Charley’s dream about his meeting with his mother made him not to commit suicide.
The author of For One More Day, Mitch Albom, got the inspiration from the moment in his life. His mother was really inspiring him to write this book
although at the time he was in the middle of writing another story. This book became a tribute to his mother and Mitch is thankful she is able to read it while
the other people who became his inspiration for his other books were not able to read his books http:mitchalbom.comdbio3718letter-young-fan.
The most famous presenter of The Oprah Winfrey Show, Oprah Winfrey, was moved by the message on this book. Later she decided to make this book into
a movie with the same title as the book. It is a story about forgiveness, redemption, and ultimate love between a mother and her son
http:www.oprah.comoprahshowFor-One-More-Day.
B. Approach of the Study
Rohrberger and Woods 1971: 6-5 in Reading and Writing about Literature point out that there are five approaches as the means to understand and
apprehend the aesthetic values of literary work. They are formalist approach, biographical approach, sociocultural-historical approach, the mythopoeic
approach, and the psychological approach. In this study, psychological approach is the most appropriate way to
answer the problems. The writer uses psychological approach to answer the third problem. This approach suggests the influence of human psychology in literary
work. This approach is used in this study because the basis of the analysis places on the theory of decision making, which is one object in psychology.
Rohrberger and Woods 1971: 31 define psychological approach as follows.
Psychological approach is the effort to locate and demonstrate certain recurrent patterns, but from a different body of knowledge that is
psychology. This approach uses the psychological theories to explain human motivation, personality, and behaviour patterns written in literary
objects.
Furthermore, the relation between analytical psychology and literature has been observed by Jung in his book The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature. He
states that the connection between the analytical psychology and literature is psychological activity e.g. the mind activity and can be approach from the
psychological angel 1966: 65. The analysis will mainly focus on the main character’s dream which can
reveal his decision making process. The characterization will show how the main character, Charley, is presented in the story. Furthermore, analysis will ultimately
concern the revelation of the main character’s decision making. The revelation on the decision making of the main character, Charley, is showed to present him as
psychologically healthy human being that is capable to discover and develop himself. Therefore, the most appropriate approach is the psychological approach.
C. Method of the Study
This undergraduate thesis on how the main character’s dream influences his life’s decision making is a library research method. The writer collected data
from the library and to support much information about For One More Day, the writer also gathered data from internet. The main sources were Albom’s For One
More Day, Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dream, Behn’s Quick Analysis for Busy Decision Makers, George’s Counseling Theory and Practice, Rohrberger
and Wood’s Reading and Writing about Literature and Eastman’s A Guide to The Novel. In addition, the internet references were used to find the related studies of
this undergraduate thesis. The first step was reading the novel through close reading method. The
focus of the analysis was the text. Fabb and Durant in How to Write Essays, Dissertation and Theses in Literary Studies, implied that the textual analysis
closely emphasized on analyzing, interpreting and exemplifying theories 1993: 11. The writer was reading and rereading the main source carefully to find some
significant points about the main character, his dream and his life’s decision making.
The second step was formulating the problem and finding the appropriate approach to be applied in the analysis. The writer formulated three problems
formulation. Firstly, how the characterization of the main character, Charley, is presented in the story. Secondly, how Charley’s dream is revealed in the story.
Last how Charley’s dream affects his life’s decision making. The third step was answering the problems. This was done through
applying the theories in analyzing the work. The theories that are applied are the theory on character and characterization, theory on dream and theory on decision
making. It was found that the psychological approach is appropriate to be applied
in the analysis. The next step was answering the first problem, which was the
characterization of the main character, Charley. The second is how Charley’s dream is revealed in the story. The third how Charley’s dream affect his life’s
decision making. The last step was composing conclusions. This step was the final process
of the study. It contained the review of the previous discussion in which the main idea of this study was analyzed. It was about the answers to the problems
formulation.
CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS
