Personality as the major character in a many indoured thing a Novel Written by Han Suyin

ABSTRACT

This research focuses on Suyin’s personality as the major character in A Many Splendoured Thing, a novel written by Han Suyin. The research problem is: How is Suyin’s personality as the major character in A Many Splendoured Thing? The objective of the study is to describe Suyin’s personality as the major character in A Many Splendoured Thing.

The writer uses qualitative method, for the data are words, and in analyzing the character the writer uses one of the personality’s theories from the psychological approach, it is Humanistic theory by Carl Rogers. The data are the phrases, the paragraphs, and the conversations, which show Suyin’s characters. The data source is a novel entitled A Many splendoured Thing, written by Han Suyin, which was published in 1955. The writer as the researcher becomes the main instrument as the interaction happens directly and because the writer straightly selects the data by reading and understanding the novel. In collecting the data the writer has two steps, they are: selecting and identifying the data. In selecting the data the writer takes some data that are relevant to the theory of personality, and then she identifies it based on the characteristics of fully functioning person. In analyzing the data the writer classifies the phrases, the paragraphs, and the conversations, which shows Suyin’s characteristics in general and then the writer categorizes the data based on the fully functioning person from Humanistic Theory by Carl Rogers. Finally the writer displays all the data that have been found and reduces the data that are less important and irrelevant.

According to Rogers’s Humanistic theory, Suyin is categorized as a fully functioning person because she has the characteristics of the fully functioning person such as: openness to experiences, being characterized by the existential living, experiential freedom, trusting organismic, and creative.

The writer suggests to the further researchers that there are many points that can be analyzed using the structuralism and the extrinsic approach, such as: the elements of the novel and the movie, which was made based on the novel. In the making of this thesis the difficulty is to find the references about the Humanistic theory and psychological approach on novel analysis.