34
schizophrenic, who is her true love and has helped her finding the meaning of life. After she leaves the asylum, she considers every single day in her life as a miracle.
In an interview, Paulo Coelho stated that his books were based on his various life experiences. He also argued that Veronika Decides to Die is not a book about suicide.
He said, “It Veronika Decides to Die is about the necessity to accept our differences, instead of trying to fulfill other people’s destiny, like the destiny that our parents choose
for us, for example Anupama. The focus of the novel is not the suicide attempt done by the main character. It is about the bravery to be who you are, even if it means to get
out of the ideal life set by the society. The information about the novel is gained through various sources from the
internet. The information is very useful to get a better understanding about the content of the novel and the process and goal of its made. In addition, the internet also provides the
information related to the author.
B. Approach of the Study
The basic idea for the writer to conduct this study is to find the reflection of the author’s personal life in the two characters in the novel. The characters are Veronika and
Eduard. In order to be able to answer the formulated problems, the writer uses the psychological approach as well as the biographical approach.
According to Rohrberger and Woods in their book entitled Reading and Writing about Literature, the psychological approach involves the effort to locate and
demonstrate certain recurrent patterns of human thought, most often on that offered by
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
35
Sigmund Freud and his followers Rohrberger and Woods 11-15. The theories of psychology that are employed in analyzing the novel are Maslow’s Hierarchical Theory
of Motivation and Adler’s theory about someone’s goal in life. The biographical approach, according to Rohrberger and Woods, employs the
needs of appreciation to the ideas and personality of the author in order to understand the literary object Rohrberger and Woods 8. Therefore, the biographical approach is very
helpful to be applied in this study to analyze the relation between the author’s personal life and the characters in the novel. In addition, author’s personal life can be used to get
a better understanding about his her work.
C. Method of the Study
The method used in conducting this study was library research. Library research was applied to collect the data for the analysis. The sources from where the data taken
was divided into two categories, they were primary source and secondary source. The primary source was the novel used in this study, Veronika Decides to Die. While the
secondary sources were books and websites, which have provided many theories and information for the analysis. The books were Abram’s Glossary of Literary Terms, Feist
and Feist’s Theories of Personality, Fernando Morais’ Paulo Coelho: a Warrior’s Life, Forster’s Aspects of the Novel, Hjelle and Ziegler’s Personality Theories, Hudson’s an
Introduction to the Study of Literature, Huffman, Vernoy, and Vernoy’s Psychology in Action, and Murphy’s Understanding Unseens.
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
36
In order to be able to answer the research questions formulated in this study, sequencing steps were taken. First, the writer read and reread the novel used as the
object of the study, Veronika Decides to Die. The writer read the novel more than eight times in order to get a good understanding and comprehension toward the novel. The
second step was to determine which theories and approaches that were going to be used in the study. Seeing the research questions that have been formulated, the best approach
to use in this study were the biographical approach and the psychological approach. The psychological approach was used to analyze the characteristics and the mental condition.
Meanwhile, biographical approach was very helpful since the author pours his personal experience in this novel. The theories used in this study were the theories of character
and characterization, someone’s goal in his life, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, schizophrenia, the review of the author’s personal life, and the relation between
biography and literature. The third step was analyzing the novel using the theories proposed in the second step. The last step of this study was to draw a conclusion based
on the analysis that has been done. The analysis result contained the answer to how Coelho’s personal life is reflected in the characters of the novel.
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
37
CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS
