CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1
Background of the Study Discussing
literature is very interesting. Much newinformation and knowledge can be gotten from literature.
Knowledge about someone’s life story; about
war etc are the examples. Literature also canchange someone’s life even the world. Through literature, people can be
changed by touching their sensitivity.
It is common phenomenon while
someone is sad, angryand happy because influence
of literature. The readers of novel and poem can be so sad or happy when they read the novel and poem then the
audiences of drama performance can be so
sad when they enjoy it.
According to Abrams (1971:3)
literature is the inspiration of the life that is legalized in the written language and carries
the sense of humanity. It is an artificial
word of the author; therefore literaturecan be called as the artificial of its creator. Through literature, we can express
our feelings and ideas in the form of beautiful
language. We can write our sadness and happiness which we feel in the form of literature. In conclusion, literature
is a part of our life and can not be separated
with our life.
Literature is stories, poems and
plays (Culler, 1997:20). Base on the definition,
literature can be divided into several forms; they are novel, poetry and drama. In this occasion, the researcher
focuses on one form of literature, namely
poetry. Poetry is language that makes abundant use of figures of speech and language that aims to be powerfully
persuasive (Culler, 1997:70).
Like another literature forms,
poetry also has 2 elements, intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic elements discuss about
theme, character, setting, rhythm etc. In other hand, the discussions of extrinsic
elements are sociological, political, cultural
background etc. Next, the researcher will focus the discussion on one of intrinsic elements that is symbolism.
Symbolism consists of symbols. In
the broadest sense a symbol is anything which
signifies something; in this sense all words are symbols (M. H. Abrams, 1971:206). Based on that definition, we can
say that symbol is an aspect which exists
in our life. Symbol can give nice taste and good color for our life especially our creation such as poem, novel and etc. We
can find many symbols that relate to our
life such as symbol of love, sadness and happiness. As the example, in our society, black color is symbol of sadness.
People usually wear black clothes when they
are attending a burial ceremony. Another example, people must stop their car when the traffic light is red.
A poem consists of many symbols.
We can find floweras the symbol of women
and may another possibility that we can find as symbol in poem. The symbols that are used by the poets are to
express their ideas and feelings. Based on
that statement, in this research, the researcherwill try to find the symbols in
Robert Frost’s poems then also try to
find the meaning and the categories of those symbols.
Understanding the symbolic meaning of poem is
very amazing. Someone will understand
the poem deeply by understanding the symbols in that poem. It will be nothing if someone does not know the
symbolic meaning of poem.
Someone can not catch what does
the poem mean and what does the poet mean or what are the messages that the poet wants to
show through the poem if she or he does
not understand the symbolic meaning of the poem. It means that the symbolic meaning of poem is very important to
be understood.
Robert Frost’s poems which will
be analyzed by the researcher are the famous
poems of Robert Frost which are very beautiful and full of meaning. The researcher is interested in those poems after
she read those poems whereas just at glance.
The researcher feels that she will find many symbols in those poems. Next, the poems which will be analyzed in this
research are “The Telephone”, “Desert Places”,
“The Silken Tent”, “Come In” and “The Mostof It”.
The poems which will be analyzed
by the researcher tell about aspects in life.
The aspects that covered in those poems are about love, loneliness, happiness, obstacle and spirit. Those aspects make this
research colorful and it also gives interesting
thing to the reader. It may be able to give big contribution to the reader.
Through those poems, we are not
only can enjoy the form of language but also may be able to get solution in our problems. We
canknow about love by reading “The
Telephone” than we can get our spirit and feelhow is important the person near with us after reading “The Most of It”.
In addition, those poems are not too long. So
it can not make the reader lazy to read.
Then, those poems consist of words which are not so difficult to be understood. All those things are the reason
for choosing those poems.
To conducting this research, the
researcher takes three theses of students of Gajayana University as the previous studies.
ZaenalMachmud, in his study entitled
“Symbolism and the Messages Found in Robert Frost’s Poems”, discussed kinds of symbols and messages in
Robert Frost’s poems. In fact, this research
is same as the researcher’s thesis; in contrast the researcher analyzes different poems with Zaenal Machmud. Zaenal
Machmudanalyzed Robert Frost’s poems
which have titles, “The Road Not Taken”, “TheOver Bird”, “Fire and Ice”, “Stopping by Wood on A Snowy Evening”, “Once
by thePacific”, “Design”, “The Draft
House” and “Departmental”.In other hand, the researcher analyzes Robert Frost’s poems which have titles, “The
Telephone”, “Desert Places”, “The Silken
Tent”, “Come In” and “The Most of It”.In this thesis, Zaenal assumed that in Robert Frost’s poems which analyzed by him
consist of conventional, natural and
private symbols, and then those poems also havedeep messages that are beneficial for our life. Different with
Zaenal’s thesis, in this research, the researcher
just researches the symbols found in Robert Frost’s poems than the categories and the symbolic meaning are found
in Robert Frost’s poems.
Other previous studies are the
thesis of RetnoHandayani on the title, “Symbols
used in William Blake’s Poems” and the thesis of Budiono which has title “An Analysis on the Symbolism of
Hawthorne’s the Scarlet Letter: Semiotic Approach”. From both studies, the researcher
has similarity in the theory which is used,
whereas different in the object which is researched by the researcher. Next, the contribution that the researcher gets from
bothresearches are symbols that found by
both researchers have different in meaning, between the symbolic meaning in the poem and the symbolic meaning
in real life. It means that most symbols
have connotative meaning and it depends on the poet, that’s why they assumed that some symbols are dominant symbols.
Due to the considerations above,
it is necessary for the researcher to do literary criticism on “Symbolism in Robert
Frost’s Poems”.
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