CHAPTER III
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
A. Object of the Study
The movie script of Carnage was written in 2011 by Yazmina Reza.
The story is about two spouses Michael Longstreet and Penelope Longstreet,
Alan Cowan and Nancy Cowan that gather in one apartment due the problem
of their sons Zachary Longstreet and Ethan Cowan who got involved into a
fight. They want to deal with the problem with a good manner. As their time
together to deal with their sons’ problem, increasingly abnormal behavior
throws the discussion into chaos.
B. Approach of the Study
The writer used psychological approach in this study. Psychology itself
is a study about mind and behavior which is obviously for identifying mind
and revealing behavior (Jarvis, 2006:1). Psychological approach focuses on
the role of internal processes such as motivation in shaping personality, and
thereby behavior as it deals extensively with mental processes within the
person (Glassman and Hadad, 2009:224-225). There are several assumptions
in psychological approach, there are psychic determinism which states that all
behavior has a cause that is determined and the cause is to be found in the
mind; psychological approach believes that much of behavior is governed by
Although psychological approach is an excellent tool for reading
beneath the lines, the interpretive craftsman must often use other tools such as
the formalist approach for a proper rendering of the lines themselves (Guerin,
Labor, Morgan, Reesman & Willingman, 2005:153). Fred McKinney’s in his
book Psychology in Action: Basic Readings, he wrote that Freudian theory in
literary criticism helps to understand the nature of creative writing, choice of
themes, elaboration and resolution of plots (McKinney, 1967:350). In this
study, the device from formalist approach was symbol which to support
psychological approach to interpret the psychological terms in the film script.
Symbol is a way of using something integral to the work to reach beyond the
work and engage the world of value outside the work. It might be incident
that takes on meaning (2005:106). In the application of psychological
approach to literary works, it sees psychological terms represented by
symbols which the symbols theselves could be the actions, activities, the
structure of the literary work, objects, and places; for example in the
application of psychological approach to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young
Goodman Brown, the approach interpreted the village as a place social and
moral order as the superego; the forest, as a place of wild, untamed passions
and terrors was interpreted as the id; the Brown himself as the character was
interpreted as the ego (2005:170). Literary interpretation and psychoanalysis
are two distinct fields, and though they may be closely associated, they can in
no sense be regarded as parts of one discipline (2005:180).
Since the object of study is not a human but a literary work, there is a
plot. In order to find the id, ego, superego from the character of Penelope
Longstreet, they needed to be seen from the events of each stages in the plot.
As the result, from those events the works of id, ego, superego can be seen
and finding the clashes between them. In addition to this, defense
mechanisms that Penelope used are needed to be found. In addition to the
bridge between psychological approach and plot; how psychological
approach can be used to reveal character’s behavior through plot. In revealing
behavior, the operation of ego’s task in dealing with demands of id, superego,
reality which means that conflict is a fact of life within personality, and the
varying demands of id, superego, and reality require a continuing balancing
act by ego (Glassman and Hadad, 2009:234-235). Furthermore, Kirszner and
Mandell’s in their book Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing about plot and
revealing behavior or in this book they used “attitude” said that character’s
attitudes, feelings, beliefs, and value are revealed through character’s words
and actions (Kirszner and Mandell, 2000:1028, 1034). The character’s words
and actions are all contain in the plot. In order to reveal a character’s behavior,
psychological approach in this case freudian psychoanalysis is needed.
Freudian psychoanalysis believes that unconscious forces have the power to
influence behavior (Cloninger, 2004:33). Since the character is not a real
human but a character in a literary work, plot is the place for finding the
forces.The ways in which it does so are reveal behavior. As the final result,
by looking through the operation of structures of personality, Penelope’s
C. Method of the Study
This study was begun by choosing the literary work and turned out a
film script from Roman Polanski’s movie Carnage written by Yasmina Reza
which the film script needed to be looked through and searched for the
suitable and potential character that can be analyzed. Some possible topics
were needed to be determined in order to chose one fixed topic and searching
for the suitable theories which led to problems formulation and objectives of
the study. In this study, the aim is to find Penelope Longstreet’s behavior
which already formulated in the problem formulation. In order to answer the
problem formulation, there are several steps that need to be done:
The first step is classifying the events from each stages of the plot and
finding out Penelope Longstreet’s strctures of personality through the plot.
The second step is revealing Penelope Longstreet’s behavior by looking
through the operation of Penelope Longstreet’s structure of personality.
