The main characters’ self concept in Fan Wu’s February Flowers

ABSTRACT

Definitely, self is the core of everyone’s social world. Generally, all of the people will think about their selves, conscious or unconsciously. Our personal experiences, interaction with others, and cultural forces all play some role in definition of self. Who am I? The answer to this question is the driving force in our lives. The self is something inside us that we may evaluate and contemplate. The self is “me”, the sum of what who I am. A significant part of the self is knowledge. All the ideas, thoughts, and information that we have about ourselves – about who we are, what characteristics we have, what our personal histories have made us, and what we may yet become – make up our self concept.

This study talks about the main character’s self concept and its affecting factors. The object of this study is Fan Wu’s debut novel, February Flowers; which takes a set in early nineties of China. Revealing two main characters, Chen Ming and Miao Yan, the novel describes about their unique friendship, their contrast background life and their perception on their different self concept. The aim of present talk is firstly to gain the main characters’ perception to their self concept. And for the second purpose of this research is to find the factors that influence the main characters’ self concept.

This study is categorized into literary criticism. In conducting this study, the researcher applies Baron and Byrne’s theories of social psychology as a tool to analyze the novel. Social psychology is one of the branches of psychology which studies of how individuals think about, interact and influence each other. Self and gender are the two central concepts in social psychology and have been studied different perspectives and theoretical positions. However, prior focus of social psychology is the understanding about how and why one behaves, thinks, and has a certain feeling in social context situation.

The two main characters of this novel, Miao Yan and Chen Ming, were very different people in almost their aspects of life. Thus they have their own perception towards their self concept. Miao Yan looked her self as a “wild goose” and a “black dye vat” in the context of her friendship with Ming. Furthermore, Ming saw herself as an intelligent and was not very sociable person. There are two factors that influence the main characters self concept; internal factors and external factors. The internal factor comes from one’s interaction with her closest family member, such as father, mother, sister and brother. On the other hand, the external factor comes from one’s interaction with others outside of the family space.