Problems of faith, hope, and suffering as revealed in Eliezer`s character development in Elie Wiesel`s night - USD Repository
PROBLEMS OF FAITH, HOPE, AND SUFFERING AS REVEALED IN ELIEZER’S CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IN ELIE WIESEL’S NIGHT AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS
Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters
By
RM DONUM THEO KMP
Student Number: 994214209
ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAM DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS FACULTY OF LETTERS SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA 2008
PROBLEMS OF FAITH, HOPE, AND SUFFERING AS REVEALED IN ELIEZER’S CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IN ELIE WIESEL’S NIGHT AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS
Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters
By
RM DONUM THEO KMP
Student Number: 994214209
ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAM DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS FACULTY OF LETTERS SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA 2008
A Sarjana Sastra Undergraduate Thesis
PROBLEMS OF FAITH, HOPE, AND SUFFERING AS REVEALED IN ELIEZER’S CHARACTER
DEVELOPMENT IN ELIE WIESEL’S NIGHT
By
RM DONUM THEO KMP
Student Number: 994214209 Approved by
25 April Ni Luh Putu Rosiandani, S.S., , 2008 M.Hum.
Advisor
25 April Theresia Enny Anggraini, Dra., , 2008 M.A. Co-Advisor
A Sarjana Sastra Undergraduate Thesis
PROBLEMS OF FAITH, HOPE, AND SUFFERING
AS REVEALED IN ELIEZER’S CHARACTER
DEVELOPMENT IN ELIE WIESEL’S NIGHT
By
RM DONUM THEO KMP
Student Number: 994214209 Defended before the Board of Examiners on , 2008 and Declared Acceptable
BOARD OF EXAMINERS
Name SignatureChairman : Dr. Francis Borgias Alip, M.Pd., M.A.
______________ _
Secretary : Drs. Hirmawan Wijanarka, M.Hum. ______________ _
Member : Dewi Widyastuti, S.Pd., M.Hum. ______________ _
Member : Ni Luh Putu Rosiandani, S.S., M.Hum.
______________ _
Member : Theresia Enny Anggraini, Dra., M.A.
______________ _
Yogyakarta, , 2008 Faculty of Letters Sanata Dharma University Dean
in the memory of my Father
†
LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN
PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS Yang bertanda tangan di bawah ini, saya mahasiswa Universitas Sanata Dharma : Nama : RM Donum Theo KMP Nomor Mahasiswa : 99 4214 209 Demi pengembangan ilmu pengetahuan, saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma karya ilmiah saya yang berjudul:
The Problems of Faith, Hope, and Suffering as Revealed in Eliezer's Character Development in Elie Wiesel's Night.
beserta perangkat yang diperlukan (bila ada). Dengan demikian saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma hak untuk menyimpan, me- ngalihkan dalam bentuk media lain, mengelolanya dalam bentuk pangkalan data, mendistribusikan secara terbatas, dan mempublikasikannya di Internet atau media lain untuk kepentingan akademis tanpa perlu meminta ijin dari saya maupun memberikan royalti kepada saya selama tetap mencantumkan nama saya sebagai penulis.
Demikian pernyataan ini yang saya buat dengan sebenarnya. Dibuat di Yogyakarta Pada tanggal: Yang menyatakan, (RM Donum Theo KMP)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In the last chapter of my years in the university, there was only unfaithfulness, despair, and yet suffering. However, all of my experiences in this composition were not mainly existing in novelty or originality of thought and feeling. I barely found them in the rhythm of the truth about literature and the soul of humanity.
In the twofold reality determined this undergraduate thesis, I am obliged for various reasons to a number of individuals. Among them are Bu Putu, who kindly assisted me in the making of this undergraduate thesis; Bu Enny and Bu Dewi for their advice; Robert SJ, who lent me Elie Wiesel's Night decades ago; all of my friends in Kampung Sastra ‘99: Nugi, Ade, Bayu, Meli, Nina, Iis, Poer, and many more, who support me in their own mysterious ways; mas Yoyok, who lifted me up from my computer illiteracy; mbak Vita and mas Ndono, who promoted me to graduation; my mother, A.M. Moertiningsih and my late father, F.A. Moedijono, for their eternal love; and my beautiful young lady, Etty S.N., who accompanies me restlessly.
At the end of my acknowledgements on this clumsy work, all I could ultimately hope is that all the intellectual, emotional, metaphysical, and technical assistance that was given and went into these naive pages would not have been in vain.
RM Donum Theo KMP
TABLE OF CONTENTS TITLE PAGE .............................................................................................. i
APPROVAL PAGE .................................................................................... ii
ACCEPTANCE PAGE ............................................................................... iii
DEDICATION PAGE ................................................................................. ivSTATEMENT OF AGREEMENT ............................................................... v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................ viTABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................ vii
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................. vii ABSTRAK ................................................................................................... ix CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ..............................................................28 CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY ..........................................................
74 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................
65 CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION ..................................................................
57 3. Problems of Suffering .............................................................
48 2. Problems of Hope ....................................................................
48 1. Problems of Faith ....................................................................
35 B. Problems of Faith, Hope, and Suffering as Revealed in Eliezer’s Character Development ...............................................
32 CHAPTER IV: ANALYSIS ....................................................................... 34 A. Eliezer’s Character Development ...............................................
32 C. Method of the Study ....................................................................
29 B. Approach of the Study ................................................................
29 A. Object of the Study .....................................................................
24 C. Theoretical Framework ...............................................................
1 A. Background of the Study .............................................................
20 4. Theories of Suffering ..............................................................
15 3. Theories of Hope .....................................................................
12 2. Theories of Faith .....................................................................
12 1. Theories of Character Development .......................................
8 B. Review of Related Theories ........................................................
8 A. Review of Related Studies ..........................................................
6 CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL REVIEW .............................................
5 D. Definition of Terms .....................................................................
5 C. Objectives of the Study ...............................................................
1 B. Problem Formulation ..................................................................
77
ABSTRACT
RM DONUM THEO KMP. The Problems of Faith, Hope, and Suffering as Revealed in Eliezer's Character Development in Elie Wiesel's Night. Yogyakarta: Department of English Letters, Faculty of Letters, Sanata Dharma University, 2008.
This undergraduate thesis aims at demonstrating the problems of faith, hope, and suffering through the main character development using the autobiography of Elie Wiesel, that is Night (2006). Using the World War II as the historical background, this autobiography is phenomenal in raising questions about God, tradition-religion, as well as humanity. The present study requires two problems which show the activities conducted in the analysis part during the study of the autobiography. It begins with the character development of Eliezer as the main character. The character development of Eliezer is presented to result some findings which give significations to the second problem. The findings are applied to reveal the problem of faith, hope, and suffering through the character development of Eliezer.
The study is basically a desk-research methodology as it is conducted by making use of resources found in the library and in the internet, in the forms of books and encyclopedias. The study uses theories of character and character development to present the main character development. Also on the discussion of the second problem, theories of faith, hope, and suffering are also applied. In the analysis, philosophical approach is used to signify the problems of faith, hope, and suffering within Eliezer’s character development.
The findings eventually show that Eliezer, as the main character, undergoes some radical character development. The first changing happens when Eliezer becomes a former student of Talmud and former mystic of Kabbalah; then he refuses and denies God's silence upon inhumanity. The second one occurs when Eliezer is changing from a loving son into an abandoning son. Those changes signify the problems of faith within Eliezer who eventually puts aside his traditional faith in God as a form of human independency and turns to offensively rebel against tradition-religion of God. However, Eliezer survives to the end of the war, and there is no doubt that hope has taken serious part in providing him the strength to stay away from death. The problems of suffering have given him the signification to the remaining silent God as his own interpretation of the suffering.
ABSTRAK
RM DONUM THEO KMP. The Problems of Faith, Hope, and Suffering as Revealed in Eliezer's Character Development in Elie Wiesel's Night. Yogyakarta: Jurusan Sastra Inggris, Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Sanata Dharma, 2008.
Skripsi ini bertujuan untuk menunjukkan permasalahan-permasalahan iman, harapan, dan penderitaan melalui perkembangan karakter tokoh utama dengan menggunakan otobiografi karya Elie Wiesel, yaitu Night (2006). Dengan menggunakan Perang Dunia II sebagai latar belakang sejarah, karya otobiografi ini menjadi fenomenal dalam mengangkat beragam pertanyaan tentang Tuhan, tradisi dan agama, sebagaimana tentang kemanusiaan.
Skripsi kali ini merumuskan dua buah permasalahan yang dijadikan tuntunan, terutama pada bagian analisa, selama meneliti otobiografi ini. Hal ini dimulai dari perkembangan karakter Eliezer sebagai tokoh utama. Perkembangan karakter Eliezer disajikan untuk menghasilkan beberapa temuan penting untuk menjawab rumusan permasalahan kedua. Temuan-temuan tersebut kemudian diaplikasikan untuk menguak permasalahan iman, harapan, dan penderitaan melalui perkembangan karakter Eliezer.
Skripsi ini pada dasarnya merupakan penelitian kepustakaan dengan menggunakan bahan rujukan dari perpustakaan berupa buku dan ensiklopedia serta berbagai artikel yang diunduh dari Internet. Penelitian ini menggunakan teori-teori karakter dan perkembangan karater untuk menghadirkan perkembangan karakter tokoh utama. Pada diskusi bagian kedua, teori-teori iman, harapan, dan penderitaan juga diterapkan untuk menjawab permasalahan kedua. Dalam analisis, digunakan pendekatan filosofis untuk menandai permasalahan-permasalahan iman, harapan, dan penderitaan dalam perkembangan karakter Eliezer.
Berbagai temuan akhirnya menunjukkan bahwa Eliezer, sebagai tokoh utama, mengalami beberapa perkembangan karakter secara drastis. Perkembangan pertama terjadi ketika Eliezer akhirnya tidak lagi mempelajari kitab Talmud dan kitab Kabbalah; dan kemudian dia menolak dan menyangkal Tuhan yang Diam atas tragedi kemanusiaan. Perkembangan selanjutnya muncul ketika Eliezer berubah dari anak yang berbakti dan mencintai orangtuanya menjadi anak yang menelantarkan orangtuanya. Perubahan-perubahan mendasar itulah yang menandai permasalahan iman dalam diri Eliezer yang pada akhirnya meninggalkan iman tradisional akan Tuhan sebagai bentuk atas ketaktergantungan manusia dan menjadi pemberontak akan tradisi dan agama Tuhan. Bagaimanapun juga Eliezer selamat sampai akhir masa perang, dan tidak diragukan lagi bahwa harapan memiliki peranan penting, yaitu menyediakan kekuatan bagi Eliezer untuk bertahan hidup. Sedangkan, permasalahan penderitaan telah secara mendasar menandai Tuhan yang Diam sebagai bentuk interpretasi pribadi akan penderitaannya selama ini.
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION A. Background of the Study There is a big difference in expectation between reading a narrative in a daily newspaper and one in a literary work, say for example, an autobiography. While reading a daily newspaper, a reader comes across a narrative of a mass
murder in some environment and the reader assumes that the account is admittedly true. The reader will look for complete information on the unusual account, using guidelines such as 5W + 1H, as a common tool for journalistic reading.
When reading a novel, the reader will no longer expect to engage with literal truths, true events, since one reads a literary work not for fact finding, but for pleasure, for some valuable insight, or perhaps for a sense of what an aspect of life means to the author of the novel.
However, reading autobiography of Elie Wiesel, Night (2006), there is an uncertainty whether I should read it with a sense of journalistic or do it in a sense of literary reading. As an autobiography, Night bears in mind several traces Wiesel’s experience during the World War II, particularly inside the Nazi's concentration camps.
Eventhough autobiography is widely accepted in literature, many scholars still debate upon its clasification, whether to take it as a factual or fictional work, for instance Mansell (1981:68). But some scholars, such as Stone (1981:7), say that autobiography has simultaneously fact, that is experiece and fiction, that is reflection.
Night is based on history of World War II, but Wiesel demonstrated his
autobiography in literary narration that it provided characters with action and dialogues, plot, setting, et cetera. I continued reading and eventually found out that my literary reading has given not only an amusing and entertaining experience but also some insight about human predicament, about faith, hope, and suffering from the journey of Wiesel in the deadly concentration camps during the World War II. In addition, to the three interconnected problems: faith, hope, and suffering, I might refer to J. Christiaan Beker in Suffering and Hope, who argues that “when hope vanishes, faith has no ground and the intensity of suffering increases” (1987:14).
Night is a presentation of Elie Wiesel about his faith, his hope, and his suffering in
a slim volume of autobiography where he realized that his faith was consumed by the flames of giant crematoriums, where his hope has no real ground since he personally met with the idea of the death of God. The journey through suffering of his experience and existence in the concentration camps, based on his conception of faith and hope, until he saw the death of God, hanging on the gallows, was well expressed in literary ways, using his own character as a young Jewish boy who was taken to Auschwitz, where his mother and younger sister were killed in a giant crematorium, and later to Buchenwald where his father was dead in suffering. Wiesel existed in a very extreme experience where he was forced to cope with his own religious questions toward his faith, his hope, and his God.
The historical background of the autobiography was the Holocaust, a term which is used to refer to the killing by the Adolf Hitler's Nazi of almost six million people simply because they were Jews, and in addition there were also 500,000 non-Jewish captives, during the World War II. The term holocaust was firstly introduced by Elie Wiesel, an American-Jewish author and survivor of Auschwitz, to explain some tragedy of suffering in religious sense as a 'whole offering' or a 'burnt offering'; and it is a word which is not without its problem since the Jews, or anyone who were exterminated, in no way willing to be sacrificial 'offerings' through torture, flames, gassing, hanging, shot to death without purpose, but to live. Anyway, Adolf Hitler's Nazi did not really mean to offer a 'sacrifice' but they were really intent on total extermination of the Jews (Kung, 1995:239).
Nowadays the term 'holocaust' is widely used to recognize a situation in which many things are destroyed and many people killed, especially because of war or a fire. Yet remains the term 'holocaust' which is usually applied with 'the', i.e. the Holocaust, refers only to the killing of millions of Jews by Adolf Hitler's Nazi from 1930s to 1940s.
As a matter of fact, the literary world of the Holocaust was firstly popularized by Elie Wiesel, a Nobel Peace Prize Winner in 1986, with his first book, written in Yiddish, Un di velt hot gesvign (1956; And the World Remained Silent), abridged as La Nuit (1958; Night). In English version, the book is known as Night, an autobiographical account of a young boy's spiritual reaction to Auschwitz - Buchenwald and is one of the most powerful literary expressions of the Holocaust (Merriam-Webster, 1995:1200).
Particularly in present study I would like to put my interest and attention to the character development of Elie Wiesel when he was dealing with his God, his faith, and his hope in his very young age. This would be the focus of the present analysis. I found out that the changing character of Eliezer is interesting since the changing happened in a very extreme situation that is in the Holocaust, and in his teenage period. Eliezer should deal with his religion, his tradition, his faith, his hope, his God all at once inside his daily suffering in a series of deadly concentration camps' activities. In my opinion, the main character seems to undergo a change and analysis on Eliezer, particularly on his thought, his dialogue, and his action, will reveal the character development.
Thus the present study will try to describe the character development of Eliezer in the autobiography of Elie Wiesel, Night. Using the findings from the character development, the analysis then goes further on discussing the problems of faith, hope, and suffering of Eliezer before and during his daily life in concentration camps in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Therefore, the topic of the present study will be the problems of faith, hope, and suffering as revealed in the development of Eliezer as the main character in the autobiography of Elie Wiesel,
Night .
B. Problem Formulation
I need to organize the present study about the problems of faith, hope, and suffering as seen in the development of Eliezer as the main character in autobiography of Elie Wiesel, Night, into questions simply where I could treat them as guidelines in understanding the autobiography.
The order of the problem formulation is as follows:
1. How is the character development of Eliezer presented in Elie Wiesel’s Night?
2. How are the problems of faith, hope, and suffering revealed through the character development of Eliezer?
C. Objectives of the Study
The first discussion will be going into a comprehensive understanding on the presentation of Elie Wiesel to the character development of Eliezer through
Night as his autobiography.
The achievement of Eliezer's character development leads into a bigger discussion on the problems of faith, hope, and suffering seen from the point of view of Eliezer, a young Jewish boy who witnessed his entire family embraced by the death of series concentration camps during the World War II.
Every finding in the character development will be analyzed from the text of this autobiography in order to reveal the problems of faith, hope, and suffering of Eliezer, respectively.
D. Definition of Terms
To avoid a misleading and misunderstanding, I need to clarify some terms that will eventually be used in the present study. The first term is character which has many definitions; one of them used in literary discussion is referred from Abrams in A Glossary of Literary Terms, that is "the persons, in a dramatic or narrative work, endowed with moral and dispositional qualities that are expressed in what they say - the dialogue, and what they do - the action” (1981:20).
Dealing also with the development of a character, Perrine describes in
Literature: Structure, Sound and Sense , where all fictional characters could be
classified as static or dynamic. This dynamic character, whether over or underdeveloped, undergoes a permanent change in some aspects of his or her character, personality, or outlook. The change is perhaps small or big, better or worse, however it basically gives important contribution to the story (1974:71).
Thus a character development, literally, means the changing of a character in thought, feeling, behavior, point of view, mental, or religious quality through some environments and a period of time.
The next terms are faith, hope, and suffering. I might refer to the very general definition of the terms, regardless of the religion in particular. Faith, from the lens of tradition of religion, is discussed as an unobservable and less variable quality of human beings; moreover it is an essential human quality (Wulff, 1997:4).
Hope is then understood as the intrinsic element of the structure of life which gives a huge space for human being to develop and to improve the quality of their experience and existence within the world (Fromm, 1968:13).
Suffering is a situation shared by people in the world against of his or her will, an unpleasant experience, feeling of pain and unhappiness, becoming worse day by day (Bowker, 1970:1).
CHAPTER II THEORETICAL REVIEW A. Review of Related Studies The object of the present study is Night, the autobiography of Elie Wiesel
which is published by Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, Inc. in 2006. Based on the text, I discuss the problems of faith, hope, and suffering as seen in the character development of Eliezer, as the main character, at the hands of the Nazis and their concentration camps.
Studies on Wiesel's Night, mostly give focus on philosophy of religion, particularly on questioning the occurrence of suffering and evil. Gary E. Kessler in his Philosophy of Religion toward a Global Perspective raises evil as a problem for human existence where all human beings share the experiences of suffering and evil, in personal and cultural dimension, also in religious thought:
The broad problem of the 'why' of evil becomes the theological problem when a concept of God is brought into the picture. Why does God permit evil? Is the existence of evil compatible with the existence of God? How can it be that God loves us, and yet all these terrible things happen to us? (1999:211)
Kessler observes that Wiesel, "in countless stories and essays, [he] has explored with insight and power what such evil is like. It is a journey into night" (1999:212). As preliminary answers, Kessler distinguishes two types of arguments related to the problems of evil at which he presents the idea of the problems of evil using several passages from Night. Logical argument from evil attempts to show that the existence of evil is logically incompatible with the existence of a
God who is perfectly good, all-powerful, and the all-knowing creator of this world. Whilst evidential argument from evil tries to demonstrate that the variety and amount of evil in the world constitute good evidence that such a God may well not exist (1999:211).
Other studies pay attention to theological issue that is the death of God. The death of God theology could be found at his autobiography, in Wiesel's exploration to his own experiences in the concentration camps when Wiesel had to see a young boy, the so-called pipel, a child with a refined and beautiful face, was hanged on the gallows, as follows:
Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out, swollen and bluish. But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing ...
And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes. And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguish.
Behind me, I heard the same man asking: "For God's sake, where is God?" And from within me, I heard a voice answer: "Where He is? This is where - hanging here from this gallows ..." That night, the soup tasted of corpses. (2006:65)
Related to the above quote, in A History of God, Karen Armstrong describes the death of God theology in chapter The Death of God, page 346-376, and as a closing to that chapter she interprets Wiesel's Night as a claim where "God who manifests himself in history, who, they say with Wiesel, died in Auschwitz." (1994:375-376).
Before paraphrasing the famous scene, as I have quoted above, where Wiesel with thousands of spectators saw the hanging of a young boy, the so-called
pipel , Armstrong correlates the traditional idea of God with the proclamation of
death of God by Friedrich Nietzsche: For many Jews, the traditional idea of God would become impossibility after the Holocaust. The Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel had lived only for God during his childhood in Hungary; his life had been shaped by the disciplines of the Talmud, and he had hoped one day to be initiated into the mysteries of Kabbalah. As a boy, he was taken to Auschwitz and later to Buchenwald. During his first night in the death camp, watching the black smoke coiling to the sky from the crematorium where the bodies of his mother and sister were to be thrown, he knew that the flames had consumed his faith forever. He was in a world which was the objective correlative of the Godless world imagined by Nietzsche (1994:375).
Here Armstrong provokes the idea of the death of traditional and biblical God, obviously using the scene from Wiesel's Night. However, with the same scene, different from Armstrong, Hans Kung in Judaism tries to interpret Wiesel's Night instead of the proclamation of the death of God, but of humanity:
And despite the seductive voice in Elie Wiesel's famous Auschwitz story of the young boy on the gallows, it is not 'God' hanging there on the cross, but God's anointed, his 'Christ', the 'Son of Man'. In other words, the cross is not the symbol of the 'suffering', 'screaming' God, indeed 'the symbol of God suffering the distress of death', but the symbol of humanity suffering the distress of death (1995:601).
Night has also put Wiesel as a messenger of human kind, in a way that
people may not keep silent over the destruction of humanity. However, Wiesel has been critized for his comment and position upon the state of Israel and the Sabra and Shatila massacre. A journalist, Christopher Hitchens, with his essay entitled
Wiesel Words published on The Nation, February 19, 2001, pointed out Wiesel’s
silence and neutrality on the Sabra and Shatila massacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elie_Wiesel accessed on September 5, 2007).
Noam Chomsky, in his book Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel,
and the Palestinians , published in 1999, also noted Wiesel's moral response to the
Sabra and Shatila massacre with the following remarks: Wiesel's position was that "I don't think we should even comment on [the massacre in the refugee camps] since the [Israeli judicial] investigation is still on." "We should not pass judgment until the investigation takes place." Nevertheless he did feel "sadness" for the first time, he explains; nothing that had happened before in the occupied territories or in Lebanon had evoked any sadness on his part, and now the sadness was "with Israel, and not against Israel" -surely not "with the Palestinians" who had been massacred or with the remnants who had escaped (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elie_Wiesel accessed on September 5, 2007).
What was stressed by the last two comments is the irony of Wiesel’s silence to inhumanity. Wiesel is known to be the messenger of human kind but he never sends any message to the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Trying not to blame the state of Israel, Wiesel chose to keep silent and never gave any comment against the massacre.
I am following Kung here, rather than Armstrong, since Eliezer, the main character, is indicated that he did not proclaim the death of God, nor decline the existence of God. It was the silence of God, also reflected as the silence of humanity, that bothered Eliezer during his days in the camps. Starting from this point, I trace the Eliezer’s character development during his days in the camps and than signify the findings toward the problems of his faith, hope, and suffering.
Thus this study will focus on the Eliezer’s character development and his problems of faith, hope, and suffering during the days in the concentration camps..
B. Review of Related Theories
1. Theories of Character Development
The existence of characters is considered as important and significant in shaping and building a story, particularly in literary work. Characters contribute and take part in a story, as a matter of fact, where the author involves other elements into story, such as setting, plot, and sometimes theme. Thus during the process of reading, we are usually introduced to characters and the other elements of the story by the author (Little, 1963:1).
In A Glossary of Literary Terms, M.H. Abrams offers a definition of a character obviously as a person, a human being with moral and dispositional qualities where both elements can be identified through what the character says (in dialogues) and does (in actions) in the story (1981:20). Here the author is able to arouse an independence from narration to the readers to identify, actively and freely, the presence of the characters through the dialogue and the action.
Character is mainly divided in two parts; the first is major character and second is minor character. The major character is the main character in the story, and it plays important and significant part in the story while minor character is a supporting character for the major character in the story.
E.M. Forster in Aspects of The Novel (1927), as quoted by Abrams, introduced another terms to differentiate characters, that is flat character and round character:
A flat character (also called a "type" or "two-dimensional") is built around "a single idea or quality" and presented in outline and without much individualizing detail, and so can be fairly adequately described in a single phrase or sentence. A round character is complex in temperament and motivation and is represented with subtle particularity; thus he is difficult to describe with any adequacy as a person in real life, and like most people, he is capable if surprising us (1981:20-21).
From both terms, it could be concluded that the existence of the characters in the story is valued from the quality and capacity of the development. When a character is introduced from the start until the end of the story in a stable or unchanged nature, he is a flat character. Therefore, when a character performs changes in his nature, or has significant development in his nature in the story from the start until the end, the character is round. Abrams says that such character may undergo a radical change, either through a gradual development or as a result of an extreme crisis (1981:21).
Joseph F. Trimmer, in Writing with a Purpose, gives another term for such changes or development for a character as dynamic and static: Central characters who change in some significant way as a result of the conflicts they must resolve, are often called dynamic. Characters who remain unchanged by the experiences they encounter, are called static (1992:335). These terms are similar to Perrine in Literature: Structure, Sound and Sense, where all fictional characters could be classified as static or dynamic. This dynamic character, according to Perrine, whether over or underdeveloped, undergoes a permanent change in some aspects of his or her character, personality, or outlook. The change is perhaps small or big, better or worse, however it basically gives important contribution to the story (1974:71).
However the present study particularly pays attention to the development of character. Therefore we need some indication of how the term of character development is being used in this study. Based on what Perrine, Trimmer, and Abrams state previously, it could be indicated that character development means the changing of a character permanently and significantly in his/her personality or outlook, thought or feeling, behavior, point of view, mental, or religious quality, either through a gradual development or as a result of an extreme crisis.
Characterization is also an important part of the story that creates the existence of characters. Mary Rohberger and Samuel H. Wood, in Reading and
Writing About Literature , state that characterization is the way the author creates
characters in a story (1971:21). We can say that this is the process of the author to introduce the characters to the readers.
Related to characterization, Perrine suggests that the author could present his/her characters in two different ways directly and indirectly (1974:71). In direct presentation, the author tells us what a character is like, straight out by exposition or analysis. The author could use another characters to describe what he/she looks like. This method is clear and practical. The indirect presentation, shows us the character in action and dialogues where readers recognize the description of the character from his/her thought, dialogues, and or action.
In addition, Pickering and Hope in Literature state that character analysis is concerned essentially with three separate but closely connected activities. It is first with the ability to establish the personalities of the character and to identify their intellectual, emotional, and moral qualities. Then it is with the techniques used an author to create, develop, and present his/her character to the readers. Finally, it is with whether or not the presented characters are credible and convincing (1982:19).
2. Theories of Faith In discourse concerning religion, faith has two rather different meanings.
As a trusting and confident attitude toward God, faith (fiducia) may be compared with trust in one's fellow human beings. As a cognitive act or state whereby men are said to know God or to have knowledge about him, faith (fides) may be compared with our perceptual awareness of our material environment or our knowledge of the existence of other persons. The meaning in fides is closely related to Erich Fromm's The Revolution of Hope. Fromm calls faith as the conviction about the not yet proven, the knowledge of the real possibility, the awareness of pregnancy (1968:14). It means that faith needs rationality when it refers to the knowledge and comprehension. However, faith is not a prediction of the future; it is the vision of the present in a state of pregnancy.
The paradox of faith is that it is the certainty of the uncertain. But also faith is based on experience of living.
Following the book of Genesis 12-15, what is more fundamental for Abraham is trust in God. Faith, which is unconditional trust, is the fundamental feature. It is said that this faith is reckoned to Abraham for righteousness. Faith is understood as the acceptance of a given truth, as 'regarding as true' something which cannot be proven. Faith is unshakeable trust in a promise which cannot be realized by human beings; it is faithfulness, confidence, saying ‘Amen' (Kung, 1995:10).
Abraham is the primal image and model of those who believe in this sense, a man who on the basis of this faith can withstand the greatest test of all: the sacrifice of his own son, which is asked of him, but in the end, is not willed by God (Kung, 1995:10). This is a traditional example of faith in Judaism as seen in the Jewish annals. Abraham both accepts statements from God that seem impossible and offers obedient actions in response to direction from God to do things that seem implausible (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith accessed on September 5, 2007).
Such description of faith above has brought in the discussion of rational and irrational faith. There is an important distinction between rational and irrational faith. While rational faith is the result of one's own inner activeness in thought or feeling, irrational faith is submission to something given, which one accepts as true regardless of whether it is or not. The essential element of all irrational faith is its passive character, be its object an idol, a leader, or an ideology.
Since this undergraduate thesis is working on issue of development, we need to comprehend also that there is a state of development in the terminology of faith. This suits with the work of Wulff in his In Psychology of Religion (1997), who borrows James Fowler's research in faith development.
James Fowler, a professor of theology and human development, identifies six stages of faith development (Wulff, 1997:401), by interviewing 359 persons raging in age from 4 to 84 and representing Protestant (45%), Catholic (36.5%), and Jewish (11.2%) traditions, along with a few others (7.2%). Fowler refers to "our way of discerning and committing ourselves to centers of value and power that exert ordering force in our lives" (p.401) as the initial meaning of faith to reveal the stages, as follows:
1. Intuitive-Projective Faith The intuitive-projective faith is a primal faith of infancy, which rests on a foundation of basic trust and mutuality. It is a joint product of the teaching and examples of significant adults, on the one hand, and the young child's reigning cognitive egocentrism and developing imaginative capacity on the other. This first stage possesses the emergent strength of imagination, the capacity to represent the world of experience in powerful and unifying images that also serve to orient the child toward ultimate reality. The danger here is of becoming overwhelmed by terrifying or destructive images, or of being exploited by images used to compel moral or doctrinal conformity (p.401).
2. Mythic-Literal Faith Children, usually at about the age of seven, begin to appropriate systematically the content of their community's tradition using their development of concrete operational thinking that is, the capacity to think logically about processes or objects physically present. The image-centered faith of the first stage gives way to a more literalistic and linear way of finding coherence and meaning, particularly in the form of narrative. Story, drama, and myth became the way of conserving and communicating such experienced meaning. This stage is limited by literalism and morality. Together, they may lead to self-righteous perfectionism or, if significant others mistreat or reject the child, a feeling of badness and unworthiness (p.402).
3. Synthetic-Conventional Faith The synthetic-conventional faith is marked by formal operational thinking, which is able to reflect back on itself, around the age of 12. The world of experience for the adolescent is much broader and more complex, placing new demands on the orienting function of faith. It is a conformist stage, Fowler observes, for the opinions and authority of significant others play a powerful role. The youth simply takes the reflection of beliefs and values that form the adolescent's ideology and the world they mediate for granted. The emergent capacity is a higher level of storytelling, for the shaping of personal myth that discerns new meaning in the stories from the young person's past while also projecting him or her into possible roles and relationships in the future. Potentially at risk in this stage is the later development of autonomy, if others' expectation and judgment are too thoroughly internalized and sacralized (p.402).
4. Individuative-Reflective Faith Fowler, in Stage 4, seems to apply relativism which is proved to be intolerable and led the person to retreat into an authority-oriented dualistic structure of right and wrong. This stage is marked by two essential aspects; firstly realizing the relativity of a person's inherited world-view, and secondly abandoning reliance on external authority. Obviously a person takes on the burden of choosing priorities and commitments that will shape identity in this stage which emerges the capacity to reflect critically on personal identity and ideology. The dangers consist of overconfidence in the powers of reflection and the temptation to assimilate others' perspective, even reality itself, to one's own limited world- view (p.402).
5. Conjunctive Faith This stage is named conjunctive faith in recognition of the fact that a person faces the paradoxes and contradictions within the self and experience, also attains some measure of integration. The individual in this stage of faith is genuinely open to the truths of other communities and traditions, and at the same time humbly recognized that ultimate truth extends far beyond the reach of every tradition. According to Fowler, conjunctive faith combines loyalty to one's own primary communities of value and belief with loyalty to the reality of a community of communities. There is an ironic imagination, engaged by symbolic expressions while recognizing their relativity and inadequacy to reality. The danger is a sense of cosmic homelessness and loneliness (p.403).
6. Universalizing Faith Fowler designates Stage 6 as universalizing faith with two tendencies; first, decentration from self through a gradually expanded knowing and valuing of the world as it is experienced by diverse others, second, emptying of self through the detachment that follows from radical decentration. Stage 6 might be represented by Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Teresa, persons with universalizing faith who embrace the world as one community and demonstrate commitment to justice and love. The danger is martyrdom at the hands of those most threatened by the universalizing (or subversive) vision and leadership (p.403).
3. Theories of Hope
Hope is a belief in a positive outcome related to events an circumstances in one's life, that it is possible even when there is some evidence to the contrary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope accessed on September 5, 2007). The usage of the term hope may be distinguished following another terms. Hope as an emotion produces a motivation to act and this is similar to optimism where the only distinction is that hope is an emotional state, whereas optimism is a conclusion of thought pattern. In religion, hope is often the result of faith and hope is typically contrasted with despair.
In Greek mythology, hope was personified; however it was re-narrated in
Human, All Too Human by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in a distinctive and
contrary interpretation of hope: Hope. Pandora brought the jar with the evils and opened it. It was the gods' gift to man, called the lucky jar. Then all the evils, those lively, winged beings, flew out of it. Since that time, they roamed around and do harm to men by day and night. One single evil had not yet slipped out of the jar. As Zeus had wished, Pandora slammed the top down and it remained inside. So now man has the lucky jar in his house forever and thinks the world of the treasure. It is at his service; he reaches for it when he fancies it. He does not know that that jar which Pandora brought was the jar of evils, and he takes the remaining evil for the greatest worldly good--it is hope, for Zeus did not want man to throw his life away, no matter how much the other evils might torment him, but rather to go on letting himself be tormented anew. To that end, he gives man hope. In truth, it is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man's torment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope accessed on 5 September 2007).
Erich Fromm in The Revolution of Hope proposes an understanding the meaning of hope by distinction of "hope is" and "hope is not". He gives a question of what is it to hope. Is it to have desires and wishes? Those who desire more and better cars, houses, and gadgets would be people of hope, but they are not, they are people lusty for more consumption (1968:6).
Is it to hope if hope's object is not a thing but a fuller life, a state of greater aliveness, a liberation from eternal boredom; or to use a theological term, for salvation; or a political term, for revolution? Indeed this kind of expectation could be hope but it is non-hope if it has the quality of passiveness, and a "waiting for" (Fromm, 1968:6). This is what Fromm calls as a passive hope.