will lead him to his ex-wife, Nikki. Pat thinks that his goal of life is to end a part time with Nikki but the truth is they have already divorced and they would never
get back together.
His best friend Ronnie asked Pat to come to his house to dinner. He meets Ronnie’s sister-in-law, Tiffany Maxwell, a widower who has recently lost her job
because some issues. Pat sees an opportunity to communicate with Nikki through Tiffany because Veronica, Ronnie’s wife and Nikki are regularly hang out
together. Tiffany offers to deliver a letter to Nikki for return Pat should be her partner in upcoming dance competition. Pat agrees and they become more closer
each other during the practice. Pat creates a new theory about life. It is called silver linings. It means everyone deserves a perfect life without any conflict and
always lead to happy ending. This theory is based on Pat desire.
B. Approach of the Study
This thesis applies New Criticism as its approach. This approach is chosen since the focus is only on the text itself and the main character in facing his
conflicts through the minor character without seeing any background from the author. Bressler states that the purpose of New Criticism is to reveal the structure
of the work of art and its interrelationship and to find out the idea developed from the work itself 1999: 43. This approach is chosen since the thesis focuses on the
characters, and conflicts that appear in this novel and try to find the meaning of
Silver Linings from a bipolar disorder point of view. The process of New Criticism analysis begins with studying the characters and deciding which
character that has strong influence towards the major character.
Selden, Widdowson and Brooker state that new criticism is a method which does not talk about context – historical, biographical, intellectual and so on in
analyzing literary work. However, new criticism only focuses on analyzing the “text in itself”, with its language and organization. New Criticism does not reach
text’s meaning, but the way the text ‘speaks itself’ 2005: 19.
C. Method of the Study
There were some steps that were done in this research. First of all, the writer read the novel entitled The Silver Linings Playbook carefully so that the writer
could comprehend the story until the content was well-understood. After reading the novel, the writer found an interesting thing in the main character, Pat Solitano,
Jr. and decided to analyze his character for the study.
The second step was deciding the topic, after that the writer made the title and some questions. For the analysis of the problem formulations, first, the writer
tried to reveal the characters that represented the other character around Pat Solitano, including his social life and his family. Then the writer found that
Tiffany Maxwell plays a major role in the healing period of Pat Solitano and
found how Tiffany’s character influences Pat’s character in facing his conflict. The data of the problem can be found in the text of the novel by examining the
relationships of the minor character and their influences towards Pat Solitano.
Third the writer chose the approach. The approach used in this thesis is New Criticism. The fourth step was searching textual data from the novel. As data
collecting from the novel itself had been finished the writer gathered data from related study, many sources in library and internet. After that the writer focused
on the main character in the story, Pat Solitano and the minor character Tiffany Maxwell.
The fourth step was trying to answer the question in problem formulation. The last was analyzing and answering each problem formulations and formulating a
conclusion.
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CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS
