Ejilah’s journey is not easy. He must face many obstacles in achieving his goal. Elijah, as the representation of humankind, put all of his life in God’s hand.
Instead of getting help from God, Elijah has to face never-ending tests in his life. Finally Elijah can see God’s grand design for him after overcoming those test. In
the hard times, God performs miracles through him. He can create a miracle. Humans, in a way, can do the miracle; therefore, it is essential to see how the
miracles are recre ated in Coelho’s novel to know its importance.
B. Approach of the Study
This undergraduate thesis uses theory of narratology as the literary approach to analyse the novel. Narratology is a study about narrative structures. It is a branch
of structuralism, but it has a certain independence from structuralism. Different from structuralism which relates narratives to some larger structure and interpreting
literature in terms of a range with the structure of language, narratology looks at individual narratives seeking out the recurrent structures which are found within all
narratives. Narratology also counteracts the tendency of conventional criticism to foreground character and motive by foregrounding instead action and structure
Barry, 2009. It seems appropriate that narratology is used as the approach in this under-
graduate thesis since the title is The Importance of Recreating Elijah’s Biblical
Miracles in Paulo Coelho’s The Fifth Mountain
.
Narratology helps the writer to see the narrative structure and the significance of miracles in the novel. The same
miracles are also found in the Bible and done by Elijah. The Bible has its own
structure and so does the novel. Each work share a different structure with the same miracles. Therefore, narratology can be applied to see how the biblical miracles are
recreated in the novel and the importance of those miracles.
C. Method of the Study
There are two main texts used in this undergraduate thesis: primary texts and secondary texts. The primary texts are the novel,
The Fifth Mountain,
by Paulo Coelho and the Bible, Book of 1 Kings 17:1 -24. The novel is used to analyse the
narrative functions of the biblical miracles and to see how those biblical miracles are recreated in the novel, while the Bible is used to see how the miracles are
originally narrated and stands as a comparison to the miracles in the novel. The secondary texts are the books, journals, other undergraduate theses, and internet
articles in reliable websites which provide supporting literary theories, approaches, and information to this undergraduate thesis.
This undergraduate thesis uses library research method. There are several steps needed in finishing this undergraduate thesis. The first step was that the writer
read Coelho’s
The Fifth Mountain
several times and focused on the miraculous events. After reading Coelho’s novel, the writer read the Bible, Book of 1 Kings
17:1 -24, to comprehend the miracles within the text. Then, the writer identified the narrative functions of each story and tried to see how the miracles in the Bible were
recreated and constructed in Coelho’s
The Fifth Mountain
by using literary theories. After knowing the identification of each story, the writer observed the Brazil’s
condition in 1990s to see the effect of the recreation of the miracles in the novel in Brazil.
