blotches, and deep
creased scars. Hemingway is emphasizing Santiago’s age to show us that he is indeed old and worn; to all appearances, he seems to
be a man ready to be written off as a has been. He is old and, too often, societies dismiss the old as useless. This, indeed, happened
in Hemingway’s own situation; the critics, prior to the publication of this novel, unanimously agreed that he was ‘finished’…..the old
man’s physical features have been worn away like the land, and this emphasizes the idea of Santiago’s age and also his character.
Like the land, he is old but he survives, despite the erosion. His eyes perhaps the key of his soul; they are blue like the sea, and
“undefeated”. Gary1973:14
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2. Conscious Being in the World Hemingway also shows the conscious being in the world by describing an
‘alienated’ Santiago. Santiago is alienated by the society because he is old now. The society of local fishermen regard him as a ‘salao’ or ‘very unlucky’ or even
‘useless’. Santiago is being regarded as a useless because he is too old now and can’t make money by catching fish any more. This is the value of society in which
Hemingway tries to discover that Santiago is temporary regarded as useless because he is old and unproductive any more.
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the
first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was
now definitely and finally ‘salao’, which is the worst form of unlucky…. They sat on the Terrace and many of the fishermen
made fun of the old man and he was not angry. Hemingway1966:5-7
Exactly, Hemingway tries to criticize the value of materialistic society. It
is quite surprise that Hemingway attack the materialism by using the defeat of Santiago against shark but Santiago wins his ‘great skeleton’ of Marlin, the fish.
Societies of local fishermen regard fishing as the way of making money. Fish symbolizes money and man is nothing without it. But here, Hemingway reverses
this materialistic value by only using ‘skeleton’ not ‘fish’ to show his perspective about being a man. It means that everyone can prove existence, not only by using
money as symbolized by the fish but only a ‘skeleton’ that symbolizes the process of getting our existence.
To most of other fisherman, the old man is ‘salao’ which is Portuguese slang for ‘very unlucky’ or ‘cursed with bad luck’. In
fact, we soon learn that most of the men of village do not regard him even as a man. The boy’s father and many of other fishermen
put material considerations first: a man must catch fish – otherwise
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he has no money; otherwise he is not a man……Santiago and Manolin are men because of their codes of honor. Each of them is
an idealist for whom fishing is more than an occupation. For them, fishing is not merely way making money: it is a way of life.
Carey1973:12
Above are some examples of doing the data analyzing procedures. It becomes the main research process of this thesis. For further, the research method
procedures of this thesis will be described by the table below.
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TABLE OF RESEARCH METHOD PROCEDURES
MONTH MARCH
ACTIVITY APRIL
MAY JUNE
JULY AUG
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 COLLECTING BOOKS
X X X X X X X X
------------ -----
P RO
P O
S AL
S E
M INAR
-------- -----
---
X X
……. .…….
.TH ES
IS F
INAL SE
SS IO
N ………
.…. ..
SELECTING BOOKS X
X X
READING X X
X X X
X X X X IDENTIFYING DATA
X X X X X
ANALYZING DATA X X X
CONSULTING+REVISING X X X
X X X X X
FINISHING
X
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CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS
Human existence has several characteristics. The characteristics are subjectivity, conscious being in the world, contingency, anti-materialism,
humanity, and faith. These characteristics are fulfilled by Santiago, as the main character of the novel. The analysis of the novel will be conducted by describing
Santiago’s characteristics which represent the characteristics of human existence. Santiago’s proclamation of existence is the representation of human existence.
The result of analysis will reveal the perspective of Hemingway in viewing life and the message about Human Existence as reflected in his novel, The Old Man
and the Sea.
IV.1 ANALYSIS OF HUMAN EXISTENCE IN THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA
