A study on plot and theme in “Rising Sun” Novel by Michael Crichton

ABSTRACT

Literature can be seen as a reflection of life. Sometimes we can experience the world through our imagination, though we might never have a chance to do. By reading a novel, we may acquire amusement that will lead us to a keen perception of beauty and make us sensitive to artistic work in general.

Literature as an artistic work can express and communicate thought, feeling and attitudes toward life. Some things that happen in literature can happen in the society, in our real world.

The writer had decided to write "A Study on Plot and Theme in 'Rising Sun' Novel by Michael Crichton" because it's written by Michael Crichton, one of the greatest novelist in the world. Besides that, there was no one who conducted the research on it before. In this thesis the writer wants to know about how the plot of Rising Sun is developed and what the theme of Rising Sun Novel is.

In this study, the writer uses the structural approach. It means that this research only analyzes the work purely without any consideration who the author of this work is and how it influences the readers. This study also uses an intrinsic approach.

The writer also presents the theories that are closely related to the analysis. They are theories about theme and all of aspects of plot, that is structure of plot which contains the beginning, middle, and end. And also the laws of the plot which contains plausibility, suspense, and surprise.

In this study the writer uses qualitative research design and extrinsic aproach. The main source of the data that is used in this study is novel Rising Sun itself. To collect the data, the writer read the novel over and over to understand the story. After that, she takes and writes the events that have causal realtionship as the data. After she gets the data, she analyzes them to answer her research problem.

Novel Rising Sun tells about the murder in one of Japanese industries named Nakamoto. The victim is a girl, Caucasian and about 25 years old. Peter James Smith is called as a liason. He is a police officer that on duty in special services devision. He is helped by John Connor, the senior of special services officer, who knows a lot about Japanese culture and custom. The police officer that handle this case is Tom Graham. He has abrassive style, mixed with his dislike of Japanese, he instantly puts off the Japanese building owners named Ishiguro. Without Graham knowledge, Peter and Connot start their unofficial investigation because they thing that there is more to this murder than meets the eye. Finally, they discover the connection between the girl’s murder and a Japanese corporation’s imminent purchase of an American hightech company named Micro-Con.

From the story, the writer conclude the theme of this novel is about the desire to control the world using trade and politic though has to sacrifice someone. The writer hopes that the other reseacher will conduct another research in the same area but in different way, because there are still a lot of aspects that can be analyze and this thesis could be one of the sources for further analysis.