The Portrayal of Protagonist in Benjamin Franklin Norris' 'McTeague'.

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Maranatha Christian University

ABSTRACT

Dalam tugas akhir ini, saya membahas tentang penggambaran tokoh protagonis dalam novel yang berjudul McTeague. McTeague awalnya digambarkan sebagai karakter yang statis sebagai seorang yang sederhana, penurut, kuat dan berhati baik. Namun demikian, serangkaian masalah dan tekanan dalam hidup, terutama disebabkan oleh istrinya membuatnya berubah menjadi seseorang yang beringas dan kejam sehingga pada akhirnya dia membunuh teman bahkan istrinya sendiri.

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17 APPENDICES

SYNOPSIS OF THE NOVEL

McTeague is a novel about a man who is described as a massively large

man with thick gigantic hands and dull-wit. His profession is a dentist. It is

learned from his friend, a charlatan dentist and he has his own dental parlor in his

flat. He has no experience with woman at all and cannot make a good

conversation with anybody, even with his best friend, Marcus. Although there are

some old ladies who are his patients, he never attempts to talk to them, except

about tooth introduced to a girl, Trina to be his new patient, and then he falls in

love with her. They begin courting. He invites Trina to see a show at the theatre

with Trina’s mother and her little brother. When they go home in the evening, they

learn that Trina wins $5000 in a lottery she bought at Mac’s parlor. Then, they

decide to be married.

At first, Trina and Mac have a happy life. Through bad turns of events

between Mac and Trina must sell their belongings and live in a one room hovel. In

their hardships, Trina becomes more and more greedy. It makes Mac growing

more and more disgusted to his little wife. He kills his wife and flees with her

money. Marcus hears the news of the death of Trina. He finds Mac in the dessert

and asks for about $5000. They fight each other for remaining water, and then

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18 BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR

Benjamin Franklin Norris or Frank Norris is an American novelist. He was born in

05 March 1870, Chicago. He moved to San Francisco at the age of fourteen and

he was educated at the University of California, Berkeley and at Harvard

University. During at the University of California, Berkeley, he was a brother in

Fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta. He worked as a news correspondent in South

Africa in 1895 – 1896, and then an editorial assistant on the San Francisco Wave

in 1896 – 1897. Besides, he worked for McClure’s Magazine as a war

correspondent in Cuba during the Spanish – American war in 1898. He joined the

New York City publishing firm of Doubleday & Page in 1898.

Norris was influenced by the advent and an optimistic of Darwinism and

Thomas Henry Huxley’s philosophical. His peculiarity and confusion makes him

exposed to the naturalist novels of Emile Zola. His works often includes

depictions of suffering caused by corrupt and greedy turn of the century corporate

monopolies.

In 1900 he married Jeanette Black and had a child in 1901. Because of

peritonitis from a ruptured appendix, he died in 1902 at the age of thirty two and

left his young wife and his baby, also his The Epic of Wheat trilogy unfinished.

He was buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California.

Source: “Biography of Benjamin Franklin Norris.” Sep. 2009.

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Benjamin Franklin Norris or Frank Norris is one of the famous American

novelists in the Progressive Era, at the turn of the century, which lasted from the

1890s to the 1920s. He is well-known as a realist and naturalist figure in

American fiction. He describes a believable everyday reality in lower and middle

classes in his stories and the stories generally end in tragedy.

Frank Norris’s notable works are McTeague (1890), The Octopus: A

California Story (1901), and The Pit (1903). For my thesis, I decide to analyze

McTeague as I find the book is interesting and fascinating to me, easy to read and

to understand. McTeague was written in the Progressive Era and it has been

filmed repeatedly under the title Greedy in 1924. This book is the first book of Frank Norris but it is the most famous. The book is surprising and shocking

because in the beginning of the story, the novel presents a promising and hopeful

atmosphere but it ends tragically. In this novel, the author exposes the dark

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Maranatha Christian University who is stupid, obidient and immensely strong and later he kills his wife and his

best friend.

The name of protagonist is McTeague (he has no first name). His very

simple life changes into a hard-life and it makes him become a nasty and cruel

man. The author uses his protagonist to convey his ideas and that is why I would

like to analyze the portrayal of protagonist, using formalism. As stated in Story

and Structure,

“All fictional characters may be classified as a static or dynamic.

The static character is the same sort of person at the end of the story as

he was at the beginning. The dynamic or developing character undergoes

a permanent change in some aspect of his character, personality, or

outlook” (Perrine 71).

So, I think it is most suitable for me to analyze portrayal of protagonist from

McTeague based on the above definition.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

I will discuss the following problems in this study:

1. How does the author portray the protagonist?

2. What is the author’s purpose in creating such protagonist?

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

Based on the statement of the problem, the purposes of the study are:

1. To show how the author portrays the protagonist.

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METHOD OF RESEARCH

I used library research in my analysis and I start by reading McTeague as

the primary text. I also read and use some resources and references from the book

and internet to help and support me in writing the thesis. Finally, I draw some

conclusions of what has been discussed.

ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS

The thesis consists of three chapters, preceded by Abstract,

Acknowledgment, and Table of Contents. Chapter One is the Introduction

comprising of the Background of the Study, the Statement of the Problem, the

Organization of the Thesis. Chapter Two is the Portrayal of the Protagonist in

Frank Norris’s McTeague. The last chapter, Chapter Three is the Conclusion. The

thesis ends with the Bibliography and the Appendices, which consist of Synopsis

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CHAPTER THREE

CONCLUSION

After having analyzed the portrayal of the protagonist, McTeague in the

novel, I arrive at a conclusion that Norris has constructed the portrayal of the

protagonist very well because he manages to reveal each characteristic of the

protagonist from static into dynamic very smartly and surprisingly. This

conclusion comes from the fact that I, as the writer do not expect such changes of

characters to be very frontal. It is because from the start, McTeague is depicted as

a person who is not bright together with its sub characteristics such as being

stammered, a slow thinker, unsociable and else. This makes me think previously

that the story is likely to revolve around the protagonist’s adventure or struggle

over his not being bright. And yet, after a through reading of the novel, I find it

surprising to discover that the protagonist undergoes an extreme change from not

being bright into a man of violence.

Specifically, Norris depicts his static character very well. Norris cleverly

portrays his being stammered, particularly when Mac repeatedly stammers in a

number of different occasions and not being bright, particularly when he does not

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Maranatha Christian University Norris portrays such characteristics in a realistic way because this kind of

character relates closely and can easily be found in daily lives. This is in

accordance with Norris’s being naturalistic writer. One of the characteristics of a

naturalist is that they conceive the world as it is and in a very realistic manner.

The fact that Mac experiences certain changes of characteristics also goes along

with Norris’s being a realistic and naturalistic writer. In our daily life, very often

we find that a person can totally change and become a new kind of person if

having been oppressed so many things. A person, regardless of the characteristics

that he on he has, will likely to change because that is what happens to people. It

is natural process and a realistic fact.

That is why, I find it necessary to point out and summarize that the aim of

the author to present such a character is to portray a realistic character that is

natural and exists in our daily lives. As regards for the application in the real life, I

conclude that there is a kind of a moral lesson from this novel that is we should

not to oppress a person to a certain extent that might become stressful for the

person, and which may lead to person’s expressing his anger in an extreme way

like McTeague does in the novel.

In terms of being naturalistic, I find that McTeague is seems to be bounded

by fate. He can seem to do anything or to make an effort to change his life when

he is depressed by his reality of being unemployed, being ridiculed by his wife or

his friends as well. He merely accepts such a reality defenselessly. This shows that

he is the representation of a naturalistic character whose life is determined by fate

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Maranatha Christian University In my opinion, I find it wrong for someone to simply rely on fate in life.

We are the one that creates our own fate. If we work hard, never give ourselves up

or come up with a number of excuses, we can create our fate. In life, we are

confronted with a number of chooses in life, and we are entitled to choose who we

want to become if we fight for it. Each choice that we have has its own benefits

and losses and God gives us freedom to make up our own choice.

What happens in this novel actually from the characters’ own choices of

life. Had McTeague chosen to fight his fate, the result would have been much

different. The same is also true of Trina. If only she had not been so thrifty and

close-minded to help her own husband, he would not have been killed by her

husband and her life would have been happier.

Trina chooses to be selfish and leads to her being killed by her husband

finally. It applied to real life, I can gain a moral lesson from this novel that is, in

our life, we must not surrender to our fate, instead we must fight for our fate and

choose our own destiny, so that in the end we will not have a miserable kind of

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Maranatha Christian University 19

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Text:

Norris, Benjamin Franklin. McTeague. New York: W.W. Norton, 1899.

References:

Perine, Laurence. Story and Structure. United States: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974

Internet Websites:

The Portrayal of Protagonist in Benjamin Franklin Norris' 'McTeague'.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER TWO: ANALYSIS OF PORTRAYAL OF

PROTAGONIST

IN

FRANK

NORRIS’S

McTeague

. . . 4

CHAPTER THREE: CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

APPENDICES:

ABSTRACT

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER THREE

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY