CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION - CHAPTER I BINTANG KUSUMA SUNU AJI SASTRA'12
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION1.1 Background of the Research
Literature is a part of life reflection that is expressed in forms of work or writing. It can be categorized into two kinds: fiction and nonfiction. We can create a literary work because literature is a self expression of our emotion, such as sadness, happiness, anger, etc. The literary works usually use narrative and descriptive writing as the following quotation:
“In the eighteenth-century England, the concept of literature was not confined as it sometimes is today to ’creative’ or ’imaginative’ writing. It meant that the whole body of valued writing in society: philosophy, history, essay, and letters as well as poems.” (Eagleton, 2003:15).
The quotes above explain that literature is somehow created by a process of creativity or imaginative writings about values of social life or to raise the issues in the society into an artwork of writing. Those writings lead a literature work where the beauty are from, in which beauty is a value taken in the shape and content of it which creates a new sensation and feeling for the literature lovers, as it is shown by the quotes below:
“Suatu hasil karya baru dapat dikatakan memiliki nilai sastra bila di dalamnya terdapat kesepadanan antara bentuk dan isinya. Bentuk bahasanya baik dan indah, dan susunannya beserta isinya dapat menimbulkan perasaan haru dan kagumdi hati pembacanya.”
(Pratama,http://www.catatan-sastra.110mb.com/arti.htm). (A work is said to have a literary value when there is equivalence between form and content. It must also have a good and beautiful language, and its structure and contents can draw the readersfeelings and impression).
1 The conclusion of the quote above is that literature gives a beauty of symphony that is felt, literature has forms and grammatical sides that mesmerize them.
Everycountry has their own literary work, and every literary work has different generations, nature, and beauty.Takefor example, during romantic period in England, we found authors who showed their characters through beautiful and natural poems, while during industry revolution era, there were many authors who showed their literary works with social themes from society and the effects of industry revolution toward society. According to Plato (Bressler, 1994:16), a literature is a real concept that has its goodness, nature, etiquette, and morality.
Literary work is created to provide entertainment to the viewers or readers.
.
An example is a novel, short story, poem, movie, and drama A novel is a literary work that consists of a complete story. In a novel, one particular character can be told from the very beginning until the end, thus we need much time to read and finish it. On the contrary, a short story is created with more details; readers can finish the story quickly. A poem is a writing that composes verses/rhymes. In fact, a poem consists of stanza, figure of speech, imagery, detonation and connotation, alliteration, rhythms and rhyme. Movie is a literary work as it aims to give an entertainment to the audience and the movie is also a reflection of a social life.
The last one is drama.Drama is a literary work that specifically depicts a fiction of life.According to Morris (Tarigan, 1984:69) dramais originally a Greek wordit comes from dran which means to do or to act. According to Webster new international dictionary (Tarigan, 1984:71) definition of drama is:
“Drama adalah suatu bentuk karangan, kini biasanya dalam bentuk prosa,
disusun untuk pertunjukan dan dimaksudkan untuk memotret kehidupan atau tokoh atau mengisahkan suatu cerita dengan gerak, dan biasanya
.”
dengan dialog
(Drama is a form of essay, nowdays, known as prose, it is arranged for a certain show, it is aimed to capture a life or a figure or to tell a story in a motion, and usually also with dialogue). Drama is divided into some criteria, according to Tarigan (1984:73), there are : tragedy, comedy, mystery, action, melodrama, and history. The researcher gives the definition comedy and tragedy as follows:
Comedy is a depiction of social system which is more than metaphysical values. The word ‘comedy’ originates from Greek, which are komos or komai andoda(Budiman, http:// www. interseksi. org/ publications /essays/ articles
th
/komedi. html, accessed at March 18 2011). Comedy purposes on criticizing the current social system. Comedy is considered able to create improper behavior and social class attitude, thus it functions as social gap.
“Tragedi merupakan suatu drama yang di dalamnya terdapat suatu tekat
dari suatu karakter yang berhati baja, ataupun suatu karakter yang berbudi luhur untuk mengorbankan dirinya menentang segala sesuatu kebobrokan baik dalam kondisi-kondisi sekitarnya yang di perjuangkannya tersebut .” (Tarigan, 1984:84)
(Tragedy is a kind of drama describes the guts of certain character, tough character or a nobleminded character that will scarify him in order to against any wrongdoing happen around him). From the quotation above, not like a comedy that always makes the audience laugh, tragedy offers pity and fear. There always will be a character that is dead or suffered at the end of the story.In a literary work, especially drama, short story, novel, there are always similar elements. Drama has some elements, such as intrinsic and extrinsic elements. According to Tarigan (1984:75) the elements are:
“unsur interistik terdiri dari, tema, alur ataupun plot, karakter di dalam drama, setting tempat kejadian cerita, dan juga pesan atau amanat. Lalu unsur eksterinsiknya adalah naskah dari drama tersebut.”
(The intrinsic elements are, theme, plot, character of the drama, setting, moral of the story. Then the extrinsic is the script of the drama). The reseacherchooses literary works of drama and tragedy asresearch materials and focus on a character based on one certain role in that drama. This drama belongs to modern tragedy drama, which is a literary work from America. The title is Desire under The Elms by Eugene O’Neill. It was published in 1924.The drama tells about a family who always wanted to gain wealth so much that they decided to go to California to seek gold. This story is a social reflection in England in 1850 where every people wanted to gain wealth to fulfill their ambition or dreams. The characters in this story are Ephraim Cabot, a widower with his sons: Simeon, Peter, and Eben. We also can find Abbie Putnam as the wife of Ephraim and stepmother of his sons. Abbie Putnam is one of the characters with an ambitious personality especially to have and to control Ephraim’s wealth, a rich man in his era. Abbie is full with that ambition once she saw Ephraim’s assets, Abbie considered those assets enough to make her happy.
In order to make her dream comes true, she arranged a strategy, sadly, the strategy creates a conflict among the male characters, namely Ephraim and Eben.
Besides creating conflicts between male characters,Abbie symbolizes a flower among the bees. She is very ambitious to posses his husband’s land.The researcher is interested in Abbie’s character who is very ambitious to posses his husband’s land. Based on the consideration above, the researcher wants to observe the character of Abbie Putham, the only female character who creates conflicts and tragedy. Based on that reason, the title of this research is Abbie’s Ambition to
Posses the Land in Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms.
1.2 Problemsof the Research
Based on the background, the researcher findsproblems of research which become main issues to conduct a research:
1.2.1 What does Abbie do to get the land as reflected in Eugene O’Neill’s
Desire under the Elms?
1.2.2 What strategy does she make to get the land because a land symbolizes of
property?
1.3 Objectives of the Research
Objectives of research is used to answer the problem statement. Thus, the objective for the problems above are as follows:
1.3.1 To know the purpose and description of Abbie’s ambition to get the land as reflected in Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms.
1.3.2 To find out the strategy of the story and the symbol of the property.
1.4 Significance of the Research
The significance of the research is that Desire Under the Elms isone of the greatest tragedies of modern drama from Eugene O'Neill who is one of the masterpieces of American literature.Theoretically, it is used to give contribution in criticizing a literature uses the theory of Psychoanalytic to find out the ambition of a character, Abbie Putnam, in the drama of Desire Under the Elms. Practically, this research aims to understand one of those theories in order to ease readers to understand this drama and conduct a research with other themes.
1.5 Scope of the Research
Based on the background, researcher limits this paper to analyze the drama of Eugene O’Neill entitled Desire Under the Elms.The researcher focuses on Abbie Putnam’s ambition in acquiring her husband’s land.
1.6Research of the Organization
This research consists of five chapters. The first chapter is introduction, this chapter explains about the background of study, problem of study, objective of study, significant of study, scope of study, approach of study, definition of key terms and research organization.
The second chapter is a literary review, conceptual frameworks and theoretical frameworks which explains about the literary review, conceptual frameworks consist of the definition of ambition and Eugene O’Neill and Desire
Under the Elms , then theoretical frameworks consist of structural analysis and
psychoanalytical theory.The third chapter discusses on researchmethodology. The fourth chapter is an analyzing of Abbie Putnam’s ambition in possesing the land. And thelast chapter consists of conclusion and suggestions.