7 a story and described by the readers through his or her action, appearance, and
speech to find the personality. In this study, the character which will be observed is Toru Watanabe, the major character in Haruki
Murakami’s Norwegian Wood.
8
CHAPTER II REVIEWS OF RELATED LITERATURE
This chapter presents the theories which are used to analyze the topic of the study. It is divided into three parts, namely review of related study, review of
related theories and theoretical framework. Review of related study reviews other related study on the same work which has been done previously. Review of
related theory presents several theories which will be applied for conducting the study. Meanwhile, theoretical framework explains the contribution of the theories
to solve the problem and the reason why this study applies such theories.
A. Review of Related Study
Norwegian Wood is a novel written by a Japanese author named Haruki Murakami. Since this novel is interesting to discuss, there are many studies and
articles discussed this novel. One of them is an article written by Christopher Mihalo which is entitled
“The Triviality of a Pop Song: How Murakami’s Character’s Overcome Detachedness”. This study analyzed the detachedness of
Toru Watanabe, the major character in Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, and discussed the details of the events that lead Toru to his ultimate reentry into
society. In his study, Mihalo discovered seve ral leading factors of Toru’s
detachment with society, one of them is Toru recalls his love for Naoko. Because of his detachment from society, Toru shows a failure to communicate with others.
9 However, Toru is preferred to live in a comfortable solitude which means that his
solitude and detachment are a conscious choice. In his study, Mihalo stated that being detached from society means a
person cares only on himself or herself. Thus, he concluded that overcoming detachment can be done by conveying feeling towards others. It can be seen on
the novel when Toru is finally able to portray any internal feeling besides loneliness and this feeling is directed towards another person.
This study is also going to analyze the same character on the previous study. However, the goal of this study is different from the goal of previous study.
The previous study analyzed how Toru Watanabe overcomes his detachment. Meanwhile, this study will analyze the character of Toru Watanabe and discover
the causes of loneliness as experienced by Toru Watanabe.
B. Review of Related Theories
There are numbers of theories related to this study. This part includes those theories used in conducting this study. They are theory of character, theory
of characterization, theory of human needs, and review of loneliness.
1. Psychological Approach to Literature
Rohberger and Woods 1971 note that there are five critical approaches used to analyze a work of literature, one of them is a psychological approach.
Psychological approach is an approach which focuses on the character’s feeling, attitudes, and thought that motivate character to act. They also explain that
