Background of the Study

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter deals with background of the study, problem formulation, objectives of the study, benefits of the study, and definition of terms. Background of the study describes the reason why I chose the novel and the topic. In background of the study, I describe some important informa tion related to the topic. The problem formulation gives general descriptions in the form of questions about the problems that are analyzed and discussed in this study. The objectives of the study contain the expected answers to the questions formulated in the problem formulation. The benefits of the study contain people who will get benefits from the study. The last part, definition of terms, explains the definition of key terms in this study in order to avoid misconception.

1.1 Background of the Study

When we talk about life, we can talk about many things. When we discuss life, we discuss about faith, idealism, beliefs, behavior, attitude, dreams, and many things. All are based on the fact that life is a complex matter. Life contains many things and all depend on individual beliefs. In viewing life, people have different point of views. They also have different ways to face their life. It can be caused by their background of knowledge, experience, and faith. Those backgrounds can influence people on shaping the way they view life and face it. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI As it is like a mirror, sometimes we can see literature as a reflection of our life and that makes studying literature interesting and fascinating, since it contains some kinds of human aspect of life, such as moral, history, psychology, social, and more. Reading a piece of literary work is similar to reading a story of life. When one reads literary work, it means he or she reads or experiences the expression of life through the media of language. By reading literary works, we gain not only pleasant things, but also some life values because literature may become one of the ways in which human learn about moral which happens in life. Moody explains that literature can give more than just pleasure and enjoyment. And all of us who read literary work will find our knowledge broadened and deepened, whether in the individual, the social, the racial, or in the internal sphere; we shall understand the possibilities of human life, both for good and evil, we shall understand how we come to live at a particular time and place, with all its pleasure and vexations and problems; we shall understand onward which are open to us, and we shall perhaps be able to make right rather than wrong choices 2-3 Therefore, by reading literary works, we can enrich our knowledge more on the values in life, such as the good and the evil. One of literary works is novel. In a novel, characters play an important role, and convey the message from the author to the readers. The author may use human, plants, animals, and even supernatural beings such as ghosts, gods and goddess, or other creatures as the characters in order to build the story. Those characters are usually the representatives of the human being. Their experience, conflicts, problems and achievements usually represent what we, humans, experience in our life. Holman and Harmon state that “all novels are representations in fictional narrative of life or experience but the form are itself as a protean as life and experience themselves” 336. It means that novel is like a mirror in which we see our life in it. That is why sometimes when we read a literary work we can find that a character in literary work is just like us. Since a novel is like a mirror in which we see our life in it, then it also contains values in human life. The values that are presented in literary work usually are carried by the characters. The author usually provides the characters with certain values, so that they can conve y those values to the readers. By reading a novel, sometimes the readers can get more values besides the pleasure. Mitch Albom’s novel entitled The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a novel that portrays the things described above. It tells a story of the life after death of the main character, named Eddie, a veteran war who works as the maintenance person in a pier named Ruby Pier. When Eddie dies, he goes to heaven and meets five people that answer all the questions about the life that he has been through, and also conveys the Biblical values. This novel is interesting to discuss because there are some biblical values that are conveyed through the five people that Eddie meets in heaven. Therefore, this study, focuses on analyzing the biblical values conveyed through the characters, in this study is the five people that Eddie meets in heaven, in Albom’s the Five People You Meet in Heaven.

1.2 Problem Formulation