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progress is revealed as a hacker, admits doing good deed to save the people from the lies which shake their happiness. Being traced through the victims, it is found
that in relation to Adam’s wife disappearance, the stranger is actually hired by Adam’s friend namely Tripp Evans. Tripp Evans wants to bring Adam’s life down
by evoking the secret about Adam’s wife and by manipulating the affair which results in a murder. It sounds a puzzling story, but the point of view employed
attracts the readers to stay in each chapters and it raises the suspense through each characters’ contribution. It invites the readers to walk in Adam’s shoes as well, for
being puzzled in looking for her wife and being surprised to f ind his wife’s death.
B. Research Focus
Among the popularity of thriller as a literary genre, the focus on the structure itself is not yet much discussed. As the conventions which construct thriller are
focused, the close reading technique proposed by Structuralist approach would be applied. In fixing the affective and intentional fallacy from New Criticism as the
predecessor in focusing on the unity of literary elements, Structuralist approach proposes ‘intertextuality’—the ability to relate the structure of a text with other
texts in the same genre. “Structuralism often investigates the system where by
individual texts are related to each other, because they believe that they are only expressing agents of a superior social and cultural system Taghizadeh, 2013:4.
” In addition, the construction of meaning is not regarded through the content but
the structure itself.
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However, the research focuses on the sub-genre of thriller, namely noir thriller as its characteristics are much discussed than thriller in general. Yet Harlan
Coben’s The Stranger is a challenging work as well to be identified. The novel shows about how a single crime committed by a person had caused domino effect.
The crime does not only ruin people’s life, but also motivates another person to commit a more painful crime. It is also uneasy for the readers to leave a single
page as the problems faced by the characters are getting intense and are only able to be revealed by the end of the story. Thus, as the research focuses on the
conventions of the work, the researcher will identify how the conventions of noir thriller construct those interesting ideas in the story.
Additionally, among the conventions of noir thriller employed in the novel, the use of point of view is taken as the second focus.
Point of view is not merely an element employed in the story to deliver the idea, but it also contributes to
guide the readers in creating meaning in the story through either the narration or dialog among the characters. In addition, point of view creates the suspense to
increase the readers’ curiosity and invite them to get involved to what the characters experience. Generally, thriller is a genre which explores the use of
point of view to build the mood and create the excitement. Harlan Coben’s The Stranger
is a work of which the tension is created through the way each character perceives the issue in the story. It is also supported by Steven James in How to
Write Thrillers that Actually Thrill 2011 who proposed that the information
about the characters is deeply explored to invite the readers in experiencing the suspense. In addition, the characters involved may have the same chance in
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perceiving the same issue in the story through their own perspectives. Thus, as the various employment of point of view is getting explored in thriller writing, Steven
James also noted that the switching point of view showed a great result in exploring the suspense.
C. Research Objectives
