28 Unfortunately, Dave’s mother behavior changed suddenly. His alcoholic mother
started to abuse and beat him. Daves life began to change when his teacher at the school and the police took actions to help Dave to escape from his house.
The second volume of Daves trilogy is The Lost Boy. It was written in 1997 and it consists of 340 pages. It told the story after he was rescued from his
abusive mother by the police. Dave was taken to the foster care system until the age of 18. This novel presented his ability to adapt to the new environment around
him as a foster child. It also told about the kindness of his foster parents and other people around him. Dave never stopped hoping and seeking for the love of a real
family. Finally, he found the love of a family in the hand of his foster parents. A Man Named Dave
is the last part of Daves trilogy which consists of 426 pages. This novel presented Dave’s adult life. The story told Daves struggles to
earn money and to survive in the society. It also described how he tried to overcome his memories as an abused child. After a long time of struggle, in this
novel, finally he was able to forget his past. He was able to love, to trust and to live as a man named Dave. Those three novels were published in Great Britain by
the same publisher, Orion Media.
B. Approach of the Study
The purposes of the study are to describe Dave’s characteristics from each novel and Dave Pelzers personality development which is analyzed using
Erikson’s psychosocial theory. To achieve these purposes, psychological approach was applied in this study. Rohrberger and Woods Jr 1971 state that the
29 psychological approach is an approach that applies psychological theories to
explain human motivation, personality and behavior written in literary object pp. 13-15.
Psychological approach was chosen to analyze these three trilogy novels because this study dealt with psychological aspects in human thoughts and
behavior. In this study, the changes of the authors personality were caused by his experience of being abused.
C. Method of the Study
In doing this study, the researcher used two kinds of sources, namely primary sources and secondary sources. The primary sources were the three
novels of Dave Pelzers autobiography; A Child Called ‘It’, The Lost Boy, and A
Man Named Dave. The secondary sources were literary, human psychology books
and online source. As the method of study, the researcher used library research. In order to analyze those three novels, there were some steps taken by the
researcher. First, the researcher started to read the novels. The researcher read the whole parts of the novels several times in order to get deeper understanding about
the novels. Second, the researcher decided the aspects to be analyzed in those trilogy novels. Since the trilogy novels told about child abuse, the researcher tried
to find several sources from books and electronic sources about child abuse. From this step, the researcher was interested in analyzing the personality development
of Dave Pelzer as an abused child who was the main character of his autobiographical trilogy novels.
30 Third, the researcher looked for the psychological theories from books and
electron ic sources used in analyzing Dave Pelzer’s characterization and
personality development. After reading some sources, the researcher took notes in order to find the related theories. Fourth, since this thesis focused on the
psychological aspects of the novels, the researcher chose the psychological approach to analyze the trilogy of Dave Pelzers autobiography. The researcher
used psychological theories from some experts. The researcher also had a consultation with a psychology lecturer from Psychology Department to discuss
the theory that can be used to analyze the novels. The researcher used the theory of personality development by Erikson as cited in Feist 2006 and the theory of
abuse by Wilson 1996. Those theories were applied in order to analyze Daves personality development in the novels. The next step was making draft of the
writing from each chapter. After finishing the draft, the researcher tried to develop ideas into paragraphs. The last step was drawing a conclusion. The conclusion
contained the statement of the findings in the analysis.
31
CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS
