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
close reading method. In this step the literary text was read several times. Also the researcher made marks on the literary work that gave off significant point to the
next stage. The second stage was to identify the character. In this stage the theory of character that belongs to Abrams 1993 and theory of characterization that
belongs to Murphy 1972 were used to see its depiction by the researcher. As suggested the character was analyzed through their dialogue, speech, interaction
with objects, etc. The third stage was to apply the theory of setting in order to identify the settings and then examined it. The theory of setting also belongs to
Murphy 1972 that enables the depiction of setting revealed. The fourth stage was analyzing the relation character and the significant setting to find the central
idea with the help of theories own by Roberts and Jacobs 1987, Guth and Rico 1996, and Rohrberger and Woods 1971. The last stage was to use the theory of
theme that belongs to Perrine 1974, Kenney 1996, Kennedy and Gioia 2010 to draw a conclusion of the theme of the story.
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CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS
In conducting the analysis to answer the problem formulations in the first chapter, the researcher applies the problem formulations as guidance. Based on
the problem formulation, the analysis is expected be divided into 2 subchapters. Rather 3 subchapters are preferred by the researcher to ease the analysis in the
mean to be understandable. The first subchapter does analysis on characters in the story. This subchapter mainly discusses how the characters are described in the
story. The second subchapter examines how the setting is described in the story. The setting examination searches for deeper understanding of the setting’s
description throughout the story. Then, the last subchapter uses the answers in the first and second subchapter in the analysis to word the theme into statement that
“holds true of the story as a whole” Kennedy and Gioia, 2010: 185. Those subchapters may be divided into smaller section as it seems fit.
A. Depiction of the main character and the setting in “A Worn Path” 1. Depiction of the main character in the story
There are several characters in the “A Worn Path”, which can be categorized into two types, the major and minor characters. However, there is
only one major character or main character in the story, whose name is Phoenix Jackson, an old African - American woman. The other characters are the minor
characters. The minor characters are mentioned without specific names like the major character of the story. However these minor characters are mentioned
