4 Past life
The author gives a clue to events, which happened in the characters past life, that shape a person’s character through direct comment, the readers
thought, or conversation through the medium of another person.
5 Conversation of others
The reader would know the person’s character through the conversation of the people and the things they say about the person.
6 Reaction
The author also gives the readers a clue by letting us know how the character reacts toward various situations and events as a way to describe the
character.
7 Direct comment
The author gives comment to the character personality directly.
8 Thought
The author gives a clue about a character’s characteristics through what the character is thinking about.
9 Mannerism
Mannerism is the way the author tells about a character through the description of the character’s mannerism, habits, or idiosyncrasies.
3. Approaches
According to Marry Rohrberger and Samuel H. Woods, Jr, there are five approaches which can be used in analyzing a literary work. They are the formalist
approach, biographical approach, the sociocultural – historical approach, the mythopoeic approach, and the psychological approach 6 -15. The description of
each approach will be stated as follows;
a. The Formalist Approach
This approach tries to examine the literary work without the reference to the fact of the author’s life without reference to the genre of the work or its place in
the development of the genre or in literary history, or without reference to its social milieu. The formalist approach concerns about demonstrating the
harmonious involvement of all parts to the whole and pointing out how meaning derived from structure and how matters of technique determine structure 6 – 7.
b. The Biographical Approach
This approach takes us to the necessity for an appreciation of the ideas and the personality of the author to an understanding of the literary object. The
proponents of the biographical approach insist that a work of art is a reflection of a personality that is the aesthetic experience the reader shares the author’s
consciousness and that at least part of the reader’s response to the author personality. The readers try to learn as much as they can about the life and
development of the author and to apply this knowledge in their attempt to understand his writing 8.
c. The Sociocultural – Historical Approach
The sociocultural – historical approach leads the readers to analyze a novel in reference to the civilization that produces the novel. Civilization is defined as the
attitudes and actions of a specific group of people. Meanwhile, it is necessary to investigate the social milieu, the cultural and the historical background in which a
novel is created 9.
d. The Mythopoeic Approach
Using the mythopoeic approach, the readers analyze the novel by trying to discover certain universally recurrent patterns of a human thought. The
universally recurrent patterns are those that found first expression in ancient myth or folk rites and are also basic to human thought that they have meaning for all
man 11.
e. The Psychological Approach
This approach brings us to analyze a novel from point of view of human beings. Freud’s exploration of unconscious area of the human mind led him to the
conclusion that it was the area of the wellspring of man’s rich imagination, his capacity for creation, and the complexity of his thought and behaviour, and that
the contents of this region of mind found expression in symbolic words, thoughts, and actions. Through the analysis of the structure and content of the dreams, he is
led to believe that there exists a set of symbols which are common to all men and which can be interpreted in light of the individual’s experience 13.
