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CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY
A. Object of the Study
“A Worn Path” is an American short story written by Eudora Welty in 1940. It was first published at The Atlantic Monthly, an American literary and
cultural magazine in 1941. At the same year the short story wins the second place of O. Henry Award. In 1994 “A Worn Path” is filmed into short film entitled
Eudora Welty: A Worn Path and is directed by Bruce Schwartz. The film wins several awards such as Silver Apple of National Educational Media Network and
Silver Award of Fort Lauderdale Film Festival WorldFest Houston. The story of “A Worn Path” is about an African-American old woman
who takes on journey. Her purpose is to get the medicine at the city for her sick grandson. She passes the shortest yet, encounters a lot of obstacles. Her journey is
cold, long and hard through woods and fields. The obstacles within her route are the people that she encounters and the nature.
B. Approach of the Study
This undergraduate thesis employs New Criticism as the approach. New Criticism which certainly views the literary work as none other than a different
form of language has the relevance to scientific language or philosophical language is at minimum, as Holman wrote in A Handbook of Literature below,
The whole body of criticism that concentrates on the work of art as an object in itself, finds in it a special kind of language opposed to – or at
least different from – the languages of science or philosophy: and examines it through a process of close analysis 1986, 331.
Furthermore, the New Criticism are the study that puts forward the unity of all elements and words meaning Abrams, 1993: 247 as it only focuses on the
text, and expels the influence of the author intentional fallacy and the readers’ possible personal assumption in their mind affective fallacy as the analysis take
a place. In other words New Criticism directs the one’s critical attention to analyzing the text. It leads the one reaches a depth of understanding in the close
reading of the text without influence from either the author or the reader itself. In order to obtain a proper analysis and produced a fine conclusion after
considering the focus of this undergraduate thesis, this approach is chosen because the study takes a scope to examine Phoenix Jackson who is the only main
character and the setting which is written with detail description in “A Worn Path”. These two elements signal the residing theme and that is the study
researches to be discovered.
C. Method of the Study
Library research is used in this undergraduate thesis to help the analysis. Library research is gathering information from books and other references to find
theories to support the study of the undergraduate thesis. Obviously the primary source is the short story “A Worn Path” of Eudora Welty. The secondary source
was some books that considered as references and some reliable sources from internet.
There were stages to be undergone. The stages relatively refer to problem formulation in the first chapter. The first stage was to read the “A Worn Path” in a
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