b. Safety Needs
In brief, Mack’s decision to fulfill God’s invitation to come to the shack is actually Mack’s effort to fulfill the needs proposed by Maslow. However, there is still
one question left. The question is whether Mack finds the fulfillment of his human needs or not. The process can be seen through Mack’s several conversations with God
within the novel. Mack’s finding will be analyzed to find out whether he finds the needs or not.
At the very moment Mack arrives in the shack, Mack does not meet his goal. Mack finds these needs right after he decides to leave the shack.
He had barely walked fifty feet up the trail when he felt a sudden rush of warm air overtake him from behind. The
chirping of a songbird broke the icy silence. The path in front of him rapidly lost its veneer of snow and ice, as if someone were
blow-drying it. Mack stopped and watched as all around him the white covering dissolved and was replaced by emerging and
radiant growth. Three weeks of spring unfurled before him in thirty seconds. He rubbed his eyes and steadied himself in the
swirl of activity. Even the light snow that had begun to fall had changed to tiny blossoms lazily drifting to the ground. p.82
The sudden change of the environment around the shack is the pre-answer of Mack’s needs. It can be seen that the freezing and dark situation is suddenly
changing into a warm and bright situation, and it provides Mack with the warmth, and the feeling of safe, which allow Mack to grab his second needs, safety needs. Mack
feels safe right after he decides to enter the shack once again, for he feels that there is something live and warm inside p.84. Mack decides to come back to the shack, and
all of the sudden, he gains his second needs.
Instinctively he jumped back, but he was too slow. With speed that belied her size, she crossed the distance between
them and engulfed him in her arms, lifting him clear off his feet and spinning around him around like a little child. And all the
while
she was
shouting his
name—“Mackenzie Allen
Phillips”—with the ardor of someone seeing a long-lost and deeply loved relative. She finally set him back on earth and,
with her hands on his shoulders, pushed him back as if to get a good look at him. p.84
In this situation, Mack gains the feeling of being loved, although it comes from someone he barely knows, but Mack can feel the purity of the love that the
woman gives. Here, the character of God is depicted as a big African-American woman p.84. God does not appear in a male form because Mack has a bad memory
about a figure of a father, so Mack sees God as a woman. It can be seen that Mack himself who decides what he wants to see, that is why Mack sees a figure of a
mother, instead of a man. This love that Mack gets from the woman is fulfilling his needs of safety, the second needs. He knows that the woman will not harm him in any
circumstances.
c. Love and Belongingness Needs
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