An analysis on messages of Pink Floyd’s The Wall

ABSTRACT

Literature can be a mirror of life. It brings many life themes. Literature can also be a communication tool. It can be a medium to communicate between literary man and the readers in a special way. Besides as a mirror of life and as a communication tool, literature has certain functions in society. It can change or influence society to do something that the author spells out or suggests. But, above all, literature is nothing when the readers do not understand the message. The message is something that inspires the artist or the author to make literary works, something that an artist wants to send to the reader.

This study aims at analyzing the message in Pink Floyd's lyrics in the album entitled *The Wall*. In this study, the writer has two problems. The first is what kinds of messages are found in the lyrics, and the second is how those messages are expressed through the lyrics. The writer only analyzes ten lyrics out of twenty-six lyrics.

The research design used in this study is descriptive qualitative research, which describes the messages and how they are expressed through ten lyrics in the album entitled *The Wall*. In collecting the data, the writer has three stages. They are as follows: 1) the writer looked for the text lyrics on the cassette's cover of *The Wall* album, 2) the writer read the lyrics, 3) the writer selected ten lyrics out of twenty-six lyrics purposively in order to get the suitable lyrics for the analysis.

The result of this study is that the ten lyrics by Pink Floyd contain messages. They are moral messages and social messages. The messages are expressed through different ways. They are expressed by using the story, the figure of speech, the criticism sentence, advice, the form of problems and solutions, and the form of questions and answers.

From the analysis, the writer is aware that this study is far from being perfect, and he expects that other researchers would continue and develop it for a better analysis. He also expects the analysis can arouse the readers' desire to understand the message found in literary works, especially the poem. Finally, he hopes the teacher will use this analysis as an additional contribution in learning literary works, especially the message in poems