Portrayal of The Protagonists in Wally Lamb's 'She's Come Undone' and Janet Fitch's 'White Olfander'.

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ABSTRACT

Di dalam skripsi ini, saya menganalisis karakteristik dua tokoh dari dua novel berjudul She’s Come Undone karangan Wally Lamb dan White Oleander karangan Janet Fitch.

Saya menganalisis bagaimana kejadian traumatik yang dialami kedua tokoh di masa kecilnya memengaruhi karakteristik dan tingkah laku mereka pada saat mereka dewasa. Selain itu, saya juga menganalisis bagaimana kedua tokoh ini dapat menangani kejadian traumatik tersebut sehingga mereka pada akhirnya dapat menemukan jati diri mereka yang sesungguhnya.

Dolores Price, tokoh protagonis dalam novel She’s Come Undone digambarkan sebagai tokoh yang mandiri namun keras dan tertutup, sedangkan Astrid Magnussen, tokoh protagonis dalam novel White Oleander digambarkan sebagai seorang yang sangat bergantung pada orang lain dan sangat penurut pada awalnya.

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APPENDICES

Synopsis of She’s Come Undone

Dolores Price is a troubled young woman who undergoes unpleasant moments in her childhood. She is happy until one day her pregnant mother loses the fetus and starts to be mentally ill. Dolores’ father cannot stand his wife so they get divorced. The mother is then sent to the hospital and Dolores has to live with her conventional grandmother who sends her to a Catholic school.

Dolores becomes a girl who is not confident which makes her having no friends. Once she thinks she gets a friend, he rapes her. Since then, she limits herself from the outside world. She stays in her bedroom a lot and eats a lot so she becomes overweight, which makes her less and less confident.

One day, Dolores’ mother dies and it ruins her more. She does not want to

stay with her grandmother so she decides to go to college. In college, she is bullied because she is fat. She is also trapped into a lesbian relationship. These things put too much stress on her so that she tries to commit suicide. She is saved but she has to spend seven years in the hospital. There, she loses her weight, recovers herself from the anger towards her parents and regains her confident.

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let herself down again, so she starts to get further education. At this point, she meets Thayer, her future lover. With Thayer, Dolores begins to have a better life.

Synopsis of White Oleander

Astrid Magnussen is a young girl who has to face hard time living with different foster families in short periods. This happens because her mother is sentenced for murdering her womanizer boyfriend with drugs and oleander.

Astrid used to fully depend on her mother because she is the only parent she has. Astrid never knows her father because he and her mother get divorced when she is only a little girl.

Astrid’s condition gets worse because of the different situation in each

foster house. It makes Astrid get more confused and easily tempted by bad things. In these places, Astrid is involved in adultery, violence and drugs. She befriends a prostitute and once witnesses her foster mother commit suicide.

On one occasion, Astrid suddenly remembers one moment in her life when she is abandoned by her mother. Her mother leaves her to her babysitter, Annie for more than a year. At that point, Astrid realizes it is the reason why she really depends on her mother.

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Biography of Wally Lamb

Wally Lamb is an American author who was born on 17 October 1950. He was brought up 10 miles north of New London, Connecticut. Lamb took Education as his major when taking his bachelor and master degree in University of Connecticut. After finishing his master degree, he continued his study at Vermont College, where he earned an M.F.A degree in Writing.

Lamb’s first novel, She’s Come Undone, was first published in 1992. It

later became New York Times number one bestseller and was chosen by Oprah Winfrey in her show as selective book for Oprah’s Book Club. Six years later, Lamb published his second novel, I Know This Much is True. After that, he wrote some more fiction and non-fiction books. The fictions are The Hour I First Believe and Wishin’ and Hopin’: A Christmas Story. The non-fictions are

Couldn’t Keep It to Myself and I’ll Fly Away.

Lamb’s books has brought him some awards such as Los Angeles Times

Book Awards’ Art Seidenbaum Prize for first fiction, Governor’s Arts Award and

NEA grant for fiction.

Now Lamb settles down with his wife and their three children in

Connecticut. He works in University of Connecticut’s English Department as an

Associate Professor of Creative Writing.

Source:

“Wally Lamb”

“Meet the Writers”

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Biography of Janet Fitch

Janet Elizabeth Fitch was an American author who was born in Los Angeles on 9 November 1955. She studied in Reed College majoring in History and then she continued to Keele University in England. There, she learned Russian History.

Fitch has a lot of job experiences, including typesetter, proofreader, graphic artist, freelance journalist and editor. She started her writing career with the short stories which she published in literary journals. Her first novel, White Oleander, was developed from her short story under the same title. This book later

became a chosen book in Oprah’s Book Club and was made into a movie in 2001.

Beside White Oleander, Fitch wrote another famous book entitled Paint It Black. She planned to publish her next book in the spring 2009 but unfortunately her plan has not been put into realization.

At this time, Fitch, with her husband and daughter, lives in Los Angeles. She shares her knowledge about writing fiction by teaching in the University of

Southern California’s Master of Professional Writing program. She also now

becomes an editor of fiction manuscripts.

Source:

“Biography”

“Janet Fitch”

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Self-discovery is commonly defined as “[t]he act or process of achieving understanding or knowledge of oneself” (“Self-discovery”). The two novels She’s Come Undone and White Oleander raise a very interesting issue about two women who have traumatic experiences in the form of parental fights and abandonment in their past. These experiences later make them try to find their true selves and the meaning of their lives. Each main character goes into a journey of self discovery. They begin with analyzing the causes of their broken lives and then struggle to make their lives better.

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a woman who undergoes mental illness. Surprisingly, Lamb succeeds to delve into her mind in detail. “Lamb's choice of the female voice has been praised by critics” (“She’s Come Undone: Female Voice”) and his guts have earned him some awards.

The author of White Oleander, Janet Fitch is a talented author who has dozens of journalistic experiences. Her experiences make her able to create an intricate character and “the artistry of her work, the lines that take the reader's breath away, are hard-won” (“About the Author”). Fitch admired Edgar Allan Poe’s works which make some of her works much influenced by him. She does not “follow Poe’s storyline in anyway” (“From White to Black”), but she makes her works concern more “in part, with the internal corruption and destruction … [and She] cast a Poe-like shadowy spell” (“From White to Black”).

In my major thesis, I am going to analyze how the protagonists are portrayed in She’s Come Undone and White Oleander using formalism. Protagonist is defined as “the main character in a play, film/movie or book” (Hornby 1060). So, to portray a protagonist means to describe the main character’s characteristics in a particular way.

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STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The statements of the problem in my major thesis are: 1. How are the protagonists portrayed in the novels?

2. What are the purposes of the authors in creating such protagonists?

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

The purposes of the study in my major thesis are:

1. I want to analyze how the protagonists are portrayed in the novels. 2. I want to show the purposes of the authors in creating such protagonists.

METHOD OF RESEARCH

In analysing She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb and White Oleander by Janet Fitch, I use library research. First, I read the two novels as the primary texts. Next, I find some literary criticisms about the authors and the works from the internet to help the writing of my anaysis. Finally, I finish the analysis with a conclusion.

ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS

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CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

Having analyzed the portrayal of the protagonists in She’s Come Undone and White Oleander in chapter two and three, I can find some similarities and differences from the two protagonists. The first similarity is that both protagonists undergo abandonment in their childhood. Dolores, the protagonist in She’s Come Undone, has to lose her parents in her childhood because of their separation and her mother has to stay at a mental hospital. Similar to Dolores Price, Astrid, the protagonist in White Oleander, is abandoned by her mother in her early childhood and she also never has the figure of a father. The abandonment becomes a traumatic experience for both of them and for that reason, both protagonists have behaviour and characteristics issue, and they have to endure a long journey of self-discovery.

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confident and optimistic person. While Astrid changes from a dependent, diffident and pessimistic person into a person of independence, confidence and optimism.

Beside the similarities, there are some differences between Dolores Price and Astrid Magnussen. They are two different individuals who have distinct characteristics. Dolores is impudent, introverted, self-conscious and pessimistic, while Astrid is a dependent, diffident and pessimistic person. From these characteristics, I can say that in the beginning, Dolores is more of a rebellious person while Astrid is the submissive type of person.

The next difference is Dolores’ abandonment happens when she is old enough to remember it, while Astrid is too young to remember. In other words, Dolores remembers about the abandonment in her conscious mind while Astrid keeps it in her unconscious mind. Therefore, although the trauma that these protagonists experience is similar, they develop different characteristics.

The last difference is Dolores Price’s self-discovery is aided by others, one of which is the psychiatrist in the mental hospital who helps her in amending her childhood, while Astrid Magnussen’s self-discovery happens within herself through the series of experience that she goes through in foster houses.

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they find the root of the problems, which is the trauma. As for children, mostly they need love and attention. This is why abandonment from people they love, in this case their parents, can be traumatic to them.

Secondly, the characteristics affected by the traumatic events can be changed. From the analysis of the two protagonists, there are two ways to change or to discover one’s true self. First, it is done with other people’s assistance like Dolores. The second way happens within one’s self like Astrid, or in other words, without any help from others.

Lamb creates the character Dolores Price to show that someone can be released from her traumatic experience through the assistance from other people. Lamb shows that to be able to free someone from her trauma and in order to make that person find her true self, a therapy is needed. The therapy can be done with or without a specialist as long as it involves other people. Like Dolores, the therapy is in the form of conversation with the others and some form of therapies with a psychologist. In these therapies, Dolores is decoyed to find the root of her bitterness through hypnotism and by undoing her childhood.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Texts:

Fitch, Janet. White Oleander. New York: Back Bay Books. 2000.

Lamb, Wally. She’s Come Undone. New York: Washington Square Press. 1996.

References:

“About the Author.” Literati.net. 2009. 24 Aug. 2009 <http://literati.net/Fitch/>

“Bio.” Teenreads.com. 2003. 25 Aug. 2009

<http://www.teenreads.com/authors/au-lamb-wally.asp>

“Biography.” Bookbrowse. 2009. 25 Aug 2009

<http://www.bookbrowse.com/biographies/index.cfm/author_number/341/Ja et-Fitch>

“Biography for Janet Fitch (II).” IMDb. 2009. 25 Aug. 2009 <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1433521/bio>

“From White to Black.” First Person Bookpage. 2006. 30 Aug. 2009. <http://www.bookpage.com/0609bp/janet_fitch.html>

Hornby, AS. Oxford Advance Learner’s Dictionary. New York: Oxford University Press. 2000.

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"She's Come Undone: Female Voice." 123HelpMe.com. 2009. 24 Aug. 2009 <http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=3038>

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“What a Wally!!” Dooyoo. 2009. 3 Oct. 2009