one of the best Australian novels written in the 1990s, therefore it can be argued that Looking for Alibrandi reflects a culturally sanctioned ideology of Australian
adolescent” http:epress.lib.uts.edu.au. It means that Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi successfully reflects the life of Australian adolescent that is full of
important issues in adolescent’s life such as maturity, identity, family and society. Besides Heather Voskuyl, Lesley Speed also states the significance of Melina
Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi in revealing Italia-Australian female identity in her article No matter how far you run: Looking for Alibrandi and coming of age in
Italo-Australian cinema and girlhood. The film and novel of Looking for Alibrandi mark a public coming-of-age for
Italo-Australian female identity. Marchettas novel is part of the literary tradition of the coming-of-age story, which typically centers on a young
person whose acquisition of experience entails a loss that facilitates her acquisition of a new maturity… Josies narration in the novel and film
of Looking for Alibrandi serves to assert her identity on multiple levels. It makes public the thoughts and emotions of Josie Alibrandi as a woman, as an
Italo-Australian and as an Australian born to an unwed mother: identities that in earlier decades were likely to be kept private http:www.latrobe.edu.au.
The second reason why the thesis writer chooses Looking for Alibrandi is because the novel brought up various important experiences that commonly occur in
adolescent’s life and one of them is maturity which is the main attention of this study. Looking for Alibrandi concerns about adolescent experiences in the final year of high
school. It is the story of the main character’s maturity process throughout a span of journey in school life, family life, and friendship.
B. Problem Formulation
There are three problems presented in this thesis. The problems are stated below:
1. How is Josephine described in the novel? 2. What are the conflicts experienced by Josephine?
3. How does Josephine’s maturity result from the conflicts?
C. Objectives of the Study
In this study, the main character’s maturity as the result of conflicts is analyzed. The first purpose of this study is to find out the context and the
characteristics of the main character throughout the novel in order to get better understanding of the character. The second is the writer wants to find out what
conflicts leading her to maturity. The last aim is to find out how Josephine’s maturity results from the conflicts.
D. Definition of Terms
In order to achieve better understanding of the study, the writer needs to provide the definition of particular terms in this study. In this study, the term maturity
refers to the psychological term. Justin Pikunas in Human Development, An Emergent Science states that “a mature person is one who has acquired a personal identity and
has made progress in integrating his or her total personality into a smoothly functioning system” 1976: 295. It means that maturity is the ability to respond in
mature ways under various circumstances and finally accept wholeheartedly his or her own life as it is. A person can achieve maturity through the adolescent
experiences that make them learns from the experiences. The term conflict in this study also refers to the psychological term. Dean G.
Pruitt and Jeffrey Z. Rubin in Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate and Settlement define conflict “as a sharp disagreement or opposition, as of interests, ideas and
includes the perceived divergence of interest, or a belief that the parties current aspirations cannot be achieved simultaneously” 1986: 4.
8
CHAPTER II THEORETICAL REVIEW
A. Review of Related Studies
Looking for Alibrandi written by Melina Marchetta has become a great novel to be read and an interesting literary work to be analyzed. Due to the reason, there are
some studies that had been conducted before by other researchers. To find out whether this thesis is original or not, it is important to map out the studies on Melina
Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi that had been previously done. The first thesis on Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi is The Self
Between Two Worlds: Cultural Authenticity in Melina Marchetta‘s Looking for Alibrandi and Saving Francesca conducted by Vasiliki Tassiopoulos. His thesis
examines cultural authenticity because it has close relationship with the lives of the teen protagonists who become the main characters in the two young adult novels that
both novels were written by Melina Marchetta https:circle.ubc.ca. The writer uses theories in cultural studies to analyze the cultural authenticity. He also uses a Greek-
Canadian point of view in examining the novels and then connected it to the lives of the characters since the writer also has grown up living between two cultures with an
integrated understanding and appreciation of both Greek and Canadian cultures as well as in the lives of the characters.
This thesis is different from Tassiopoulos’s thesis since this thesis examines the main character’s process toward maturity in Melina Marchetta’s Looking for
Alibrandi. Due to the reason, psychological point of view is used for examining the topic. This thesis focuses on the development of the main character examined from
psychological approach meanwhile Tassiopoulos’s thesis focuses on the reader’s response based on the characters’ experiences. Tassiopoulos’s thesis is listed here
because Tassiopoulos used a novel that also becomes the object of the study of this thesis, which is Melinna Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi. In other words, this
thesis tends to discover a new topic on Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi. The next paper comes from a journal article conducted by Rita Wilson who is
an Associate Professor of Languages Cultures and Linguistics in Monash University. Her journal article, titled Excuse me is our heritage showing? Representations of
diasporic experiences across the generation, examines the writers of Italian descent who made the narration of diasporic experiences. Furthermore, Wilson analyzes the
ways in which relationships between ‘home’ and ‘destination’ cultures are negotiated across the generations http:ehlt.flinders.edu.au.
Wilson uses the narrations of three women writers, Rosa Cappiello, Anna Maria Dell’oso and Melina Marchetta, and then analyzed them to show how
negotiating the tensions between nostalgia for the past and the needs of the present transforms and translates notions of ‘home’ for writers who are living ‘in between’
cultures. Wilson chose the texts that revealed distinctive strategy of representation in which spatiality functions as a symbolic conduit between the plotting of identity
constructions and ItalianAustralian realities http:ehlt.flinders.edu.au
The other paper is written by Lana Zannettino entitled From “Looking for Alibrandi” To “Does My Head Look Big In This?” The Role of Australian Teenage
Novels In Reconceptualising Racialised gendered Identities. This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of three Australian teenage novels – Melina Marchetta’s
Looking for Alibrandi 1992, Randa Abdel-Fattah’s Does my Head Look Big in This? 2005, and Morris Gleitzman’s ‘Girl Underground’ 2004. Drawing from
feminist post-structural and postcolonial theories, the paper examines how each author has constructed the racialised-gendered identities of their female protagonists,
including the ways in which they struggle to develop an identity in-between minority and dominant cultures. Zannettino also considers how each author inter-weaves race,
gender and class to produce subjects that are positioned differently across minority and dominant cultures http:epress.lib.uts.edu.au.
This thesis is different from Wilson’s and Zannettino’s paper since this thesis examines the life of the main character in Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi.
Meanwhile, the other two papers focus on the Melina Marchetta’s life.
B. Review of Related Theories
It is necessary to include all related theories which are very useful to be used for answering the problems formulated. Because the topic examined in this thesis
focuses on the main character, therefore theories on character, characterization and conflict are very useful to be included in order to get better understanding of the
character. Those theories enable the thesis writer to analyze the changing
