her brain die and she has no expectation to live again. Conducting with this situation, Alexander, Anna’s medical attorney, has the doctor take her kidney.
Then Sara gives her husband a command to turn off the respiratory. Finally, Anna dies and Kate lives. However, Kate’s life cannot be separated from Sara’s
sacrifice, care and responsibility, support and struggle to fulfill her health needs even if those things involve Anna’s bodily organ donor.
This novel is interesting for me to analyze because it gives so many lessons about life. It is related to love, one’s existence and also a struggle of a
mother who wants to give the best to the beloved child. As a woman who will be a mother, I am interested in mother’s love. A mother will always love her child
through many impediments in life. Thus, she will do anything to ensure her child’s safety and happiness. In this study, Sara never gives up in trying to save
her dying daughter although she has to battle against her youngest daughter. Her love to the helpless daughter makes her do everything possible to her dying
daughter. That is why I will focus on analyzing the meanings of a mother’s love to her dying daughter.
B. Problem Formulation
Based on the background of the study as explained above, this study would like to answer the question of “What does love mean for Sara as a mother
to her dying daughter?” To answer this formulated problem, this study would like to give the description about the main and the minor characters first and then the
description of Sara and her children relationship. Based on their relationship, we
can also know the meaning of Sara’s love.
C. Objectives of the study
The objectives of the study are to analyze and to find out the meanings of love to her dying daughter for Sara, as a mother. Related to this problem
formulation, the description of main characters and mother-children relationship are important to be analyzed. By analyzing their relationship, we can know the
meanings of Sara’s love to Kate, her dying daughter.
D. Benefits of the Study
This study deals with Sara’s love to her dying daughter as seen in Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper. We can gain a lot of lessons from reading the novel
because it presents a mother’s struggle and love and the values of morality. Firstly, this study is expected to give benefits for the readers, especially
the students and the lecturers of English Education Study Program of Sanata Dharma University. For the students, this study helps them to gain more
understanding about life through literary work. They can grasp and implement important values portrayed in this novel into their life. For female students, this
study can be used as reflection of their own life. They can learn how a good mother should act out to her family especially in giving love to her children.
Hopefully, the teachers can also use this study as a reference to teach Public Speaking 1.
Secondly, for future researchers, I hope that this study provides important information about the novel. Besides, it also presents beneficial information about
the relationship between Sara and her children and the meanings of her love to Kate, her dying daughter.
Finally, for the writer, analyzing a novel can help me reinforce my skills in interpreting a literary work. It enlarges my literary knowledge and vocabularies.
As a woman who wants to be a mother, I can take a lesson on how a good mother should be. I can grasp important values from Sara’s struggle to care her oldest
daughter. It teaches me that life is a complicated matter and it is full of choices. It is not easy to take a decision because there are so many considerations that should
be noticed.
E. Definition of Terms