CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY
This chapter consists of three parts, namely, Object of the Study, Approach of the Study, and Method of Study.
A. Object of the Study
This thesis is concerned on Sam Shepard’s Buried Child, which is written in 1978. To analyze the play, this study uses the edition compiled by Milly S.
Barranger and published in 1994. Buried Child is a winner of the 1979 Pulitzer Prize, written in 1970s https:www.dramatists.comcgi-bindbsingle.1351. After
Shepard rewrote Buried Child in 1995, it is approved at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. Then it is revised for the 1996 Broadway production. Buried Child,
like most of Shepards plays, is suffused with symbolism, which he uses to communicate deeper, though sometimes ambiguous, levels of meaning to his
audiences http:www.smh.com.auarticles200209261032734277401.html. The object of study in this thesis is symbolism reflected through one of the
characters that found in Sam Shepard’s Buried Child. The writer will use theory of symbolism, character, and characterization, and theory of formalism to explore
the play. Those theories are needed to analyze the characters closely and find the values of symbolism.
The play itself is about an American Midwestern family with a dark, terrible secret: Tilden, the eldest of three sons belonging to Dodge and Halie,
16 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
commits an act of incest with his mother. She bore his child, a baby boy, which Dodge drowns and bury in the field behind their farmhouse. The act destroys the
family. Dodge stops planting crops in his fields and took to smoking, drinking, and watching television from a lumpy old sofa. Halie, apparently seeking
salvation, turns to religion with eagerness. She becomes a member of Christian church with guidance of the hypocritical Father Dewis. Tilden becomes insane
with guilt and grief, spends time in jail in New Mexico, and has only recently returns to the farmstead, perhaps to set everything right. The secret is drawn out
into the light of day, and the family curse apparently lifts, with the arrival of Vince, Tildens estranged son, and his girlfriend, Shelly.
B. Approach of the Study
The study uses formalistic approach to analyze the play. This approach helps interpret or evaluate literary works that focused on features of the text itself
especially properties of its language rather than on the contexts of its creation biographical, historical or intellectual or the contexts of its reception. Besides,
this approach looks for relationships of system related metaphor, symbols, myths, images and allusion. According to Kennedy and Gioia, formalist approach might
as well be called as unique form of human knowledge that needs to be examined on its own term, to a formalist, a poem or story is not primarily a social, historical
or biographical document; it is a literary works that can be used to understand only by reference to its intrinsic literary features, those element that is found in the
text itself 1995: 71. Concerning the study is focused on the symbol of a 17
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