Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

This chapter is divided into five parts. The first part is the background of the study which presents the description of the topic and also the reason why this topic is chosen. The second part is the objective of the study which describes the aim of conducting the research. The third part is the problem formulations which deal with two research questions that will be analyzed and discussed in this study. The fourth part is the benefits of the study which identify the benefits for the readers in general, the benefits for the researcher and also the benefits for the future researcher. The last part is the definition of terms used in this study and their explanation used to avoid the readers’ misunderstanding toward the certain terms.

A. Background of the Study

Literature is the expression of human feeling, imaginative process and creativity Wellek, 1971, p. 2. Human feeling uses human senses and thoughts to feel the experiences and then to share the experiences. The experiences will be put into an imagination world imitating those experiences through the imaginative process and creativity to be an artwork. As seen in Wellek and Warren 1977 in their book Theory of Literature, literature is said to be creative art what a playwright had produced. The playwright will bring the readers out of their reality to the playwright’s imagination as the creative artwork p. 15. 2 The creative artwork can be seen in drama, as one of three major generic divisions of literature. Through drama, the readers do not only feel the experiences or the imagination of the playwright through reading the artwork, but also they can feel the real emotions of the experiences or imagination through the characters’ dialogue and actions. Furthermore, drama is a picture, happiness and sadness, or black and white of human’s life Herman, 2003, p. 1. Besides, drama is easier for the readers or the audiences to understand the playwright’s experiences or imagination because the event of the drama is taken from the reality that people do in their daily lives. Drama as well as theatre develops fast. There are many plays from the Shakespeare’s era till now; and they have their own genres of the theatre. One of them, which was booming in 20 th Century, is Theatre of the Absurd. In book Theatre of the Absurd, Martin Esslin 1961 uses that term as a critic. He sees this theatre, which is popular during World War II, as a rejection of the realism drama which dramatists or playwrights conduct in their artworks. Therefore, Esslin classifies them as “absurdists”; people who make the absurd play. The playwrights who are well-known as absurdists are Samuel Becket, Eugene Ionesco, Arthur Adamov, and Edward Albee. However, one of absurdist, which is controversial, is Eugene Ionesco. Ionesco has several absurd artworks. Nevertheless, one of his famous and extraordinary artworks is The Chairs. The Chairs arrived as the surrealism theatre with the worry of Ionesco’s life. Thus, Ionesco became the pioneer of the theatre of absurd with Samuel Bucket. 3 By considering the facts mentioned above, the writer chose the general of the study and the play was the subject of this study. The writer was interested in a play of Ionesco entitled The Chairs. The story is really close to human’s life related to the problem they face. In reality, people always do something interesting or boring and they do them every day. Those activities can also be seen in the Ionesco’s play. The Chairs is a play showing the absurdity through the dialogue and action, which is conducted by the characters and related to the people daily life. In brief, the playwright of this play expresses his anxiety of human existentialism through the old couple. The old couple has married for 76 years; and they are 96 years old. They live in an isolated place surrounded by water. They live in a boredom. They used to do the same activity every night. Till the old man wants to invite all of his friends and people to come to his house and will tell ‘the message’ to them. He hires the orator to tell ‘the message’ because he fells he is not capable to tell the message. His friends come one by one with their boats. The old woman prepares the chairs for them to sit. They all introduce their selves and talk each others. However, the all guests coming are all invisible. Those old couple still receive the guests and prepare the chairs to them till the orator comes. After the orator comes, the old couple decide to suicide by jumping to the water through the windows. Unfortunately, the orator is deaf. He could not talk ‘the message’ clearly. Interestingly, ‘the message’ is not talked clearly in the end. Moreover, another interesting thing to point out is the chairs used. The chairs are passive. 4 However, on each chair, there is an invisible guest sitting on it. The old couple do not mention directly what the chairs mean. Somehow, this situation could be absurd when the title of this play is The Chairs, but the chairs are passive and could not say anything. The playwright must think about the meaning in considering the title with the purpose why the chairs appear and those old couple respond the chairs in his play. This study means to find out what the old man means about the chairs for their guests. In analyzing the meaning of the chairs according to the old man, it is important to find out first the characteristics or the description of the old man. The writer decides to choose library study that focuses on the play script as the primary data and the theories needed on this study as the secondary data. This study uses the psychological approach to analyze the topic of the study that is the meaning of the chairs according to the old man in Ionesco’s play The Chairs. This study uses some supporting theories. They are the theory of absurdity from Albert Camus and theory of existentialism from Jean – Paul Sartre. The deeper explanation of those theories is presented in the Chapter Two

B. Objective of the Study