An Analysis Of Symbols In Dan Brown’s Novel Angels And Demons

CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE

2.1 Novel

  Novel is one of literary work that represents the ideas or the thoughts of the author. The author expresses the feeling, the passion and the emotion that relates to the experiences of life. That’s why the author needs a media to express the ideas, the thought and it’s called literature as media of communication. Through literature, human beings can communicate with others because literature is a media of communication.

  The most general genres in literature is divided into three major genres, they are drama, prose, and poetry. Prose can be divided into two categories, they are fiction and nonfiction. Fiction is created from the imagination of the author, not presented as fact, though it may be based on a true story or situation. While non- fiction is true writing that tells about real people, places and events. According to Nurgiyantoro (1998), “The non-fiction works are autobiography, diary, essay, and history. On the other hand, the fiction works are tales, roman, short story, and novel.

  Peck and Coyle (1986:102) say that “Novel is prose story telling with a great amount of detail on every page, usually reveal human values”. In analyzing a novel, there are two methods to understand all about the details on every page or in a literature, they are intrinsic and extrinsic approach. Kasim describes about extrinsic and intrinsic in his book entitled Theory Of Literature says :

  “Intrinsic method is one of the which focuses the analysis on the work itself, the text. It may analyze the rhytm, rhyme scheme, form, mood, or other elements of literary works without the help of other disciplines, such as the author’s biography, psychology, religion, etc. As opposed to intrinsic method of criticism is the extrinsic in which the analysis of literary work applies the above disciplines of knowledge or belief. This method of studying literature concerns itself with its environment and its external causes”. (Kasim, Razali,7:2000)

  In this analysis, the writer uses the intrinsic method to analyzing the data, because the writer will analyze from the text itself and the structure of the literary to find out the sense of mystery in the novel. Mystery is the condition of being secret or obscure which the caused or origin is hidden or impossible to understand. Mystery contains some secrets and hidden meaning that must be solved (Purwanti : 2009:6) the mystery elements in Carolyn Keene’s Nancy Drew : The Email Mystery).

  The mystery in this context is how a symbol as mystery things that needed to be solved and understand because the symbol itself is hidden and being secret. The way of an author in conveying the information, denotative, conotative meaning is called style. Style deals with the texture of writing, imagery, sound and meaning , irony, syntax and symbol. It focuses on text itself and structures which are created. Style, in literature, the mysterious yet recognize result of a succesful blending of form with content.

  The writer uses intrinsic method, because the writer will analyze some symbols that hidden in the novel, Angels and Demons. An analysis through intrinsic approach is to analyze the literary work from the structure of literary itself such as theme, characters, setting, plot, symbols, point of view and language style. Symbol is one of mystery elements, the writer will observe some information or symbols that is unknown and must be explained. According to the Cambridge International

  

Dictionary of English literature mystery is “something strange or unknown which

hasn’t yet been explained or understood”.

  “Today a mystery story is, loosely, any story containing a mystery. It may be, and frequently is, a tale of horror and terror, an affair of codes and ciphers and secret societies, a crime story, a symbol or a dozen other things involving an enigma”. (Benton,1960:49)

  In this thesis, the writer focuses on understanding symbols in the novel, Angels and Demons. It’s important to understand the real meaning and the purpose of symbols irrelevant to get deep explanations and descriptions of the symbols in order to avoid the wrong explanation and comprehension of the meanings of symbol. Peck and Martin Coyle (1988:71) say that symbol is an object which stands for something else. It means that an object which is found as a symbol in novel, it doesn’t merely means the object itself, but it has another wider meaning and has a function for certain intention. A symbol can’t directly understood literally. It needs deep interpretation to total meaning of literary work.

2.2 Symbol

  Etimologically, a symbol is “something thrown together”. The ultimate source is Greek, sumballein, it formed from the prefix sum-“together” and the suffix ballein “throw”. So symbol is something thrown together (Ayto:1990). The notion of ‘throwing or putting things together’ led on to the notion of ‘contrast’ and so

  

sumballein came to be used for ‘compare’. it was derived from sumbolon, which

  denoted an ‘indentifying token’—because such tokens were compared with a counterpart to make sure that were genuine — and hence an ‘outward sign’ of something”. (Ayto, Dictionary of word origins. Arcade,1990).

  The word symbol who is derived from the Greek word symbolon in ancient Greece it was a custom to break a slate of burned clay into several pieces and give each individual in a group one piece as a mark of identification. When, at a later date, they met and fitted the pieces together (Greek symbollein) it confirmed that the persons were the same ones, or representatives of those, who had received the pieces of clay in the first place.

  The use of the word symbol was widened to include the engraved shells that were employed by those initiated in the mysteries, both as marks of identification and as essential components in ritual gatherings. It was only a short step away to the word’s eventual meaning, in which an object, either through a visual similarity or a common agreement between those using it, represented something other than itself.

  Camte Goblet d'Alviella, in his book on The Migration of Symbols says a symbol is : "Might be defined as a representation which does not aim at being a reproduction. Originally, as he points out, used by the Greeks to denote the two halves of the tablet they divided between themselves as a pledge of hospitality,"

  It came to be used of every sign, formula, or rite by which those initiated in any mystery made themselves secretly known to one another. Gradually the word extended its meaning, until it came to denote every conventional representation of idea by form, of the unseen by the visible. (Literary Symbolism:9)

  For example, Angel is a symbol of Hope, goodness, purity, protection, comfort and consolation. They also represent the spiritual nature of the being. A word, a phrase, or an image used with some kind of special reference (which is what a symbol is usually taken to mean) are all symbols when they are distinguishable elements in critical analysis. From the word symbol came the concept of symbolism where one object is used to refer to something else. Even the letters a writer spells his words with form part of his symbolism in this sense: they would be isolated only in special cases, such as alliteration or dialect spellings, but we are still aware that they symbolize sounds. Criticism as a whole, in terms of this definition, would begin with, and largely consist of, the systematizing of literary symbolism. It follows that other words must be used to classify the different types of symbolism.

  Symbolism is used in literature to give to the literary work meaning that goes beyond what is evident to the reader. Symbolism helps in giving the piece of writing feeling and mood without the writer having to actually spell out the same. By giving certain things human like characteristics and also defining them with certain qualities, the writer can manage to give the novel another level that may refer to things that are completely alien from what is mentioned in the piece of writing

  A symbol, in a broadest use of term, is anything which signifies something else; in this sense, all words are symbols. As commonly used in criticism, however, “symbol’ is applied only to a word or phrase signifying an object which itself has significance; that is, the object referred to has a range of meaning beyond itself.

  Some symbols are conventional and public, Klarer (1976:140) says a symbol is a thing that suggest more than its literal meaning in a literary text. He divides symbol into two kinds; they are conventional and private symbol.

2.2.1 Conventional Symbol

  Conventional symbol is a symbol is easily that has an understood or widely accepted interpretation. There are some conventional symbols that are easily recognizable, for example, a flag which is a physical, tangible representation of a country. Even as children people know that the flag isn’t the country, but that it stands for a country. Conventional or traditional literary symbols work in much the same way, and because they have previously agreed upon meaning, they can be used to suggest ideas more universal than the physical thing itself. Conventional symbol has meaning that recognized by a society for example: Red can symbolize blood, passion, danger, or immoral character and stars are the symbols of Moslem.

  The following objects have been considered as conventional symbols for centuries, some of which are reflected in religious customs, mythical story and literature. The universal symbol usually have known by many people or groups in society that when a writer puts a symbol in the story and the symbol is known as universal symbol, the groups in society and some people have same perception of the meanings of symbol when they recognize the symbol firstly.

2.2.2. Personal Symbol

  Personal symbol or private symbol is a symbol that made and put by the author in a literary works as individual works. The symbol isn’t known by majority of a society, it’s the one that requires special or private knowledge to understand the meaning of and according in the context of specific story. The problem with private symbol is the readers do not understand much about the symbol. It is a relation between the reader and the author because The author needs to present or create a symbol using the context of literary work and the reader understand the symbol according context of text, the reader must recognize an object or things as a symbol.

  That’s why a reader must to relate the interpretation to the total meaning. For example, in Angels and Demons novel , Dan Brown symbolizes that angels are people who involved in religion part, the priests. Meanwhile demons are some bad guys that join in Illuminati. Angels and Demons novel is about two parts that get conflict because there’s something contrary between the both. It can concluded that symbol is the person , natural, man, man objects, words, phrase, setting and character which are used to represent abstract ideas and feeling.