Main Character and Peripheral Character Protagonist and Antagonist

17 Therefore, in characterization contained two aspects: contents and type. Actually, what and who is the character in a novel do not important during the reader can identified at that character Jones,1968:33 or interpret that characters according to the logic of the story of the perception.

2.2 Main Character and Peripheral Character

When reading a novel, we usually face several characters that appeared in the story. However, each characters has different role. We can see from the role point of view or the level of importance of the character in the story, there is character that only appeared once in the story. The character that called first is central character or main character,. Whereas the second is peripheral character. Main character is the character that often appeared in the almost each event is the important and the special character, so that we feel, is so dominates the story. In certain novel, the main character always appeared in almost each event and can be found in each page of novel. Usually, a synopsis made for the main character. The main characters in a novel can more than one person. On the other hand, there are characters that appeared once or something in the story, and may be relatively in short portion, which is called peripheral character. Universitas Sumatera Utara 18

2.3 Protagonist and Antagonist

Protagonist is the character who is favorites by the reader. He or she like a hero or the good people, because he or she always does ideal role, the rules and values in society. The reader always gives sympathy and emphasis by the protagonist character. On the other hand, the protagonist is, it should be pointed out, not always the hero of the story. Many authors have chosen to unfold a story from the point of view of a character that, while not central to the action of the story to be the protagonist; even if the protagonist’s actions are not heroic, the are nonetheless usually vital to the progress of the story. Neither should be the protagonist be confused with the narrator, they may be same, but even first person narrator need not to be the protagonist. As they may simply be recalling the event while not living through it as the audience is. The antagonist is the character of the story that presents the opposition against which the heroes or protagonist must contend. In the classic style of the story where in the action consist of a hero fighting a villain; the two can be regarded as protagonist and antagonist, respectively. However, authors have often created situations that are more complex. In some instance, the story is told from the villain’s point of view, in such a story, the hero is regarded as the chief antagonist of the story. Universitas Sumatera Utara 19 The antagonist is any character in literally work that opposes the effort of the antagonist hero or main character. Many stories have only a single antagonist or one main one, while longer works, especially novels, may have many antagonist. Universitas Sumatera Utara 20 3 . A BRIEF STUDY OF CHARACTERIZATION OF SIDNEY SHELDON’S NOVEL THE SKY IS FALLING 3.1 The Main Characters 3.1.1 Dana Evans