Theoretical Framework REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Adam http:www.penguin.comnewsroomgayle-formans-new-york-times-
bestselling-novel-stay-hits-theaters-august-22-2014. The movie won some awards, which were
the category of “Choice Movie: Drama” in Teen Choice Awards and “Favorite Dramatic Movie Actress” in People’s Choice Awards.
Gayle Forman, born June 5th 1970 in Los Angeles, is an American author who focuses on the genre of young-adult fiction. She is very popular and has been
featured in
many national
publications, including
The Nation, Elle
Magazine, Cosmopolitan Magazine and The New York Times. She won the NAIBA Book of the Year Awards in 2009 and an Indie Choice Honor Award
winner for If I Stay in 2010. She also won the British Fantasy Award and the ALAYALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers in 2010
http:gayleforman.combio. The inspiration of this If I Stay novel is based on a real accident happening
to a family in New York. The news spreads all over the city, including to Forman who hears it. A little boy survived, while the other members of his family do not.
Forman, then, keeps thinking whether the little boy knows what has happened to the rest of his family and whether it is his decision to choose not to go with his
family. Besides, there is also another inspira tion coming from Forman’s friend.
Her friends all over the country suddenly gather in the Oregon town where their friend has an ad-hoc wake after in the coma for a long time. Forman reflects that
although there are wounds in life, her friend must have found clarity, a moral compass that has guided her to come back to life. After what has happened to her
friend, she keeps pondering and questioning whether someone really chooses to die or to live Forman, 2010: 241.
From those real happening events and those questions in her thought, almost seven years after those facts, a stranger pops into Forman’s mind. Her
name is Mia, a seventeen-years-old cellist, and she is going to take a journey to answer that question that has been living in Forman’s mind for years: “What will
you do if you have to choose?” 2010: 242. Mia Hall, as the main character of If I Stay, is described as a seventeen-
year-old girl who really loves playing cello. Her family gets an accident, and she is the only one who survives. She is in a comatose state, which is a state between
life and death. Her body is in a critical state and cannot move at all, but Mia’s soul is going back and forth around the hospital, which represents the unconscious
mind of Mia Hall. In the end of the story, Mia Hall has to choose by herself which path of life she wants to take. She must decide whether she wants to be alive, or
she wants to follow her family’s path. After having gone through all kinds of situation in the hospital, she finds her choice, which is to be alive.
The novel If I Stay becomes the object of this study because this study analyzes the unconscious mind of someone, especially on how it can trigger and
motivate someone to make a decision in hisher life. To do so, Mia Hall’s soul, described by the author to be able to speak and feel, is analyzed as the
unconscious mind of Mia Hall; and the characteristics that have been formed in her trigger herself to make a decision to be alive.