PLEASURE IN JOHN BOYNE’S DARK THEME NOVEL ENTITLED THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS.

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A THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Attainment of the

Sarjana Sastra Degree in English Literature

Written by :

Filla Lavenia Palupy 12211141012

ENGLISH LITERATURE STUDY PROGRAM FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ARTS

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MOTTO

A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.

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DEDICATIONS

This Thesis is dedicated to:

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Praise to Allah for always giving me guidance whenever I have a hard time.

This thesis would not be better without my supervisors, Dr. Widyastuti

Purbani, M.A and Niken Anggraeni, M.A. I thank them for the inspirations

alongside this journey. I feel grateful for the never ending guidance, patience,

advise, supervision, and support during the thesis writing process.

I would devote my sincerest appreciation for the lecturers in English

Literature study program who have been guiding me and giving me inspirations

through all of these years.

My sincerest gratitude is for all of my friends in English Literature who fight

for their dream in every way. I learn a lot from them. I thank them for the lessons

and all the good times.

My thanks are dedicated for all of my friends in organizations: SAFEL, EDS,

BEM FBS 2014, and Project Child Indonesia. They are the best family I could

ask for. I owe them for always accompanying me through all of these years in

Yogyakarta as part of my family and best friends.

I feel grateful to have dearest seniors, Zidnie and Sinta, who always help me

during the thesis and with whom I share the same dreams. I thank them for

always listening to my concerns, worries, and dreams. They are the ones who

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PLEASURE IN JOHN BOYNE’S DARK THEME NOVEL ENTITLED

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS

By Filla Lavenia Palupy NIM 12211141012

ABSTRACT

The aims of the research are (1) to define the dark themes contained in John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, and (2) to reveal how the dark themes represent the pleasure of the main characters. Therefore, the researcher applies children’s literature and pleasure of children’s literature theories.

The researcher used qualitative descriptive content analysis. The subject of the research was a novel entitled The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas written by John Boyne. The data of the research were significant expressions related to the dark themes of the novel and how the dark themes represent the pleasure of the main characters in the form of sentence. The researcher was the primary instrument of the research and the two data tables are the secondary instrument. The triangulation technique was used to ensure the data trustworthiness.

The findings of the research show that there are five dark themes found in the novel. They are the children’s anger, people’s oppression toward children, children’s sadness, children’s insecurity, and children’s dark environment. The dark themes represent the oppression toward the main characters and their response upon it. The researcher found three main categories on how pleasure is embodied in the novel. They are the pleasure of observing, the pleasure of learning, and the pleasure of understanding. Therefore, pleasure becomes an important element in children’s literature.

Keywords: John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, children’s

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1 A. Background of the Study

Children’s literature comes as the help of adults to accompany their children

to go through the hard phase of growing up. Through children’s literature, parents

are able to touch the unseen emotion of children. Moreover, the stories in

children’s literature provide a form of experience for every reader, especially

children who need to learn about the complexity of life. Stories contain the

journey of life and they could be a perfect place to learn. Life is so much

complicated to tell to children. Children will not understand unless they actually

feel the emotion of such condition in life. Thus, children’s literature is the perfect

medium to educate children about the values of life and the things they cannot

learn physically but emotionally. According to Karl (1971:6), the author of

children’s literature creates an experience for its reader. It means that children

need to be opened up and start to discover new things from the stories they

already read. The discoveries of new things also include the experience of bitter

sweet things in life.

The discoveries of new things include the process of learning many kinds of

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difficult life and how to overcome their emotion. According to Southhall (1975)

children live in a reality and they do not live in a fairytale where everything is

about happiness. They live and mingle with other society, with the emotion of

both happiness and sadness. Thus, children’s literature is expected to include dark

themes of life. Dark themes in children’s literature are used by parents to educate

children about the other aspects of life. The dark feeling such as sorrow, sadness,

pain, and death are important to introduce. It is the way to tell children that these

feelings are real and they should not feel afraid of these kinds of feelings. It is

important for them to understand that such feelings are normal for every human

in the world. Thus, the dark themes in children’s literature are needed in order to

help children understand about various experiences of life.

The topic related to dark themes becomes one of the concerns in children’s

literature. As a matter of fact, there are many children in this world who have to

face different kinds of experience from such a young age. There are children who

already experience the dark sides of life, including the feeling of loss and sadness,

being haunted by wars, parents’ divorce, friends’ illness, and the death of beloved

ones, or the loss of parents in such a young age. These conditions are possible to

happen for some children but undeniable for some others. Harrison (1981:253)

gives her views regarding the role of children’s literature, “children’s literature,

which is inextricably related to language, to perception, and to the imagination, is

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children to cope with the aspects of life including the bitter one and to become a

form of experience for those who have no experience in the dark side of life.

Children are able to not only feel the feeling of sympathy and empathy but also

grow humanity side to gain more understanding of life.

In order to feel more emotions, children need to understand how they should

face those emotions. Lukens, Smith, & Coffel (2013:4) give their view upon the

benefit of children’s literature, “Children’s literature provides a form of

understanding to children”. Literature could perfectly display an image of life

that could touch the heart of its reader. The experience shared in children’s

literature would be in the form of emotions every reader could feel. Children

could specifically feel sad when they drown into a certain character in the story or

they feel the joy in the adventurous part of the story. Saxby (1991:6) claims that

“literature provides a potent source of vicarious experience and so fires the

imagination with sensory and emotive images to provoke imagined experience”.

The form of understanding provided by literature could evoke the sense of the

reader. The sense of imagination stated by Saxby can enhance the children’s

ability to have creative imaginations and provoke children’s ability to feel the

vicarious experience through reading. Children will not only gain the cognitive

knowledge but also feel a form of vivid experience through reading.

Dark themes in children’s literature are not something to be assumed as taboo.

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life experience to children. It is the duty of every parent to help their children

understand about the topics that are closely related to their real life without

feeling afraid or even shy. Moreover, parents can help children to understand

certain topics with their own imagination through the power of literature. Dark

themed novels may be the least favorite themes parents would introduce to

children. However, parents nowadays are also aware of the fact that these novels

should be considered as children’s reading materials.

Parents prefer fictional works as they think that it is best for children in

guiding their imaginative view and also amusing them. The fable stories have

always been the choice of parents to tell or to read for children. These forms of

stories are conventional, safe and pleasant for children, like what adults think.

Furthermore, when children learn from stories, the learning process would be fun

because children see it through the characters and the plot of the story they read.

The valuable lessons about life in stories are displayed in a positive way as it

helps children know and understand more about their surroundings. Thus, dark

themed novels might not be the favorite choice of parents.

Parents are afraid that dark themed novels would frighten their children

becausereading is supposed to be fun for children. The activity of reading should

not only make children aware of what is going on around their life but also amuse

them at the same time. Parents are afraid if children do not feel the pleasure or

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somewhat different. The pleasure is the feeling of completeness, the discovery of

new things and introduction of the new emotions (Nodelman and Reimer, 2003).

The discovery of guilt and loss is also partof reading in pleasure because children

are learning something new and they try to cope with that feeling.

On the other hand, children nowadays are different from children in the past.

Today’s children are wiser about many things. They are not easily fooled and led,

also they are ignorant of many things that children of an earlier generation know

well (Karl, 1971:23). Parents should not be afraid because children nowadays are

more open-minded to digest dark themed stories. There are many sources that

make children open up to the emotions or situations in which they have to learn

about the dark emotions in life. Parents are their guardians. Thus, parents should

not be afraid to introduce such themes to children.

Reading dark themed novel would be one of the examples on how adults

introduce realism stories to children. It is the one very close to everyday life. The

fiction of realism probably has a wider range of possibility in making children

feel connected to the story. Although it is fiction, the realism is still the essence of

the story. The stories, characters, and events might be fictional but they develop

to make every element logical and come close to the real reality. Wald (1975:939)

explains that realism involves possible people involved in the struggles and

complexities of life, so children are expected to relate to the stories. The fiction of

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Children need to understand that life does not only contain happiness and joy

of getting a new toy or new clothes and the sad feeling does not only stand for

losing their toys. There are deeper feelings of loss, sadness and sorrow, which

children feel when they face the real situation. The touching story and plot is the

perfect way to help children understand the concept of death and how they should

perceive it without losing hope for their future. As always, children’s literature

tries to give children pleasure in every story.

Children’s literature is meant to please children. The reading activity can

arouse their curiosity in understanding a whole new world they have never been.

The way children enjoy literature might be different from adults. Adults develop

the ability of enjoying literature simply from reading a lot of books while children

might have different ways of enjoying literature through their limited experience.

Nodelman and Reimer (2003:21) gives an example on how children find pleasure

in reading literature, the pleasure of having their emotions evoked: laughing at a

comical situation, being made to feel pain or joy character experiences. Though

children and adult have different ways of enjoying literature, reading literature

still enriches their understanding as a whole.

Pleasure is the core of children’s literature. “We choose literature that

promisesentertainment and, sometimes, escape. If other discoveries come to us,

too, we are pleased and doubly rewarded” (Lukens, Smith, & Coffel, 2013:2).

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the new discovery of the world. Although every reading is different, the ability to

enjoy literature is something that can be developed. The more children read

literature the more they develop the ability of enjoying literature. Denis Sumara

(in Lukens, Smith, & Coffel, 2013:2) stated that reading and interpreting

literature bring the readers to the pleasure of transforming “imaginative occasions

into productive insights”. Reading literature might be a new form of self

-discovery and even evoke the sense of humanity. In comparison, pleasure in the

real life is the same with pleasure found in the story as it depicts the same

vicarious events of life. The characters try to cope with the problems the same as

children do in their real life. Those ups and downs in life’s events are the form of

pleasure.

Nodelman and Reimer in their book The Pleasure of Children Literature defines a few forms of pleasure found in a text of children’s literature. There are

many forms of pleasure in every kind of children’s stories. Furthermore, the main

aspect of reading literature itself is finding the literary elements of the text which

could be discussed among children, so the essence of reading literature would be

shared among them. It helps children to appreciate many kinds of new experience

that happen in their actual life.

The question is how dark themed novels provide such a pleasure to children.

As Nodelman and Reimer (2003) emphasizes in his book The Pleasure of

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excitement and happiness. Pleasure indeed has a deeper meaning of the

completeness human could feel, the whole feeling of knowing what life is,

sharing imagination and emotion. Saxby (1991:5) also emphasizes his views that

Children should be able to enjoy such stories and are ready to be taken to a whole

new journey, the same as the aim of children’s literature stated by Saxby, which

is giving enlightenment to children and giving them wings to fly high.

The pleasure of literature is the pleasure of conversation, of dialogues

between the readers and texts, and between the readers about those texts

(Nodelman and Reimer, 2003:22). Seen from Nodelman and Reimer’s

perspective, pleasure indeed has a wide range of definition. Furthermore, it is the

duty of adult to show children that they can find such pleasure in literature.

Adults try to help children to read between the lines in order to help them not

being a thoughtless adult when they grow up, and to unconsciously agree on

some ideas that they do not even know. The freedom of thinking should be their

form of pleasure while they experience some new events in life. Children will be

able to enjoy and cherish every moment and new experience whether it is a happy

one or a sad one. Children will soon find out that those events happening in their

life are ways to learn and they will take it as pleasure.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas written by John Boyne was released in 2006. This book is quite recent for a book called as one of a must-read novel in

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in the book. The book is considered as one of the dark themed novel in children’s

literature because it depicts the holocaust setting in Germany and Auschwitz,

Poland. Holocaust is a sensitive topic about war, religion, ideology and

discrimination. These hard yet important topics might seem to be too difficult and

dark for children. However, the topics could be something pleasant, too.

In this book, children are portrayed as close to reality as possible. It is proven

by the innocent character of the story, Bruno, in seeing the world around him.

The war, discrimination, politics and so on were seen from Bruno’s perspective

as a child. The journey of the characters inside of the story portrays the pleasure

that children could enjoy although being in a difficult situation. Friendship is

also the main issue of the story, on children’s innocent way of seeing the world. It

is a satirical way of criticizing adults on their way of seeing people based on their

ideology or religion. Through the eyes of Bruno, the main character, the story

develops into a perspective taking a child to see war and discrimination that are

very close to them.

The author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is an Irish writer. He is widely

known as one of the most successful authors of young adult novels from Ireland.

This novel was Boyne’s most successful book asit became New York Times no.1

Best seller. It was shortlisted in British Book Awards and won several awards

dedicated for children’s literature books. Other books of John Boyne also become

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and listed in numerous list of children’s literature (Boyne, 2016:par.2). In 2008,

the novel was made to major motion pictures by Miramax, an American

entertainment company based in California, United States.

The book has already been sold for more than 6 million copies around the

world and translated into 48 languages. “Boyne’s text has received considerable

praise, been shorted-listed for several awards, and a recommended reading in the

English secondary school National Curriculum” (Gilbert, 2010:356). Aside from

winning several awards for the book itself, John Boyne also proves his existence

as a writer by getting awards for Children Book of the Year and Short Story of

the Year. Based on the novel and the author’s achievement, this novel is a

prominent work of children’s literature to take into consideration as a world

literaturebecause of its influential story.

As one of the most recommended books for children, the researcher tries to

unveil every detail of the dark themes embodied in the novel. The variety kinds of

dark themes are an interesting topic to unveil. Moreover, the pleasure of the main

characters is the crucial part to be analyzed despite the dark emotions and

treatments. By analyzing the dark themes in the book, the researcher would like

to reveal the pleasure of the main characters in the dark themed novel, The Boy in

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B. Research Focus

There are two focuses in this research. The first is to reveal the dark themes of

the novel and the second is to prove that the dark themes represent the pleasure of

the main characters. The researcher thinks that the dark themes are important

elements to be considered as the strength of the text. The dark themes are the

main tools to counter the stereotype that dark themes are not for children.

Furthermore, the dark themes are considered as a brave step to advance the study

about children’s literature in a deeper level because the researcher determines to

reveal that dark themed text also contains pleasure and enjoyment.

The second point in this research is to define the pleasure embodied in the

novel. There are many kinds of pleasure that children could feel. Pleasure does

not merely contain happiness and joy. Through the eyes of the main characters in

the novel, pleasure will be unveiled from their perspective. The research focuses

to prove that the dark emotions, new discoveries, and even the dark sides of life

contain pleasure. Through this research, adult’s way to see through children’s

literature hopefully come to enlightenment.

There are two theories that will be combined as the main approach to the

story. The first is the children’s literature theory on how the spirit of children’s

reading material is to give enlightenment to children as their readers. The theory

is also used as a means to find out the dark themes in the novel as part of

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literature theory about pleasure which is mainly discussed by Perry Nodelman

and Mavis Reimer in Pleasure of Children’s Literature. The researcher tries to

reveal how dark themed story contains pleasure for children.

C. Research Questions

1. What are dark themes found in John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas?

2. How do the dark themes represent the pleasure of the main characters?

D. Research Objectives

The objectives of this research are:

a. To identify the dark themes in Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

b. To reveal how dark themes represent the pleasure of the main characters

E. Research Significances

a. The result of this research is expected to give a better understanding and

deeper knowledge about children’s literature, dark themes in children’s

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b. The research is expected to give benefit for the further research done by

students, lecturers and future researchers in providing examples of pleasure in

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CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW

A. Children’s Literature

1. Defining Children’s Literature

Children’s literature is different from adults’ literature because they have

different audience. Children’s literature is literature dedicated to children. They

might contain the same elements of complexity, resonance, insight, wit, and

artistry with adult’s literature. However, children’s literature needs to consider its

audience because the writers need to provide a form of understanding for children

(Lukens, Smith, & Coffel, 2013:6). Thus, literature for children has to be simpler.

Stories for children are usually more directly told than literature for adults. The

relationships between characters and actions also need to be displayed in an

obvious way in order to make children easily understand about the conflict.

In order to have a better understanding about children’s literature, adults need

to understand that children also search pleasure in their activity of reading stories.

Many reasons behind censorship in children’s literature and also many adult who

do not let their children read certain kind of book are because they thought that

the book is not appropriate for children. Children have the same capability to

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certain topic should be adjusted to children’s level. In conclusion, children are

also humans who need to know about the world around them and their limited

understanding should not become a barrier for them to enjoy literary works.

Dealing with children means that adults need to concern on how children use

their imagination. The power of literature is to encourage children’s ability to

experience more value through their imagination. Harrison (1981:244) states that

sometimes the demands of literature for children are as exciting as the experience

of childhood itself, on how the imaginations depict the experience they feel

through literary works. Furthermore, Harrison also explains the importance of

imagination. Although the imagination of literary works cannot substitute the real

life experience, it can help children to find an exact greater truth than the life

itself.

In relation to the importance of children’s literature, Saxby (1991:6) explains

that literature provides a source of vicarious experience and fires the imagination

with sensory and emotive images to provoke imagination. The form of

understanding provided by literature could evoke the sense of the reader. The

sense of imagination will directly help children to feel such emotions. Children

will not only gain the cognitive knowledge but also feel a form of vivid

experience through reading.

The form of experience will increase through reading, as Lukens, Smith, &

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is a series of episodes consisting of a few kinds of fragmentations. The life’s

fragmentation could not be separated one to another as it is meant to complement

each other. The fragmentation of life would include friendship, family, society,

love, sacrifice and any other elements of life that all people will face in their life.

The fragmentation will come in many ways as people choose their own path in

life, and it is the duty of children’s literature to introduce children on what series

of event they will face once they grow up. “Literature allows us, as it does our

children, to hold life in our hands, the whole and the parts, to gather the recurring

fragments and to piece them into a coherent pattern” (Harrison, 1981:253). Every

fragmentation will be different from one person to another but it will help

children to focus on their life essentials. The experience might be different but the

new understanding will surely help them to deal with it.

Children will have different attitudes to death, fear, sex, perspective, egocentricity, causality, and so on. They will be more open to genuinely radical thought and the ways of understanding texts; they will be more flexible in their perceptions of texts; and, because play is a natural part f their outlook. They will regard language as another area for playful exploration. They are less bound by fix schemes and in sense see more clearly.

(Hunt, 1991: 57)

From the quotation above, Hunt believes that through children’s literature,

children will be able to appreciate texts and stories. Stories in children’s literature

include the value in society and the aspects of life. As readers, children have a

different perspective in seeing various events in their life. The exposure of topics

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of life and the life they have to go through. The texts which consist of language

will be their first challenge to explore its part and sense. Children will find it

usual and attractive to play with languages and to express a certain emotion.

2. Dark Themes in Children’s Literature

Dark theme in children’s literature is a term to derive children’s story

revealing dark sides of life as the main themes, such as death, illness, divorce,

separation, loneliness, and etc. Many researchers and scholars in children’s

literature conduct a research upon the dark themes in children’s literature. The

research is done to counter the opinion that children should be away from dark

themes contents in literature. As Nodelman (1992:2) said that every subject about

things people have no wish to hear about should be silenced and that we think

children with such concern are abnormal. The important message author and

scholars would give to children is to make them understand that dark side of life

is normal because it happens to anybody. Thus, children should be prepared for

every possibility to cope with those feelings. Each research usually conducts with

specific dark themes in one particular novel or novels with similar themes. Death

could be one of the examples of the dark themes which are mostly found in

children’s story. According to Romero (1974:par.1), the theme about death will

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ways to suit the various stages of children’s development. Therefore, the

depiction of each theme will be adjusted to children’s stage of development.

Children need to learn and understand about the dark side of life because

sooner or later children will face the dark side of life and it is unavoidable.

Southhall (1975:12) states that children live in a world, not in a pedestal and they

are out among people and interact with each other. Death might still look far

away for them but coping with death might happen anytime and they should be

prepared to feel the fear, pain, and loneliness as a part of the emotions. Children

need to put themselves in someone else’s shoes to realize that this world does not

only consist of happiness but also other dark emotions. Children need to see and

understand that anything bad could happen to anyone. If it is not to them, it could

happen to their family or friends. Furthermore, the sad feeling of watching

someone suffering is a part of sympathy which every child should learn as a part

of life lessons. As Mehta (2013:1) explains in her article about children who need

to have sympathy for others, “children need to read terrifying situations in order

to empathize with characters who endure those situations. Those characters,

learning to stay strong and amid struggle, are part of a larger cultural shift in how

we express ourselves about the things we’ve endured”.

The existence of dark themes in children’s literature is to help children to

cope with the feeling that deals with the dark side of life. The important part of

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feeling of loss, so the after effect of the death is more important to children. It is

emphasized by Corr (2004:338) who believes that children need to understand

about death because they need to learn how to grief and cope with it.

Children need to understand about the concept of death, pain, loss, illness,

and many other dark side of life. In the case of death, children should understand

that death is a natural process that will be through by all the living things in the

world. Children need to cope with the feeling of sadness, loss, and grief.

Jimmerson and Lazarus (in Heath et al. 2008:259) state that “grieving is defined as personal thoughts and feeling associated with loss”. They continue to explain

that a loss triggers children to feel the grief and it involves experience of mixture

emotions in response to the loss. Although the grief is associated with death, it is

also associated with the disruption of familiar comfort and security, including

divorce, family financial difficulty, and loss of a friend.

To see so many children’s books contain dark themes nowadays, parents

might think that dark themes in children’s literature seem more varied and darker.

However, the readers might not realize that the dark themes have been a part of

children’s literature since a long time ago and even folklore of children also

brought dark side of life as a themes in a story. Bates (2007:48) argues that the

children’s classic folklore has been started with the universal dark themes of

separation. There are many classic works of children’s literature that brought

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or step-parents. Some of classic stories are The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum and The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Both stories depict the main

characters whose separated from their family and had to deal with the current

condition to survive.

The classic fairy tale has already started to bring dark themes to children’s

reading materials. The nowadays theme seems darker to most of the parents

because the present children’s literature brought the reality of life closer to

children’s perspective. Divorce, illness, pain, and also death are becoming more

and more vivid in present children’s literature. According to Eccleshare

(2013:par.5), “today’s book for children tackle the current problems of the world

at both a domestic and a global level; they are sometimes bleak in themes but

may also be inspiring, unrevealing difficulties in a wonderful story”. In the

article, Eccleshare also explains that a classic novel like Charlotte’s Web also

brings death as one of the topics. Children will mostly remember the adventure as

much as the darker subject matter. Thus, nowadays children’s text maybe the

same as the subject matter.

B. Pleasure of Children’s Literature

Children might have difficulties to understand the complexity of ideas, but the

difficulties do not stop children to seek pleasure when they experienced many

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adults thought. People seek pleasure in reading literature, they read for pleasures.

The simplest pleasure might be found in enlightenment when children read

literary works. It could be the pleasure of knowing simple words from the text or

might be a pleasure comes from the background of the reader while reading

particular events which evoke the past memories (Lukens, Smith, & Coffel,

2013:2). In relation to the simple pleasure, every story could give emotions to

children. Events and emotions in life are also parts of pleasure children should

enjoy and discover. Pleasure is not only found when they read certain stories but

also when they have vicarious experience and try to deal with it.

Pleasure is the main attraction of children’s book, as stated by Greenby

(2008:67), “children book should be judge for the pleasure it gives, for its style

and its quality”. The potentpleasure in children’s book should be fairly judged as

the source of vicarious experience to take children into a whole new level of

enjoyment and excitement. All the new discovery contains in a text could be the

source of potent pleasure. The experience of happiness and sadness are both

pleasure for children. Furthermore, Lukens, Smith, & Coffel (2003:6) also

explain that children seek the same pleasure as adults when they read stories, but

the difference is their source of pleasure. Children have a limited source of

pleasure because of their limited experience. Thus, children’s stories are

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Nodelman and Reimer (2003:23-24) already listed the outlines of pleasure on

how pleasure could be achieved by all children when they experience events in

their life. One of the examples is the pleasure of experiencing. They explain that

every kind of life experience is meaningful to children and they should learn

based on their experience. To be examined as pleasure, children do not have to

understand the whole meaning of a life journey. Children will naturally learn how

to deal with the current situations and find the pleasure. This is how a simple

event of life could give a pleasure to children. Both experience in reading

literature and experiencing life events are the process of learning, the source of

potent pleasure to children. Thus, pleasure in reading and in life experience is

coherent to one another.

Pleasure is borderless, and even the limited experience of the reader will not

become an obstacle in reading literature, as Nodelman and Reimer (2003:16))

said that the lack of knowledge does not prevent the reader from enjoying it. The

pleasure of the text does not require absolute mastery of its vocabulary. Children

could feel the pleasure of a story even from the strangeness of how a word

sounds. Furthermore, children could relate to the reality in which they can find

pleasure through the bitter experience and still learn about how to cope with those

kinds of feelings. Children should know that their limited experience could be

their benefit in learning and understanding the new situations that they will face

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Furthermore, the story as the essence of the text also plays a big part in giving

pleasure. A story is the perfect way to see and to analyze children’s world

through the actions and events in children’s environment.

“the most important source of pleasure in a text is the pleasure of the story. The organized patterns of emotional involvement and detachment, the delays of suspense, the climaxes and resolutions, the intricate pattern of coincidence to make up a plot”. (Nodelman and Reimer, 2003:25)

From the quotation above, Nodelman and Reimer explain that children put all

the events happening surrounding them to learn and to understand something

new. The process of learning is what Nodelman and Reimer call as pleasure. The

complexity of the plot is also the complex journey of a certain character in the

story. The more complex plot means more events will happen in the story.

Throughout the complex events happened in the plot, children represented by the

characters are expected to give the mirror of the actual reality on how they should

deal with their current problems. As thinking is pleasure, children are expected

not only to discover but also to explore the new experience which is the highest

level of learning.

The fundamental of children’s literature is the discovery of the new

experience. The process of discovery is the pleasure fulfillment of a text. The idea

of meaning between the texts is something difficult and complex to be revealed,

but there is a certain tension between texts and literary elements which give its

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(2004:97) agrees to this argument by saying that the idea of meaning is waiting to

be discovered and something to be completed.

The discovery of pleasure might be different from one person to another, but

the actual pleasure should be enjoyed based on understanding. Nodelman and

Reimer (2003:25) give his argument about how the world could shape people for

its purpose and not necessarily for their own good. In addition, an understanding

of pleasure is important to distinguish the good from the bad especially for

children. The understanding of pleasure in every emotion is necessary to shape

children’s sensitivity and to make them understand of what gives them the actual

pleasure. Deeper consciousness of pleasures also reflects and gives benefit to

children as mirror to themselves.

1. The Pleasure of Discovery

Many people assume that pleasure is the opposite of thinking. Pleasure should

be felt when they enjoy a certain moment without thinking much about it. In the

exact opposite way, Nodelman and Reimer (2003:23) share his thought that

pleasure is not the opposite of thinking—that meaning is waiting to be

discovered. The discovery of life events is a long way journey for children to

understand and gain an insightful exploration. In conclusion, thinking is pleasure.

Meaning is different from every reading and sometimes in each reading the

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applied in the story. Each event in the story could affect the character’s feeling in

learning new things. Thus, learning could be the source of great relief and

satisfaction (Hintz and Tribunella, 20013:11). In learning the new skill, children

are able to discover and then take a whole new understanding of the new

experience. A simple understanding of others can help children to treat people

better and probably different based on their characters.

The explorations of life events need a whole understanding. To relate with

others is the first step to gain understanding. There are relations in understanding

others and gaining new experience, so children can learn from those relations.

Great pleasures are found after experiencing many kinds of life events and feeling

many kinds of new emotions (Lukens, Smith, & Coffel, 2013:137). Representing

reality is important to children in order to relate and explore their own feelings

and imaginations.

The ability of seeing through life experience is the way to appreciate the

pleasure of learning. In stories, the way each character interacts with each other

or the way the characters deal with their problems are the source of new

understanding in seeing problems from someone else’s perspective. Nodelman

and Reimer (2003:26) explain that in the story, sometimes, reality is depicted as

something backlashing with the ideology of the main character. Sometimes, it

challenges the common value in society and the way stories depicts the problem

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In order to explore the new environment, children need to discover their

surroundings. To go out and to discover could lead into certain escapism. An

escape which is not in imaginative ways but directly escapes into different

environment and different routine. Finding a new environment and feeling the

different situation between past and present also part of pleasure. Nodelman and

Reimer (2003:25) believe that the pleasure of escape is to step out and to

experience the lives and thoughts of different people. That experience will be

both bitter and sweet. Being able to see something from the thought of different

people is a part of the new experience as the escape of from the current state of

mind. Thus, escape can be a part of pleasure in which children could learn how to

be critical and how to see something from a new perspective.

2. The Pleasure of Experiencing

Experience is something which is already gained by the characters in the story

before the plot. Experience also develops along with the plot. Many of these

experiences develop along with the development of the plot. In addition,

characters’ experience will be complete at the end of the story. As the story

continues, sharing experience could be a part of the pleasure in gaining

knowledge. The interaction between characters is the main source of sharing

experience. Nodelman and Reimer (2003:26) share his views of this topic;

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It could be derived from Nodelman and Reimer’s view that not only sharing

experience with the other readers of the story but also sharing experience inside

of the story from characters to characters which could be a mirror to its readers.

Experiencing the plot is another aspect of seeing literary text. The way

characters gain experience in the development of the plot. There are many kinds

of events that happen in the plot. The events are not only consisting of happiness

that the characters feel but also including the horrible experience. The characters

need to overcome the horrible experience the same as happy ones. Hintz and

Tribunella (2013:11) share their view on experience, they believe that pleasure

could be in the form of experience that characters should deal with. Furthermore,

the pleasure they felt could help them to work through horrible experiences or

feelings.

The pleasure of experiencing can also reveal the greatest pleasure and the

deepest fears or concerns. In children’s interaction with the other children or with

their own environment is another form of experience. Understanding the world

surrounding children is the key to reach a deeper understanding to know what it

means to be human and how human relate and treat one another. The attitude of

concerning and understanding would lead further to the feeling of empathy as it

evokes the deepest insight of human’s feelings. Seeing something people

concerned about and being able to relate to other people’s feelings are the best

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potent pleasure in experiencing fears, anxieties, pleasures and desires (Hintz and

Tribunella, 2013:11).

3. The Pleasure of Finding Mirror for Oneself

To see many interactions among characters and the environment in the story

are helpful as the depiction of reality. Those interactions help the children to

identify their position in the society and discover their true self. Along the

journey, the intense interaction between children helps each child to grow. In

finding mirror for oneself, Nodelman and Reimer (2003:25) state that the pleasure

of finding mirror for oneself is the ability to identify and discover the true self.

Children are able to find the mirror of their selves in the other children’s

characteristic.

Being able to relate to people’s perspective is a form of understanding which

needs a long process to gain the understanding. The pleasure of having one’s

emotion evoked is Nodelman and Reimer’s (2003:25) view in seeing interactions

among children. To evoke someone’s emotion is not simply by feeling the

sadness of other people but going deeper than the superficial feelings. Being able

to relate to the pain or the joy with certain actions is the highest pleasure in being

able to relate to others. The relation between children and the actual characters in

the story is not something to be underestimated. Children see themselves in

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learn something from the problems faced by the characters. Examining pleasures

experienced by the characters also have a significant mirror to have a projection

of children having the same difficulties. Thus, pleasures are fundamental things to

children and often represented by the characters in the story.

C. The Previous Studies

There are some previous studies which have been done before this research on

Pleasure in John Boyne’s Dark-themed Novel Entitled The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is conducted. The previous research are on the same topic of children’s literature under the same novel or/and use the same theory of children’s literature

to analyze a certain text. The first previous study is a research by Kartika

Nurhandayani entitled An Analysis of Themes and Sub-Themes in Judy Blume’s

Are You There God? It’s me, Margaret which was done in 2014. The research

objectives are to find the themes and sub-themes of the novel. On her research,

Nurhandayani aims to unveil the themes and sub-themes in the novel by using

New Criticism study. She also uses children’s literature theory as the basic

foundation of her research in finding the elements of the themes.

The second previous study was conducted by Gideon Widyatmoko in 2011.

His research entitled Telling Institutional Cruelty to Children through Literature: a Study on John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas focuses on how the writer tells the institutional cruelty through his book. Widyatmoko’s research

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to analyze the author’s technique in describing institutional cruelty. In his

research, Widyatmoko aims to relate between the characters and the institutional

cruelty, on how the characters could represent it.

The research on Pleasure in John Boyne’s Dark-themed Novel Entitled The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is different from Nurhandayani’s and Widyamoko’s. It differs from the previous research because it analyses the most important aspect

of children’s learning process which is pleasure. Furthermore, the topic of the

research is also different because this research focuses on the dark themes of the

novel. This research differs from Nurhandayani’s because it analyses the specific

dark themes of the novel and the pleasure embodied in the novel which

represented by the main characters. This research also differs from Widyatmoko’s

because it took different approach to the novel. It focuses on finding the pleasure

of the main characters and it does not relate any of the topics with the author’s

point of view. Thus, this research is different compared to the previous studies

because it has different approach upon the dark themed novel. In addition, the

researcher could propose the novelty of this research from the previous studies.

D. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework is needed to guide and understand the researcher’s

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of dark themes in children’s literature, that children should not be excluded from

knowing any kinds of emotions in life. Thus, children’s literature should provide

a form of understanding about the dark side of life through literature.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is one of many novels which try to bring reality closer to children’s perspective of thinking. The war, conflict, holocaust,

and death are seen to be one of the hardest themes to be brought in children’s

literature. Boyne’s tries to give the message to children about the humanity

children’s should feel while reading the story. Furthermore, Boyne comes to

children’s perspective to tell the story from their innocence eyes to see every

conflict in the novel. This book is able to tell children that there is pleasure in

reading a book with dark themes in it.

There are two theories that are combined to work hand in hand in order to

find the pleasure of the novel. Children’s literature theory is applied to unveil the

role of children’s literature to help children to cope with the world around them.

The aim of children’s literature is to give a better understanding to children about

the world and to grow the deepest humanity side of them. The pleasure of

children’s literature theory is applied to unveil the pleasure of the main

characters. Furthermore, pleasure is the spirit of life in which children should

understand in experiencing life events. Thus, pleasure should exist in every books

children’s read and books contain dark themes should not be excluded from the

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The theoretical framework of this research can be seen in Figure 1 below.

[image:45.612.110.564.143.641.2]

Figure 1: The Scheme of Theoretical Framework Children’s Literature

Pleasure of children’s literature Dark themes in children’s literature

1. What are dark themes found in John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas?

2. How do the dark themes represent the pleasure of the main

characters?

John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

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33 CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHOD

A. The Research Design

There are two objectives in this research which need to be answered at the end

of the research. The first is to find the dark themes in the story and the second is

to reveal how the dark themes represent the pleasure of the main characters. To

answer those objectives, the researcher needs a research design to guide the

research. The term research design is important to define to guide the researcher

in doing research. According to Cheek (2008:761) research design refers to and

encompasses decisions about how the research is conceptualized and how the

research is intended to make contributions towards development of knowledge in

particular area. Furthermore, Cheek also mentions the process to develop a

research to gain the most important value. The research design is expected to

guide the researcher prioritizing the decisions during the research and help the

researcher to answer those objectives. Thus, research design is expected to guide

this research effectively.

Content analysis uses as the design of this research. The researcher did

content analysis to seek trustworthiness and credibility in finding the data by

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confirmatory data, and provide supporting examples to conclude the data

analysis. As qualitative content analysis is used in this research, it is best to

answer the “why” question of this qualitative research (Julien, 2008:120). In

content qualitative analysis, the researcher’s interpretation is valuable in

collecting the data because of its instrument’s validity. The data of this qualitative

research are in the form of narrative texts which means it cannot be measured by

numerical numbers since it deals with literary text. The content analysis of this

research also referred to analytic method in reducing the data to find the meaning

of the data to support the result of the research.

B. Data Types

Data is one of the important elements in the research as a material to conclude

the result of the research. Vanderstop and Johnston (2009:176) explain that

qualitative research uses a narrative form to find the data and explain the

phenomenon in the research. In conclusion, this research used narrative

expression of the novel as the data of the research. The narrative expressions of

the novel are in the form of words, sentences, and paragraphs related to dark

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C. The Data Source

The data source of this research were collected from any kinds of sentences,

expressions and paragraphs related to the research upon pleasure in dark themed

novel by John Boyne entitled The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas. All the data sources that have been mentioned above must relate to the aspects of the research:

1) the dark themes of the novel, 2) how the dark themes represents the pleasure of

main characters. The novel of John Boyne entitled The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas was originally published in English. It was published in 2006 by Black Swan and consisted of 20 chapters and 215 pages.

D. Research Instruments

In this qualitative research, the researcher plays a center part of the research

instrument. The researcher acted as the interpreter of all the data with specific

explanation based on theories used on the research and data classifications. The

researcher is the possible valid instruments in qualitative research. Lincoln and

Guba statement cited in Vanderstop and Johnston (2009:201) also agree to the

idea, they believe that the best instrument for qualitative naturalistic inquiry is

human. In this case, the researcher’s interpretation played a significant part to the

research. The data table provided by the researcher would be the secondary

instrument to this research. There are two data tables to help the researcher

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The first table is needed to answer the first objective of the research. The table

was designed to categorize the dark themes found in the story. The table helped

[image:49.612.122.557.271.483.2]

the researcher to classify the dark themes of the novel.

Table 1: Kinds of Dark Themes

No Dark

Themes

Page Quotation Explanation

1 A.Childre n’s anger

7 ‘Say goodbye to them?’ he asked,

staring at her in surprise. ‘Say goodbye to them?’ he repeated, spluttering out the words as if his mouth was full of biscuits that he’d munch into tiny pieces but not actually swallowed yet. ‘Say goodbye to Karl and Daniel and Martin?’ he continued, his voice coming dangerously close to shouting, which was not allowed indoors. ‘But they’re my three best friends for life’.

Bruno is angry with the fact that he needs to say goodbye to his best friends.

The second table was designed to help the researcher answer the second

objective. The table is crucial to answer the most important question to show how

the pleasure of the main characters is represented by the dark themes of the novel.

Thus, the second table played the most significant part to categorize the data

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[image:50.612.125.560.147.426.2]

Table 2: Pleasure of the Main Characters

Data No

Pleasure Page Explanation Pleasure

1 A. Pleas ure of obser ving

30 To begin with, they weren’t

children at all. Not all of them, at least. There were small boys and big boys, fathers and grandfathers. Perhaps a few uncles too. And some of those people who live on their own on

everybody’s road but don’t seem

to have any relatives at all. They were everyone.

‘Who are they?’ asked Gretel, as open-mouthed as her brother often was these days. ‘What sort of place is this?’

‘I’m not sure, ‘said Bruno, sticking as close to the truth as possible. ‘But it’s not as nice as home, I do know that much’

Bruno and Gretel feel the pleasure of observing the new environment.

E. The Technique of Data Collection

The technique of data collection is needed to help the researcher to obtain the

data and to classify the data. The researcher needs to follow the steps to obtain the

data effectively and to analyze the data through the data classification of The Boy

in The Striped Pyjamas. The first step referred to close reading and re-reading the novel as an effort to find the significant data. In this step, the researcher had to

read the text comprehensively and thoroughly to obtain the significant the data.

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upon the text and to gain a deeper understanding of the text. While reading the

text, the researcher took notes to any important data and classified them to a

certain category to help researcher draw conclusion at the end.

The second step was done to categorize the raw data. The raw data were

collected through few steps: 1) identifying, interpreting, and labeling them into

two kinds of categories: the dark themes and the pleasure in the dark themes and

2) re-examining the classified data whether the accurate data were already placed

in appropriate category. Those two data tables played an important part to

formulate the data.

F. Data Trustworthiness

To obtain authentic and trustful data, the researcher needs to provide

triangulation to guarantee the quality of the data. In ensuring the data

trustworthiness Julien (2008:121) states that validity and reliability is the key to

gain prominent result of content analysis. In this research, the researcher’s first

and second supervisors helped in checking the data. In addition, to provide data

trustworthiness, the researcher was helped by two graduate students under the

same concentration in literature and used children’s literature as their thesis

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G. Data Analysis

Data analysis refers to how the researcher categorized the raw data into a

certain category, found the relation between the data, discovered the deeper

meaning of the data and gave a deeper analysis to the data. Vanderstop and

Johnston (2009:267) agree that in obtaining the data, the reader of the research

should agree and understand how the researcher find the data, and trust the

procedure enough to agree that the result found in the research are valid.

Therefore, the data analysis is important to be established for its validity and

affectivity of the research.

There were some steps of data analysis done by the researcher. The lists of

the steps are below:

1. obtaining the raw data from the novel by close reading, re-reading and taking

notes,

2. classifying the raw data into two categories made by the researcher to sort

them based on their category,

3. identifying the classified data into more specific details of sub-categories,

4. re-examining classified data by checking, comparing and combining the data

in the two categories,

5. interpreting classified data into a new form of understanding, and

reporting the data analysis into a narrative form to gain a deeper

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40 CHAPTER IV

THE RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

There are two parts of the findings to answer the research questions. The first

part of the classifications is essential to reveal the first research question of dark

themes found in John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. The dark themes

are broken down into five major themes. The second part reveals the answer of

the second researchquestion. It includes the journey of the main characters as the

child characters. The second part of this chapter is essential to reveal how the

dark themes represent the pleasure of the main characters. There are three

categories of pleasure to represent the pleasure of the main characters. The last

part of this chapter is the discussion on the further implication of the research

findings in John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamasand the pleasure found

in its dark themes.

A. Research Findings

The researcher collected the data and categorized it into some categories to

fulfill the purposes of the research. There are two major tables to answer the two

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The second one is used to reveal how the dark themes represent the pleasure of

the main characters. The complete data can be found in the appendices.

1. Kinds of Dark Themes

There are various data found in the novel related to the research. The

researcher found various dark themes of John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. The data are categorized into five classifications. There are five dark themes found in the novel: children’s anger, people’s oppression toward children,

children’s sadness, children’s insecurity, and children’s dark environment. Those

five dark themes are considered as the main data classification of the research.

These findings are explained in the following.

a. Children’s Anger

The first theme found in the novel is anger. Anger has been one of the most

natural expressions of frustration. Anger might be performed in the simplest thing

like losing toys or even the hard ways of separation. Children are not excluded

from the expression of anger. Some children will let out their anger and some

others decide to keep their anger inside. Many of them let out their anger without

even realizing it. Therefore, it is a form of a spontaneous action when they feel

shocked and angry.

The anger is mostly referred to the child’s main character of the novel, Bruno.

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environment he has to deal with. When Bruno’s family leaves Berlin for

Out-With, that is the time when Bruno starts to show the dark side of him. In this case,

Bruno is forced to leave Berlin and his best friends. Bruno’s explosion of anger

and surprise can be seen in the datum below.

‘Say goodbye to them?’ he asked, staring at her in surprise. ‘Say goodbye to them?’ he repeated, spluttering out the words as if his mouth was full of biscuits that he’d munch into tiny pieces but not actually swallowed yet. ‘Say goodbye to Karl and Daniel and Martin?’ he continued, his voice coming dangerously close to shouting, which was not allowed indoors. ‘But they’re my three best friends for life.’ (Boyne, 2007:7)

In this novel, Bruno shows the hardship of separation. As a form of a spontaneous

action, Bruno lets out his anger when he hears the news that he will moves from

Berlin. The thought of leaving his three best friends also makes him burst in

anger. As a child, Bruno is attached to his three best friends as they always spent

time together. When he hears the news, he automatically protests his mother.

Children’s reaction to a sudden separation could be in different ways. Anger

is one of the most common emotion children could feel as a form of rejection.

Anger also could be a form of confusion because children feel the anxiety of

having a different routine. In the quotation below, it shows how Bruno reacts to

his new house after he moves.

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Bruno’s expression of disappointment is shown as he sees his new house. He

observes his new environment and compares it to his old house in Berlin. There

are huge differences between his old and new house. He feels as if there is no one

to hear him. No one agrees to h