Character Setting Drs. Mohammad Syafi’i, M.A. Reader

other not simply because time thicks away, but more importantly because effects follow causes. In a good story nothing is irrelevant or accidental: everything is related and causative.

4.2 Theme

Theme is a broad idea, message, or moral of a story. The message may be about life, society, or human nature. Themes often explore timeless and universal ideas and are almost always implied rather than stated explicitly. All stories have a theme or purpose, no matter how deviously the author chooses to present it. At one time authors stated their purpose, but such a prosedure has become old-fashioned; no self-respecting writers at present will do more than imply their theme. They suggest it through character, athmosphere, setting, plot, and style-thus theme is a kind of composite statement which requires our comprehension of numerous other elements.

4.3 Character

A character is the representation of a person in a narrative or dramatic work of art such as a novel, play, or film. Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr, the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration. Character, particularly when enacted by an actor in the theatre or cinema, involves the illusion of being a human person. In literature, characters guide readers through their stories, helping them to understand plots and ponder themes. Since the end of the 18th century, the phrase in character has been used to describe an Universitas Sumatera Utara effective impersonation by an actor. Since the 19th century, the art of creating characters, as practised by actors or writers, has been called characterisation. In fiction, a character maybe defined as a verbal representation of a human being. Through action, speech, description and comentary, authors portray characters who are worth caring about, rooting for, and even loving, although there are also character we may laugh at, dislike, or even hate. A character who stands as a representative of a particular class or group of people is known as a type. Types include both stock characters and those that are more fully individualised. The characters in Henrik Ibsens Hedda Gabler 1891 and August Strindbergs Miss Julie 1888, for example, are representative of specific positions in the social relations of class and gender, such that the conflicts between the characters reveal ideological conflicts. The study of a character requires an analysis of its relations with all of the other characters in the work. The individual status of a character is defined through the network of oppositions proairetic, pragmatic, linguistic, proxemic that it forms with the other characters. The relation between characters and the action of the story shifts historically, often miming shifts in society and its ideas about human individuality, self-determination, and the social order.

4.4 Setting

Setting is the natural, manufactured, political, cultural, and temporal environment, including everything that characters know and own. In fiction, Universitas Sumatera Utara setting includes the time, location, and everything in which a story takes place, and initiates the main backdrop and mood for a story. Setting has been referred to as story world or milieu to include a context especially society beyond the immediate surroundings of the story. Elements of setting may include culture, historical period, geography, and hour. Along with plot, character, theme, and style, setting is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction. Setting is a key role in plot. In some stories the setting becomes a character itself. In such roles setting may be considered a plot device or literary device. The term setting is often used to refer to the social milieu in which the events of a novel occur. Novelist and novel-writing instructor Donna Levin has described how this social milieu shapes the characters’ values.

4.5 Point of view