Background of the Study

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CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

A. Review of Related studies

Therese Holm 2001 studied about the use of language in several chi ldren’s book, which among them is Animorphs. According to Holm, the language in Animorphs is somewhat cliché-filled and flat, she is referring to the use of repetitive expression or passages that seems to be bit turgid in front of adult reader. For example: “He just looked at me with those deep, troubled eyes –eyes I can now see only in my me mory” Animorphs 1999: 56. This style of writing is usually brushed off by adult reader. They consider it as badly written. Yet for those who usually cares about the plot of the book rather than the writing style prefer this kind of writing style because it made it easier for them to read. Roger D. Sell 2002 compared Animorphs with the famous children show known as Power Rangers, both media has two similarities. First, the main plots of both stories are about five teenagers who are given a special power to protect their planet from evil. Second, the unification of the group from both media somehow erase the individuality from each person. They become more care to each other more than they care about their own wellbeing. Roger symbolizes this as the need of erasing individuality for the sake of a greater good in Animorphs the greater good refer to protecting the planet from yeerks’ invasion PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI Roger symbolizes the protagonists’ ability to morph into any creature that they touched as children’s metamorphosis into adult hood. When they leave their human body to morph into animal form, they leave their normal human mind and body into something new, something which they never know before, something which sometimes are dangerous for them. for the sake of saving other people, it is similar to children who has to leave their childish personality in order to find something better and new for their development. He also stated that the protagonists’ ability to morph can also be viewed from negative perspective, from this perspective the morph can be symbolized as people who want to cast away their identity, or people who try to throw away their old identity because they feel more comfortable in their new identity. Dr Edwin Bakker and Dr Beatrice De Graaf study that something like terrorist attack or terrorist threats can cause a shock to some people. They will be terrorized or traumatized by those events that may disrupt people’s psychological condition. Terrorist attacks, and even terrorist threats, can be considered traumatic events. Such events are defined in the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV” as an event in which the person experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to physical integrity of self of others Edwin Baker, 2014:5. According to them, the differences of fear shown by people whenever they were experiencing this event were not caused by the level of the terror. The difference is caused by the perception, imagination and vulnerability of targeted audiences or otherwise involved parties. In other words each people have different ways of perceiving their fear when they were terrorized by such event. Fear should not be considered merely as a negative reaction to threats and attacks. In fact, fear of danger is a very natural and useful emotion. Fear is a survival mechanism. Fear of terrorism can encourage people to take the neces sary precautions and actions Edwin Baker, 2014: 2.” They also believe that fear does not always bring negative effect, people can use that fear as stepping stone so that they can overcome that situation. This is related with the previous statement that each person have different reaction of fear, it is up to them to manage their own fear. They can let the fear consume their mind, or they will try to overcome those fear. “Recall the valence prediction that fearful and angry individuals will make risk-averse choices across gain and loss frames when compared with individuals who are low in dispositional fear and anger. The appraisal- tendency approach generates the same prediction for fearful individuals. However, it differs for angry individuals, predicting that they will make risk- seeking choices across frames.”Lerner, 2001: 3-4. Jenifer S Lerner and Dacher Keltner analyze about the result of human’s fear and anger. They study that human’s fear may cause severe result to themselves or even to everyone arou nd them. The result is caused by people’s behavior when they were affected by strong emotion like fear and anger. In the end, what makes this study different from the previously mentioned studies is that this study explores the relation between the protago nists’ characteristics with their mental condition. This study also focuses on analyzing how the protagonists of Animorphs utilize certain defense mechanism to cope against the terror. This study also analyzes the development of the protagonist caused by the terror, how the terrors mold the protagonist into a different kind of person which depends on how well they suppress the terror.