Meaning of Ketut Liyer, Wayan and Felipe
36 go off all of her negative sides and sharing her love to others, she feels happy,
relaxed and have her confident back. “indeed, I do not think my body has looked or felt this relaxed in its
life, not since I was maybe six months old and my mother took snapshots of me all blissed-out on a towel on the kitchen counter
after a nice bath in the kitchen sink.
” p.295 The depression, misery, sadness that ever came to Gilbert‟s life is over
now. The painful memory which was in her mind is finished. “I am happy and healthy and balanced. And, yes, I cannot help but
notice that I am sailing to this pretty little tropical island with my Brazilian lover. Which is
–I admit it –an almost ludicrously fairy-tale ending to this story, like the page out of some housewife‟s dream” p.
413 Loving all these people truly makes Gilbert find out happiness. Moreover
the last one who is Felipe that takes her to a fairy-tale ending. It is not exactly Felipe who saves her from all of her misery in the past, but Gilbert‟s own choice
to choose and trust Felipe as her lover. It is kind of Gilbert‟s responsibility for her own happiness as she says “I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator
of my own rescue” p. 424 Every meaning of the symbols above must be united to form the theme of
the novel. After uniting all of the meaning above, the theme can be formulated. There are three symbols which have been found in the novel. The first one is
eating. In this case, eating symbolizes Gilbert‟s happiness. The activity of eating makes her feel happy and contended. The second symbol is praying. Praying also
symbolizes Gilbert‟s happiness. When she stayed in Ashram Praying is one of her big source of happiness. The last symbols in the novel are Ketut Liyer, Wayan and
Felipe. The last symbol also symbolizes Gilbert happiness. After all of her misery PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
37 in the past, she is able to forgive her past and she is able to build a good
relationship with man. She is able to share her love and accept love from people around her. She makes her own self happy and also people around her.
The theme of the story is pursuit of happiness. As mentioned before that the theme of the story is found by linking all the details of the story which are the
symbols. Gilbert is woman who made a difficult choice to eave modern American success including marriage, house and a successful career as a writer. She leaves
all of her life in America to find out what she truly wanted in life by doing the journey across the three countries namely India, Italia and Indonesia.
Gilbert start her journey in Italy, here most of her activity were eating and learning Italian Language. Her eating activities make her feel happy because she
enjoys every meal that she have when she stayed there. Eating is symbolizes Gilbert‟s happiness because through eating she can enjoys her days and she feel
contended after she ate every meal in Italy. After her eating journey in Italy, Gilbert start to feel happy as she says
“But I felt a glimmer of happiness when started studying Italian, and when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times
you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt
–this is not selfishness, but obligation. You were given life; it is your duty and also your
entitlement as a human being to find something beautiful within life, no matter how high.”p.115
After Gilbert finished her journey in Italy, she continues her journey to the second country which is India. In India she expected to have a spiritual journey to
find God and to make her life better. She stayed for about four month in an Ashram in India. There she learns meditation, yoga and gugurita. Gilbert‟s life in
38 Ashram is very different with her life in America; she spent most of her time to
meditate and practicing yoga and gugurita. She ate healthy food and she had a discipline bedtimes. Through meditation, Gilbert is able to control her thinking,
she can change her negative thought into positive one. Finally, she is also able to forgive everything that happened in her past including her husband and David.
She is able to made peace to her past experience. Besides, she also able to find God and how to communicate with Him also find herself through meditation. She
realizes that everything that she has been searching for is already in herself. “We search for happiness everywhere, but we are like Tolstoy‟s fabled
beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, begging for pennies from every passerby, unaware that his fortune was right under him the
whole time. Your treasure –your perfection–is within you already. But
to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart.
The kundalini shakti –the supreme energy of the divine–will take you
there” p.245 Experiencing meditation and everything in ashram makes Gilbert realizes
that everything that she has been looking for is already in her. Praying is symbolizes happiness because through praying Gilbert find what happiness is and
how to find it. The last country in Gilbert
‟s journey is Indonesia. She stayed in Bali for about four months and she meets many people there. Her experience with people
who were close to her is an experience of love. She is loved by people and she loves people around her. It makes her feel happy and balanced. Therefore, Ketut
Liyer, Wayan and Felipe symbolizes gilbert‟s happiness and balance. Moreover
the meaning of each symbol which has been found in the novel is correlated with PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
39 the theory of authentic happiness by Seligman namely pleasure, engagement, and
meaning. The first is pleasure. Pleasure is indicated with daily experiences of
positive emotions. Frequent experience of positive emotion is also related to higher level of satisfaction. In Italy, Gilbert enjoys a pleasure by eating Italian
foods and learning to speak Italian languages. In India, Gilbert gets positive thought when she does all her daily activities. The experience of positive emotions
gives pleasure to her and makes her feel the happiness. In Indonesia, pleasure is easily got through living in a peace place when she stayed in Bali.
The second is engagement. Engagement means doing activity that has the benefit for nurturing our well-being life by building our interest which can make
our life happier. During Gilbert‟s journey in the three countries she also builds her interest to make her life happier. The first is when she is in Italy. She tries to
speak Italian language because it makes her feel happy and sexy. She tries many kinds of food because she enjoys her eating activities and it makes her feel happy
and contended. She also learns the Italian dictionary to know some words in Italian. Second, when Gilbert stayed in India, she engages in praying, gugurita,
meditation, and yoga activities for nurturing her well-being life. Third in Indonesia, Gilbert learns the new meditation taught by Ketut Liyer. The
meditation is called Four Brother meditation to pursue happiness. The last theory mentioned by Seligman is meaning. An individual achieves
meaning in life when he or she experiences life as purposeful, significant, and understandable. In Italy, Gilbert achieves meaning in her life after experiencing
40 many beautiful things in Italy such as learning eating many kinds of food, makes
her own meal and also learning and practicing Italian language. Gilbert also gets meaning in her life by knowing some Italian expressions that are catchy to her
ears. Through those expressions Gilbert learns how to apply those words into her real life thus her life is meaningful. In India, Gilbert gets meaning through the
spiritual activities such as meditation. Meditation gives meaning for Gilbert‟s life in finding union between herself and God. Thus,
meditation is one of Gilbert‟s ways to find God. In meditation, Gilbert learns how to live her life in union,
between mind and body, between her thoughts and the source of her thoughts. By controlling her mind, Gilbert can learn how be proactive when she faces some
troubles. Gilbert gets excited because she finally finds a meaning for herself In the end, when Gilbert stayed in Indonesia she also gets a meaning of life
from her Guru who is Ketut Liyer. Gilbert learns to live her life from a magic picture that is drawn by Ketut.
“So I describe the picture he had made for me, the figure with the four legs and the missing head and the face in the heart and he listens to me
politely, with modest interest, like we‟re discussing somebody else‟s life entirely” p.289-290
That figure tells how Gilbert should live her life. The picture depict the
four legs means that it is grounded on earth or low profile personality, the missing head means Gilbert should not see the world from the outside or anyone from the
appearance but from the hearts that is symbolized by the face which is in the heart. The picture gives a meaningful description for Gilbert‟s guidance in living a
happy life. Gilbert learns to make a good effort to keep her happiness because happiness starts with her, not anyone else. By relating the indicators of happiness
41 from Seligman‟s theory about authentic happiness with the meaning of every
symbol in the novel, the idea of the story about pursuing happiness is strengthened
. After all of gilbert‟s misery and depression in the past, she is able to find her happiness in her journey by experiencing many meaningful and positive
activities as symbolized in eating, praying and Ketut Liyer, Wayan and Felipe. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
42