Chick’s personal life after he gets married

57 daughter to experience it as well. However, Chick’s life deals more with sport since his father forms it that way. It influences the way he takes care of his daughter. Chick loves her but he wants to form her to be a little bit the same as him. He wants to make his little girl be a sporty girl. I found my greatest joy in her. I tried to be a decent father. I tried to pay attention to the little things. I wiped the ketchup off her face after French fries. I sat beside her at her small desk, pencil in hand, helping her do math problems. I sent her back upstairs when, as an eleven- year-old, she came down wearing a halter top. And I was always quick to throw her a ball or to take her to the local YMCA for swimming lessons, happy to keep her a tomboy as long as possible Albom 155. It is a part of his ego as a father, whether Chick realizes it or not. He feels happy if his daughter has similar things like him. Parents always have certain influence in their children’s life. It is normal as long as they do not dominate their children life and let the children develop the mselves. Although Chick already has his own family to take care of, he still often thinks of his father. He still has the ambition to chase his father’s love. Unfortunately, his father really knows Chick’s weakness about this. Chick’s father is like a gho st. He comes whenever he likes to force Chick to do what he wants. Chick never has courage to refuse his father’s command. Moreover, since he has chosen to be a daddy’s boy, he feels obligated to fulfill all of his father’s wishes. One day, Chick makes a very bad decision which later changes his whole life extremely worse. After he quits from his baseball carrier, his father also disappears along with Chick’s carrier. Yet, in his mother’s seventy-ninth birthday party, Chick receives a phone call from his father unexpectedly. His father forces him to join Old PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 58 Timers Game. They have an intense conversation on the phone in which Chick tries hard to refuse his father’s offer, yet his father has stronger power to force him. There are a lot of things I wished I’d asked him. Instead, I said I’d call him back. I hung up the phone. And let the opportunity my father had “finagled” dance around my head. I thought about it as my mother sliced her vanilla layer cake and put each piece on a paper plate. I thought about it as she opened her presents. I thought about it as Catherine, Maria and I posed around her for a photo – Maria now covered in purple eye shadow – and my mom’s friend Edith held up the camera and said, “One, two… uch, wait, this thing, I can never figure it out.” And even as we stood there forcing our smiles, I was picturing my swing. I tried to focus. I tried to wrap my mother’s birthday party around me. But my father, a thief in many ways, had robbed me of my concentration. Before the paper plates were tossed, I was down in the basement, on the phone, booking the last plane out Albom 160. Chick decides to join the Old Timers Game. He has to lie to everyone at home that he has to go on a meeting on Sunday. He cancels his appointment to have brunch with family. Chick really insists on going although his family wants him to stay Albom 161. Here, Chick experiences intrapersonal conflict and he applies competition to solve the conflict. In Fitzpatrick and Noller’s Communication in Family Relationship, Blake and Mouton explain competition as putting one’s own concerns above those relationships and is characterized by minimal concern for others’ feelings Fitzpatrick and Noller 106. Chick concerns more on his father, so he decides to fulfill his father’s wish. Chick never knows that it will be the last moment he meets his mother. The mother passes away when he is playing in Old Timers Game. The game itself is worth nothing but shame. There is no meaningful achievement that Chick can get from the game. He loses his mother instead. Chick has just realized how his mother has backed his life up and how he really needs his 59 mother in his life. Chick never forgives himself of lying to his mother and speaking to her on anger in the last day he spends the time with his mother. After the funeral, I go so drunk I passed out on our couch. And something changed. One day can bend your life, and that day seemed to bend mine inexorably downward. My mother had been all over me as a kid – advice, criticism, the whole smothering mothering thing. There were times I wished she would leave me alone. But then she did. She died. No more visits, no more phone calls. And without even realizing it, I began to drift, as if my roots had been pulled, as if I were floating down some side branch of a river. Mothers support certain illusions about their children, and one of my illusions was that I liked who I was, because she did. When she passed away, so did that idea. The truth is, I didn’t like who I was at all. In my mind, I still pictured myself a promising, young athlete. But I was no longer young and I was no longer an athlete. I was a middle-aged salesman. My promise had long since passed Albom 4. He regrets of missing the last moment because of his decision to fulfill his father’s wish. That day gives big influence in the rest of Chick’s life. He loses his self-confidence. A year after his mother dies, he makes the dumbest mistake that he has ever done financially. He invests most of his savings in a now-worthless stock fund. He is bankrupt soon after his colleague transfers his money to her own bank account and brings it away. Chick gets very stressful and he drinks more and more. Later on, his habit of drinking makes him lose his two sales jobs. It makes his condition even worse. He keeps on drinking, he sleeps badly and he eats badly. Money becomes a problem in his family. Chick and his wife often argue about it. Here, as cited by Fitzpatrick and Noller in Communication in Family Relationship, Chick’s family conflict can be classified as content issues since the problem which causes the conflict is about financial problem that can lead to anger or depression. Chick applies avoidance to resolve the conflict. He chooses to keep his own problem and misery. As time goes by, his wife gets tired of Chick’s misery and she leaves 60 Chick. She brings their daughter along with her. Chick’s marriage collapses Albom 5. He lives alone with his meaningless life. Until one day, he receives a brief letter from his daughter. It tells him about her wedding. His daughter does not invite him and even inform him before about her wedding. His daughter sends him the letter a few weeks after the wedding. Chick feels that he has become too great and embarrassment to risk at a family function because of his drinking, depression, and generally bad behavior Albom 6. Chick thinks that his life is just useless and he decides to kill himself. Chick experiences the intrapersonal conflicts and gains its effects in his personal life. They are like a series of events which happen continuously and the effects remain in Chick’s life bit by bit until it comes to the peak. His adoration to his father makes him behave unkindly to his mother and his family. He does not treat his family well. He always puts his mother on the second position. He often disappoints his mother by following what his father wants him to do and ignores his mother. Chasing his father’s love is the first priority in his life, like what Chick states in his theory about love. Chick has just realized his mistakes after his mother passes away. Years later, after her death, I made list of Times My Mother Stood Up for Me and Times I Did Not Stand Up for My Mother. It was sad, the imbalance of it all. Why do kids assume so much from one parent and hold the other to a lower, looser standard? Maybe it’s like my old man said: You can be a mama’s boy or a daddy’s boy, but you can’t be both. So you cling to the one you think you might lose Albom 33, 34. His father has made him put his mother and her unconditional love on the second place in his life. Chick has just realized that he has made a wrong choice in his life. 61 Being a daddy’s boy is a big mistake in his life. His father always neglects him so Chick has an anxiety to get his father’s love. As quoted in Hurlock’s Personality Development, Bishop states that when children are neglectful, they become serious, retiring, aloof, and anxious 352. His father has made Chick busy chasing his love so that Chick ruins his personal life. Chick ignores his mother. He disappoints his mother which later leads Chick into depression and it makes his wife and his children leave him. His own family is also collapsed. In this way, Chick finds that he and his father are just the same Albom 186. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 62

CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

This chapter consists of two sections. The first describes conclusions that present the answers to the questions stated in the problem formulation. The second are suggestions for the future researchers and for teaching- learning activities.

A. Conclusions

Based on the analysis, Chick Benetto is portrayed as an obedient, selfish, ambitious and wishy-washy person. Those characteristics mostly can be seen from the character’s manner. Chick Benetto is an obedient person. He will do what his parents want him to do. For example, when he is still a little kid his father has trained him baseball and Chick has already accustomed to catching every hardball that his father throws. Chick is also willing to wait for his father everyday after school playing alone in the store room while his father is working. When his father asks him to set his career as a baseball player, Chick also really tries to accomplish it. When his mother insists him to read a book regularly once a week to make him smart, he does it. However, Chick is also a selfish person. He brings his pregnant wife, moving all over the country from minor- league city to minor-league city to chase his career as a baseball player. When his first daughter is born, Chick is not there to support his wife in delivering the baby. Chick also insists on running a sports bar although his 63 wife and his mother do not really agree with his choice of having his own business because of some considerations. His selfishness can also be seen when he decides to go and join Old Timers Game although he has an appointment with his family before and he has to tell a lie to his family because of that. Chick is also an ambitious person. His dream of being a professional baseball player is very big. Thus, he tries hard to pursue it. Chick does not stop although he and his team do not win in the World Series. Chick also does not stop practicing and playing baseball although he gets knee injury. He still also keeps his ambition to play baseball longer although his condition does not enable him to make any achievements. Besides, Chick also has got another job to do. Chick has a big ambition to get what he wants in his life. From his manner, it can also be seen that Chick is a wishy-washy person. His focus of life always changes based on the one who has stronger influence in his life at that time. For example, when his father is leaving, Chick’s mother has big influence on him. He follows his mother’s wish, he go es to college to study and he gets good grades. However, when his father suddenly comes back into his life and asks him to play baseball again, Chick drops out of college to play minor league baseball. Then, after everything that his father has done to him and his family, Chick still gets influenced to his father’s urge to fulfill his wish to play in the Old Timers Game. The analysis also shows five major intrapersonal conflicts that Chick Benetto has experienced. First, he faces an intrapersonal conflict in the form of an approach- avoidance when he wants to laugh with his mother but his father does not participate