Background of the Study

somewhat different. The pleasure is the feeling of completeness, the discovery of new things and introduction of the new emotions Nodelman and Reimer, 2003. The discovery of guilt and loss is also part of reading in pleasure because children are learning something new and they try to cope with that feeling. On the other hand, children nowadays are different from children in the past. Today’s children are wiser about many things. They are not easily fooled and led, also they are ignorant of many things that children of an earlier generation know well Karl, 1971:23. Parents should not be afraid because children nowadays are more open-minded to digest dark themed stories. There are many sources that make children open up to the emotions or situations in which they have to learn about the dark emotions in life. Parents are their guardians . Thus, parents should not be afraid to introduce such themes to children. Reading dark themed novel would be one of the examples on how adults introduce realism stories to children. It is the one very close to everyday life. The fiction of realism probably has a wider range of possibility in making children feel connected to the story. Although it is fiction, the realism is still the essence of the story. The stories, characters, and events might be fictional but they develop to make every element logical and come close to the real reality. Wald 1975:939 explains that realism involves possible people involved in the struggles and complexities of life, so children are expected to relate to the stories. The fiction of realism is the source of learning about the complexity of life. Children need to understand that life does not only contain happiness and joy of getting a new toy or new clothes and the sad feeling does not only stand for losing their toys. There are deeper feelings of loss, sadness and sorrow, which children feel when they face the real situation. The touching story and plot is the perfect way to help children understand the concept of death and how they should perceive it without losing hope for their future. As always, children’s literature tries to give children pleasure in every story. Children’s literature is meant to please children. The reading activity can arouse their curiosity in understanding a whole new world they have never been. The way children enjoy literature might be different from adults. Adults develop the ability of enjoying literature simply from reading a lot of books while children might have different ways of enjoying literature through their limited experience. Nodelman and Reimer 2003:21 gives an example on how children find pleasure in reading literature, the pleasure of having their emotions evoked: laughing at a comical situation, being made to feel pain or joy character experiences. Though children and adult have different ways of enjoying literature, reading literature still enriches their understanding as a whole. Pleasure is the core of children’s literature. “We choose literature that promises entertainment and, sometimes, escape. If other discoveries come to us, too, we are pleased and doubly rewar ded” Lukens, Smith, Coffel, 2013:2. The motives of reading literature would always be the pleasure, the escapism and the new discovery of the world. Although every reading is different, the ability to enjoy literature is something that can be developed. The more children read literature the more they develop the ability of enjoying literature. Denis Sumara in Lukens, Smith, Coffel, 2013:2 stated that reading and interpreting literature bring the readers to the pleasure of transforming “imaginative occasions into productive insights”. Reading literature might be a new form of self- discovery and even evoke the sense of humanity. In comparison, pleasure in the real life is the same with pleasure found in the story as it depicts the same vicarious events of life. The characters try to cope with the problems the same as children do in their real life. Those ups and downs in life’s events are the form of pleasure. Nodelman and Reimer in their book The Pleasure of Children Literature defines a few forms of pleasure found in a text of children’s literature. There are many forms of pleasure in every kind of children’s stories. Furthermore, the main aspect of reading literature itself is finding the literary elements of the text which could be discussed among children, so the essence of reading literature would be shared among them. It helps children to appreciate many kinds of new experience that happen in their actual life. The question is how dark themed novels provide such a pleasure to children. As Nodelman and Reimer 2003 emphasizes in his book The Pleasure of Children’s Literature, pleasure does not merely contain the feeling of joy, excitement and happiness. Pleasure indeed has a deeper meaning of the completeness human could feel, the whole feeling of knowing what life is, sharing imagination and emotion. Saxby 1991:5 also emphasizes his views that Children should be able to enjoy such stories and are ready to be taken to a whole new journey, the same as the aim of children’s literature stated by Saxby, which is giving enlightenment to children and giving them wings to fly high. The pleasure of literature is the pleasure of conversation, of dialogues between the readers and texts, and between the readers about those texts Nodelman and Reimer, 2003:22. Seen from Nodelman and Reimer ’s perspective, pleasure indeed has a wide range of definition. Furthermore, it is the duty of adult to show children that they can find such pleasure in literature. Adults try to help children to read between the lines in order to help them not being a thoughtless adult when they grow up, and to unconsciously agree on some ideas that they do not even know. The freedom of thinking should be their form of pleasure while they experience some new events in life. Children will be able to enjoy and cherish every moment and new experience whether it is a happy one or a sad one. Children will soon find out that those events happening in their life are ways to learn and they will take it as pleasure. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas written by John Boyne was released in 2006. This book is quite recent for a book called as one of a must-read novel in children’s literature. It is probably based on the topic that Boyne has brought up in the book. The book is considered as one of the dark themed novel in children’s literature because it depicts the holocaust setting in Germany and Auschwitz, Poland. Holocaust is a sensitive topic about war, religion, ideology and discrimination. These hard yet important topics might seem to be too difficult and dark for children. However, the topics could be something pleasant, too. In this book, children are portrayed as close to reality as possible. It is proven by the innocent character of the story, Bruno, in seeing the world around him. The war, discrimination, politics and so on were seen from Bruno’s perspective as a child. The journey of the characters inside of the story portrays the pleasure that children could enjoy although being in a difficult situation. Friendship is also the main issue of the story, on children’s innocent way of seeing the world. It is a satirical way of criticizing adults on their way of seeing people based on their ideology or religion. Through the eyes of Bruno, the main character, the story develops into a perspective taking a child to see war and discrimination that are very close to them. The author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is an Irish writer. He is widely known as one of the most successful authors of young adult novels from Ireland. This novel was Boyne’s most successful book as it became New York Times no.1 Best seller. It was shortlisted in British Book Awards and won several awards dedicated for children’s literature books. Other books of John Boyne also become international best sellers and win several awards of international literary awards and listed in numerous list of children’s literature Boyne, 2016:par.2. In 2008, the novel was made to major motion pictures by Miramax, an American entertainment company based in California, United States. The book has already been sold for more than 6 million copies around the world and translated into 48 languages. “Boyne’s text has received considerable praise, been shorted-listed for several awards, and a recommended reading in the English secondary school National Curriculum” Gilbert, 2010:356. Aside from winning several awards for the book itself, John Boyne also proves his existence as a writer by getting awards for Children Book of the Year and Short Story of the Year. Based on the novel and the author’s achievement, this novel is a prominent work of children’s literature to take into consideration as a world literature because of its influential story. As one of the most recommended books for children, the researcher tries to unveil every detail of the dark themes embodied in the novel. The variety kinds of dark themes are an interesting topic to unveil. Moreover, the pleasure of the main characters is the crucial part to be analyzed despite the dark emotions and treatments. By analyzing the dark themes in the book, the researcher would like to reveal the pleasure of the main characters in the dark themed novel, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.

B. Research Focus

There are two focuses in this research. The first is to reveal the dark themes of the novel and the second is to prove that the dark themes represent the pleasure of the main characters. The researcher thinks that the dark themes are important elements to be considered as the strength of the text. The dark themes are the main tools to counter the stereotype that dark themes are not for children. Furthermore, the dark themes are considered as a brave step to advance the study about children’s literature in a deeper level because the researcher determines to reveal that dark themed text also contains pleasure and enjoyment. The second point in this research is to define the pleasure embodied in the novel. There are many kinds of pleasure that children could feel. Pleasure does not merely contain happiness and joy. Through the eyes of the main characters in the novel, pleasure will be unveiled from their perspective. The research focuses to prove that the dark emotions, new discoveries, and even the dark sides of life contain pleasure. Through this research, adult’s way to see through children’s literature hopefully come to enlightenment. There are two theories that will be combined as the main approach to the story. The first is the children’s literature theory on how the spirit of children’s reading material is to give enlightenment to children as their readers. The theory is also used as a means to find out the dark themes in the novel as part of children’s literature elements. The second one is the branch of children’s literature theory about pleasure which is mainly discussed by Perry Nodelman and Mavis Reimer in Pleasure of Children’s Literature. The researcher tries to reveal how dark themed story contains pleasure for children.

C. Research Questions

1. What are dark themes found in John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas? 2. How do the dark themes represent the pleasure of the main characters?

D. Research Objectives

The objectives of this research are: a. To identify the dark themes in Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas b. To reveal how dark themes represent the pleasure of the main characters

E. Research Significances

a. The result of this research is expected to give a better understanding and deeper knowledge about children’s literature, dark themes in children’s literature, and pleasure of children’s literature. b. The research is expected to give benefit for the further research done by students, lecturers and future researchers in providing examples of pleasure in dark themed novels and guiding further analysis about the relevant topic. 14 CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW

A. Children’s Literature

1. Defining Children’s Literature

Children’s literature is different from adults’ literature because they have different audience. Children’s literature is literature dedicated to children. They might contain the same elements of complexity, resonance, insight, wit, and artistry with adult ’s literature. However, children’s literature needs to consider its audience because the writers need to provide a form of understanding for children Lukens, Smith, Coffel, 2013:6 . Thus, literature for children has to be simpler. Stories for children are usually more directly told than literature for adults. The relationships between characters and actions also need to be displayed in an obvious way in order to make children easily understand about the conflict. In order to have a better understanding a bout children’s literature, adults need to understand that children also search pleasure in their activity of reading stories . Many reasons behind censorship in children’s literature and also many adult who do not let their children read certain kind of book are because they thought that the book is not appropriate for children. Children have the same capability to understand certain topics brought in story, but the way the writer displays a certain topic should be adjusted to children’s level. In conclusion, children are also humans who need to know about the world around them and their limited understanding should not become a barrier for them to enjoy literary works. Dealing with children means that adults need to concern on how children use thei r imagination. The power of literature is to encourage children’s ability to experience more value through their imagination. Harrison 1981:244 states that sometimes the demands of literature for children are as exciting as the experience of childhood itself, on how the imaginations depict the experience they feel through literary works. Furthermore, Harrison also explains the importance of imagination. Although the imagination of literary works cannot substitute the real life experience, it can help children to find an exact greater truth than the life itself. In relation to the importance of children’s literature, Saxby 1991:6 explains that literature provides a source of vicarious experience and fires the imagination with sensory and emotive images to provoke imagination. The form of understanding provided by literature could evoke the sense of the reader. The sense of imagination will directly help children to feel such emotions. Children will not only gain the cognitive knowledge but also feel a form of vivid experience through reading. The form of experience will increase through reading, as Lukens, Smith, Coffel 2013:4 explain that “literature also may reveal life’s fragmentation”. Life