Analysis of Elements of Plot in Rodman Philbrick and Lynn Harnett's 'Abduction'.

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ABSTRACT

Dalam Tugas Akhir ini, saya menganalisis sebuah novel science fiction yang berjudul Abduction karya Rodman Philbrick dan Lynn Harnett. Novel ini menceritakan kejadian aneh yang melibatkan dua karakter yang bernama Luke Ingram dan Mandy Durgin.

Di dalam Tugas Akhir ini saya bermaksud untuk meneliti bagaimana peranan dan keterkaitan antara unsur-unsur pembentuk plot yang terdapat dalam novel science fiction ini. Saya ingin mencoba untuk mengetahui apakah suspense, surprise dan artistic unity yang terdapat dalam novel ini benar-benar saling memiliki keterkaitan yang erat yang menjadikan novel ini sebagai novel science fiction yang baik dan menarik untuk dibaca. Ketika membaca novel ini, orang akan merasakan adanya ketegangan yang terus memuncak dan kejadian yang tidak pernah mereka duga sehingga membuat mereka ingin terus membaca cerita tersebut.

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Maranatha Christian University

APPENDICES

Synopsis of Abduction

Luke Ingram is a teenager who lives in Greenfield. He realizes that he has

been abducted by aliens. The same thing happens to Mandy Durgin, Luke’s

close friend. Meanwhile, Quentin, their childhood friend, works with the

aliens by helping them abduct the people of Greenfields to be made their

soldiers.

Quentin helps the aliens to abduct people of Greenfield, included Mandy

and Luke, to become the aliens’ slave. He is very sure that he can make all

people of Greenfield become the aliens’ slave because he has the power to do

it. Moreover, His self-confidence characteristic increases because his

appearance has improved drastically after the aliens help him.

As a matter of fact, the aliens like to help him because Quentin is the only

one who can detect The Others, the sworn enemies of the aliens. Moreover,

Quentin helps abduct people for the aliens because the aliens cannot live with

Earth’s oxygen.

In the end, Mandy and Luke save Greenfield from Quentin’s hand and run

away from the alien spaceship after they put poison in the aliens’ food that

makes their body weak. Because of that, the aliens cancel their mission to

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Maranatha Christian University Biography of Rodman Phillbrick and Lynn Harnett

Rodman Philbrick

Rodman Philbrick is a famous science fiction and historical fiction author

for teen readers. He was born in 1951 at Boston, Massachusetts. His first career as

the author has begun when he wrote his first novel, Shooting Star, about Ronnie

Garrick who decides to become a rock singer star from rises until receives her

consequences, in 1982. He is also publishing some of his works like Slow Dancer,

a novel that tells about detective Connie Kale, under the pseudonym of William R.

Dantz in 1984.

He married to Lynn Harnett, the author. Together they have created some

works like Abduction, The Haunting, and Children of the Wolf. His famous novel

is Freak the Mighty, gotJudy Lopez Memorial Award Honor. This novel is

inspired by the young boy, who lived as his next neighbor, died because of

Morquio Syndrome. _{Then, he sparked a sequel, Max the Mighty, which was}

published in 1988. The Fire Pony and The Young Man and the Sea are some of

another famous of his novel works for teen readers. In Fire Pony, he uses

Montana as its setting and features a young man as its narrator. Meanwhile, The

Young Man and the Sea has clear parallels to early twentieth-century writer Ernest

Hemingway’s classic, The Old Man and the Sea. After he collaborated with his

wife to create some works, he returned to solo projects like The Last Book in the

Universe.

Source: http://biography.jrank.org/pages/1818/Philbrick-W-Rodman-

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Lynn Harnett

Lynn Harnett was born on September 27, 1950, in Brooklyn, New York.

She was grown up and educated in East Meadow, Long Island. In 1972, she

graduated from State University of New York at Oneonta with a degree of

literature. Not long after that, she works as a full-time editor and photojournalist

in the Exeter News-Letter. She had a long career included worked as Assistant

Editor for Business Digest. Then she married with Rodman Philbrick in 1980. In

the early '90s, she began to write novels for young readers and published ten

books with Scholastic, Inc with her husband, like Abduction, Things, The trilogy

of Werewolf Chronicles, and Strange Invaders. Things itself is a novel about

Nick, Jessie, and Frasier which must fight the aliens by tracking down the source

of the aliens’ energy. Meanwhile, the Werewolf Chronicles consists of three

novels. They are Night Creature as the first novel, Children of The Wolves as the

second novel, and The Wereing as the third novel. These three novels are about a

male toddler who abandoned in the woods, taken in by a wolf mother, and can

transform himself into a werewolf. Lynn never published her own novel works

like her husband did. She died peacefully at her home in the Florida, on March 15,

2012 because of cancer disease.

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Science fiction, which is “highly imaginative fiction typically involving

actual or projected scientific phenomena” (English Dictionary 373), has been

regarded as “a distinct literary genre” that insistently occurs as “a social

phenomenon”. Sociologists, psychologists, historian of ideas, and political

scientists began to turn to it on the assumption that it was an important aspect of

the “sign of the times” (Parrinder xiv). People can find science fiction in literary

works dealing with “scientific topics, space travel, aliens, and recognizably

Earth-variant worlds or life forms that have not been touched by magic” (Introduction to

Science Fiction). For example, there are novels which have future characteristic in

science fiction genre like scientific topics in Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, alien in H.G.

Wells’ The War of The World, space travel in Alastair Reynolds’s Pushing Ice,

and Earth-variant worlds or life forms that have not been touched by magic in

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Rodman Philbrick is an American science-fiction author whose works are

famous among teen readers around the world. Meanwhile, Lynn Harnett,

Philbrick’s wife, is an author and journalist who collaborates with her husband in

writing some novels like The Haunting and Strange Invaders. The Haunting is a

horror novel about twelve-year-old Jason, and his little sister, Sally, who

terrorized by a series of ghostly occurrences that target children. Meanwhile,

Strange Invaders is a science fiction novel about Nick and his twin sister Jessie.

Both of them saw the strange glow hovering over Harley Hills.

I like science fiction because there are many elements of suspense and

surprise in it. This is the reason for me to choose Philbrick and Harnett’s novel,

Abduction, for my study. This novel concerns the mystery of alien existence and

unlike other works by Philbrick, the major character in this novel is not a detective

but two teenagers, Luke and Mandy.

I am going to analyze the suspense and surprise, two important elements in

this science fiction novel. In addition, I am also going to reveal how the suspense

and surprise create the artistic unity in the story. Suspense is “when reader’s

curiosity is combined with anxiety about the fate of some sympathetic character”

(Perrine 45). It also “makes the reader ask ‘What’s going to happen next?’ or

‘How will this turn out?’ and impels him to read on to find the answer to these

questions“ (45). Perrine says that suspense can be achieved by introducing

mystery, which is “an unusual set of circumstances for which the reader craves an

explanation, or to place the hero or heroine in a dilemma” (45). Meanwhile,

surprise is an element that is “proportional to the unexpectedness of what

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Maranatha Christian University expectation” (47). Finally, artistic unity is “the various stages of the story (which)

are linked together in a chain of cause and effect” (Perrine 49). In other words,

there is “nothing irrelevant that does not contribute to the total meaning; nothing

that is there only for its own sake or its own excitement” (Reuben).

Statement of The Problem

Based on the Background of the Study previously explained, the statement of

the problem is formulated as follows:

1. Which events in the novel contain elements of suspense?

2. Which events in the novel contain elements of surprise?

3. How do the suspense and surprise create artistic unity in the novel?

Purpose of the Study

The Statement of the Problem reflects the purposes of the study, which are

1. to identify the elements of suspense in the novel.

2. to identify the elements of surprise in the novel.

3. to show that the suspense and surprise create artistic unity in the novel.

Method of Research

I used library research in writing my thesis. Firstly, I read Abduction, which I

chose as the primary text. Then, I searched for references from printed and on-line

sources to support my analysis, which was on suspense and surprise elements of

the novel. After this, I collected the data from the novel to support my analysis of

suspense and surprise. I also tried to find out how the suspense and surprise had

created the artistic unity in the novel. Finally, I drew the conclusion and wrote the

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Organization of the Thesis

This thesis consists of three chapters. The first chapter is the Introduction,

which consists of the Background of the Study, Statement of the Problem,

Purpose of the Study, Method of Research, and Organization of the Thesis. The

second chapter is the Analysis of the Elements of Suspense and Surprise, which

involves an explanation on how the suspense and surprise create the artistic unity

in the novel, which is Rodman Philbrick and Lynn Harnett’s Abduction. The third

chapter of the thesis presents the Conclusion. Finally, the thesis ends with the

Bibliography and the Appendices, which contain the Synopsis of the novel and

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CHAPTER THREE

CONCLUSION

After having analysed the elements of plot in Abduction_{, I can conclude}

that Rodman Philbrick and Lynn Harnett are skilful science fiction authors due to

the fact that they succeed not only in producing a good story which makes the

reader feel satisfied but also in creating the elements of suspense, surprise, and

artistic unity so perfectly that these elements make the story become interesting to

read. They succeed in producing a good story because they have put a right

connection between the suspenses and surprises in the right places so that the

reader can feel the tension when they are curious about how something can

happen and they will also feel surprised when they know the answers.

Most of the elements of suspense in Philbrick and Harnett’s Abduction_are

full of mysteries, which make the reader wonder and ask a question about the fate

of the two main characters, Luke and Mandy. In the novel, the first suspense

occurs when Luke and Mandy experience blackout and lose four hours twice. This

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four hours. Not long after that, the second suspense happens when Mandy gets a

bad dream so that she cannot sleep well at night. The next day, Quentin talks to

her that he knows that Mandy cannot sleep well at night. This surprises her and

makes her question herself how he can know that. Later, Luke finds that he cannot

control his body. Then, another event occurs: Quentin appears in Luke’s dream.

This raises three questions: how Quentin can know that Mandy cannot sleep well

at night, what happens to Luke’s body and how Quentin can appear in Luke’s

dream. The third suspense happens when Luke and Mandy see the aliens for the

first time when they wake up inside the spaceship. At the same time, they also see

that the aliens make an agreement with Quentin and they wonder about what the

aliens do with Quentin. Then, the fourth suspense appears when they find out that

there are implants inside their head. This raises a question about how they can be

free from the implant’s influence. Finally, the fifth suspense occurs when Quentin

explains to Mandy about his plan to invade Greenfield, which creates a question

about whether Greenfield can be saved or not from the aliens’ invasion. Not only

does the suspense make the reader feel anxious about what will happen next, but it

also raises tension in the readers’ minds. They make the reader feel that they are

brought into the story and experience the story as though they are the main

characters in the story.

The second element is surprise. First of all, the first surprise answers the first

suspense. The story tells that the aliens are behind Luke and Mandy’s losing four

hours. The second surprise is when the relationship between the aliens and Quentin

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Maranatha Christian University Quentin use their technology. The third surprise is answering the third suspense and

it tells that they are abducted by the aliens in order that the two teenagers become

their experimental objects. The fourth surprise answers the fourth suspense by

telling that Luke and Mandy can be freed from the implant’s influence. Finally, the

fifth surprise answers the fifth suspense by telling that Greenfield is saved after

Luke and Mandy struggle to fail the aliens’ invasion.

Based on my analysis on suspense and surprise above, I can say that

suspense and surprise are linked together to make artistic unity. Firstly, the first

artistic unity has a connection with the first surprise and the first suspense. It tries to

explain that the aliens have a connection with Luke and Mandy’s losing hours. The

second artistic unity has a connection with the second surprise and second suspense.

Through it, the reader can realize that Luke’s body movement is controlled by

Quentin with the help of the aliens. This also answers how Quentin can control

Luke’s body. The third artistic unity shows a connection between the third surprise

and the third suspense. From this connection, the reader can know that the aliens

abduct Luke and Mandy to be the experimental objects by putting the silvery needle

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will not feel bored in reading to the end of the story. In other words, the three

elements in Abduction_{are related to one another to make the story easier to be}

understood.

In a science fiction novel, suspense is the most important element because

the purpose of this kind of novel is to make the reader feel the tension and curiosity

in their minds. Then, when readers are trapped in the suspense, they unexpectedly

get the results which make them feel surprised. As a result, the artistic unity appears

due to the strong connection of suspense and surprise in the story, which makes the

story successful. The connection of the two elements can be seen through the novel,

Abduction_{. In the end, all the mysteries are answered, and the reader}s’_{tensions are}

over.

I feel satisfied and surprised when I read the novel. The mystery elements in

the novel are good to make me or the reader to imagine about the two main

characters that experience blackout problems. Moreover, I feel the suspense and

surprise have created a good plot to make the story entertaining to be read. In my

conclusion, Abduction_{is a good novel to be read by all readers who love science}

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Text

Philbrick, Rodman and Lynn Harnett. Abduction. 1998. New York: Scholastic.

References

Harnett, Lynn. “Lynn Harnet.” N.D. Web. 5 December 2012.

Parrinder, Patrick. Science Fiction: Its Critcism and Teaching. 1980. New York: Methuen & Co. Ltd. Print.

Perrine, Laurence. Literature: Structure, Sound and Sense. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc, 1974. Print.

Philbrick, W.R. “(W.) Rodman Philbrick (1951-) Biography – Personal, Career,

Honors Awards, Writings, Adaptations, Work in Progress, Sidelights.” N.D. 22 April 2009. Web.