THEME IN ROBERT FROST POEMS
A THESIS
Submitted to the English Applied Linguistic Study Program in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of
Magister Humaniora
By:
MUHAMMAD SAYUTHI
Registration Number: 8106111023
ENGLISH APPLIED LINGUISTICS STUDY PROGRAM
POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL
STATE UNIVERSITY OF MEDAN
MEDAN
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ABSTRACT
Muhammad Sayuthi, Theme in Robert Frost Poems. Thesis: English Applied Linguistics Study Program. State University of Medan 2015.
This study was conducted to describe Theme structures in Robert Frost Poems. The objectives of this study are 1) to find out various patterns of Theme used in Robert Frost Poems, 2) to identify Nature realization through Theme in Robert Frost Poems, and 3) to find out the reason of the structures of Theme used Robert Frost Poems due to aesthetic perspective of poems. The data were obtained from Complete Poems of Robert Frost and were analyzed by using some steps as normally applied in descriptive qualitative method. The instruments of data collection were the clauses in selected poems in Complete Poems of Robert
Frost. Moreover, the analysis was descriptive analysis which was conducted by
describing the data. There were ten poems chosen; Stars, Now Close The
Windows, Good Hours, The Road Not Taken, The Oven Bird, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Blue-Butterfly Day, Acquainted with the Night, Neither Out Far Nor in Deep, and The Silken Tent. The data analysis revealed
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ABSTRAK
Muhammad Sayuthi, Theme in Robert Frost Poems. Tesis: Program Studi Linguistik Terapan Bahasa Inggris. Universitas Negeri Medan 2015.
Penelitian ini diadakan untuk menggambarkan struktur Tema dalam Puisi Robert Frost. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk: 1) menemukan variasi pola Tema yang digunakan dalam Puisi Robert Frost, 2) mengidentifikasi unsur Nature yang terealisasi dalam Tema dalam Puisi Robert Frost, dan 3) menemukan alasan penggunaan struktur Tema dalam Puisi Robert Frost. Data diambil dari buku berjudul Complete Poems of Robert Frost dan dianalisis menggunakan beberapa tahapan yang senantiasa diaplikasikan dalam metode deskriptif kualitatif. Pengumpulan instrumen data adalah seluruh klausa puisi terpilih dalam Complete
Poems of Robert Frost. Kemudian, analisis deskriptif digunakan untuk
menggambarkan data. Ada sepuluh puisi yang dipilih, yakni: Stars, Now Close
The Windows, Good Hours, The Road Not Taken, The Oven Bird, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Blue-Butterfly Day, Acquainted with the Night, Neither Out Far Nor in Deep, dan The Silken Tent. Berdasarkan analisis data
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CHAPTER II. LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Metafunctions ……….……… 9
2.4.3 Interpersonal Theme………... 20
2.4.4 Simple and Multiple Theme………... 21
2.5 Rheme………….……… 26
2.6 Systems of Theme and Rheme …..………. 28
2.7 Clause ……….……… 29
2.7.1 Simple Clause………. 29
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2.8 Clause Complex ………. . 31
2.9 Poetry……… 33
2.10 Relevant Studies.………...………... 38
2.11 Conceptual Framework …………..……….. 38
CHAPTER III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3.1 The Design of the Study……… 40
3.2 The Data and Data Source……… 41
3.3 The Technique of Data Collection... 41
3.4 The Technique of Data Analysis ……….. 42
CHAPTER IV. DATA ANALYSIS, FINDING, AND DISCUSSION 4.1 Data Analysis…... ….. 43
4.1.1 Patterns of Themes Used in Robert Frost Poems………. 44
4.1.2 Nature Realization through Themes in Poems ……….….... 52
4.1.3 Reasons of the Construction of Theme Structure……….. 54
4.2 Findings………... …… 55
4.3 Discussion………... 56
CHAPTER V. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 5.1 Conclusions………..……... 74
5.2 Suggestions……… 75
References………...….. 76
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2.5 Nominal Group Complex as Theme………. . 23
2.6 Nominal Group Complex as Theme……….. 23
2.7 Adverbial as Theme……….. 24
2.8 Adverbial as Theme……….. 24
2.9 Prepositional as Theme……….. 25
2.10 Prepositional as Theme……… 25
2.11 Rheme………. 27
4.1 The Description of Clauses Number of the Selected Poems………... 43
4.2 Pattern of Themes of Selected Poems in Complete Poems of Robert Frost …….………..…. 45
4.3 Unmarked Simple Theme, Marked Simple Theme, Unmarked Multiple Theme, Marked Multiple Theme of Selected Poems in Complete Poems of Robert Frost ………...… 47
4.4 Nature as Themes .………... 53
4.5 Nature as Theme ………..…... 53
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“now close the windows”………... 61
4.8 The Theme of Textual Topical in “good hours”……….………. 62
4.9 The Theme of Topical in “road not taken”……….………. 64
4.10 The Theme of Interpersonal Topical Textual Topical in
“the oven bird”……… 65
4.11 The Theme of Topical in “stopping by woods on
a snowy evening”……… 67
4.12 The Theme of Topical in “blue-butterfly day”………... 69
4.13 The Theme of Interpersonal Topical in “acquainted with
the night”………. 70
4.14 The Theme of Topical in “neither out far nor in deep”………... 71 4.15 The Theme of Textual Interpersonal Topical in
“the silken tent”……… 73
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LIST OF APPENDICES
Appendix Pages
A. Complete Poems of Robert Frost………...…... 79
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1. The Background of the Study
Robert Frost is one the famous American poets. He has created many
literary works especially poems. As a poet, Robert Frost used words compiled into beautiful sentences. He always used nature as his inspiration to represent his emotions and intentions through the poems. His sentences had not only simplicity
but also depth interpretation to the meaning. Overall, the sentences used are well.
Frost’s poems are made almost all of them by using nature. He appreciated
nature for its own sake, but he saw most of them in a relation to a man. It seems related to the quotations in Robert Frost Collection of Critical Essays which was written by Cox based on the ideas of Lynen below:
“The relationship between man and nature represents the whole problem raised by the opposition of mind and matter of man’s actual experience with its feeling, and intuitions of value... (Cox, 1962: 177)
The existential satisfaction he felt was based partly on a sense that the natural worls is beautiful and on the whole beneficial to man, but more largely on an
enjoyment of human activity for its own sake and a confidence in human nature.
As a poet who explored and experimented with ideas and works, Frost certainly enjoyed the playing of mind partly for its own sake. Frost’s appreciation
of humanity went deeper than simply enjoying immediate experience. Most typically, it revealed itself as kind of humanism. Altough he objected strongly be
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considered a humanist in an aesthetic sense. Frost was in his poems intensely preoccupied with man, his problems, his potential, and his basic achievements,
quite commonly in non-religious terms. It is true that Frost often represented man as persisting despite the odds againts him in a fearful universe, but his faith led him often to a more cheerful, optimistic view of experience. He felt that man had
it in him to enjoy his world and his life. Man may not be able to exercise complete control over his natural environment nor to solve the mysteries of the universe but
he can maintain the basic values built into a man for a satisfactory way of life (Pardede, 2005).
The research takes the data from classical poems written by Robert Frost.
Frost’s poems consist of hundreds poems. In this research, the selected poems of his will be analyzed. There are some reasons why the taken object is Frost poems.
First, his works contain of beauty. The beauty represents emotions. Emotions themselves represent the essential part of literary works and they are written in an artistic way. His works are also said to be a genre of literature which reveals
mystery, beauty, and loveliness of human life and nature, and in which imaginations, passions, and feelings’ predominate.
Besides, his poems also contain many interpretations due to the readers. Some say that poems is quite difficult to understand. The language it used is too abstract and cannot be understood well if it is just read once. There are other
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Frost’s The Road Not Taken for example has various interpretations for the readers especially for those who love a poem. The use of natural element has been
there in the third stanza: In leaves no step had trodden black. Leaves is the symbol of nature. It is only used for a plant. It is green, could be small or big, yellow when it gets old and falls down to the earth in autumn. It is useful to produce
oxygen where it has photosynthesis process; and truly those are the real meaning of leaves. For frost, it could have another meaning. It could be to show the readers
that it is about a fate of a person; who do not follow other men to choose the very common choice; or it could be meant for no one thinks about this choice at all.
Another natural element used in Frost’s poems can be shown from
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, on the first line of the fourth stanza, the
woods are lovely, dark, and deep. By saying woods, perhaps it represents the life.
Frost loved to say the real meaning using the nature. When it seen wholly, woods is place which is huge, full of many things including trees, animals, and etc. the same case also happens to life, where life consists of living things, professions,
intrigue, and many more. So, this is interesting when Frost dealt life into natural element. That is why he is also called naturalist, the poet who use nature to
represent the meaning or could be a message through a poem (Pardede, 2005).
View it from theoretical perspective, poem genre has theme. Theme as the clause message, as Halliday said, is frequently marked off in speech by intonation,
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functioning as subject where the theme is anything other than that which most expected (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004: 67).
Furthermore, Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) said that the theme is coded by three elements; ideational, interpersonal, and textual. The first element takes the transitivity system of ideational function. The second element takes the
interpersonal and the third takes the textual function of the sentence.
The theme in a simple sentence may be simple or multiple. A simple
theme is coded by one element of the clause which can be called topical theme since it covers a process, participant or circumstance while the multiple theme is coded by more than one element in the form of topical, interpersonal, and textual
(Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004).
The research will use SFL theory especially to the Theme and Rheme.
There are some reasons why Frost’s poems are analised using Theme and Rheme. First, poems contain theme and rheme. If common sentences have themes in them, Frost also has them in his. Because they are structured into sentences, they have
no different in taking lead the Themes in them.
Second, themes lead readers to understand the sentences to create
meaning. Themes will illuminate the whole structures of sentence. Themes will be gotten if the readers can get the main poin of the sentence. The first gotten idea is called the themes. Themes are always there in every single sentence, especially in
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Third, there may be similarity of constructing Theme and Rheme between common sentences and poems’ sentences. If in a common sentence, Theme is the
main idea to be conveyed while the Rheme is the rest of the main idea, so is the sentences in poems. The sentences in Frost’s may have the same construction or it could have different ways of constructing to be found later.
The forming of a poem could be dealt with the forming of a sentence commonly. Frost’s The Road Not Taken can show the similarity of the starting
point in a clause such as shown from the following table. Table 1.1 Unmarked Theme
I
shall be telling this with a sigh Topical
Theme (US) Rheme
I in the clause taken from stanza four can be coded as the theme; since
it is normally located in the starting point called unmarked theme, furthermore
it is kind of topical theme, while the rest is the rheme.
When it relates to common sentence, it can be seen from Tommy ate
banana yesterday; Tommy will be the theme and the rest is the rheme. Since
Tommy is commonly located as the starting point, so it can be called unmarked
theme.
Another clause also shows the similarity of theme and rheme between
poems and common sentence. The last line of the first stanza of The Road Not
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Table 1.2 Marked Theme
To where It bent in the undergrowth;
Prepo wh-
RHEME interpersonal
THEME (MM)
The words To where shows the different starting point of a clause since
it begins with something unusual one; that is why it is called Marked theme. Besides, the presence of wh- senses the clause as interpersonal theme. The number of the clause is only one; however, since it begins with the wh- as the
element of multiple theme, the clause is called multiple theme.
Dealing with the same reason can be shown from the example
Yesterday Tommy ate banana. Now the word Yesterday is the starting point
and it is unusual to be the theme while another is coded by the element of the transitivity system.
Relate to this study, the researcher analyses Frost’s poems to observe the serve language development at best due to the systemic especially by
considering Theme. In conclusion, the researcher wants to see the process of the analysis of Theme and Rheme in Robert Frost’s Poems. This is the difference of poem analysis literaturally and linguistically. Literature sees the
poem as the language to convey the idea of the author without considering the structure of the whole sentence while linguistic sees the poem through the
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1.2. The Problems of the Study
The problems of the study of the research are formulated operationally as in the following.
1. What various patterns of Theme are used in Robert Frost poems? 2. How does Nature realize through Theme in Robert Frost poems?
3. Why are the structures of Themes used in Robert Frost poems constructed
as they are?
1.3. The Objectives of the Study
In relation to the problems, the objectives of the study are: 1) to find out various patterns of Theme used in Robert Frost Poems,
2) to identify Nature realization through Theme in Robert Frost Poems,
3) to find out the reason of the structures of Theme used Robert Frost Poems
due to aesthetics perspective.
1.4. The Scopes of the Study
This study is restricted to cover three points. They are; 1) Themes as the analysis of message in Frost poems, 2) various patterns by considering
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1.5. The Significances of the Study
It is expected that findings of the study are relevant and useful theoretically and practically. Theoretically, the findings of the study are
expected to justify the use of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) theories, Theme, are applicable to texts which are used in to other disciplines such as Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). Practically, the study are
expected to be useful for.
1. The students themselves to improve their ability to understand and to
comprehend a poem which is effective in getting the message through the sentences,
2. The teachers who teach poems. The teachers should be more concerned not
only in analyzing the meaning of the poems but also the content of the poems based on the pattern of language development in order that its contents are rely related to the needs of the students, and
3. All researchers who want to use the result of this research become the
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CHAPTER V
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
5.1 Conclusions
After having the data analysis, conclusions are drawn as the following. (1) Multiple Theme was dominantly used in selected poems of Robert Frost
especially Unmarked Multiple Theme where Simple Theme especially Unmarked Simple Theme became the second one used mostly in the poems, besides the Textual is dominant through the whole clauses then followed by
Interpersonal theme.
(2) Nature was realized as the theme structure in selected of Robert Frost’s
poems by finding it which was there in the whole clause, from the position as subject to the object of the sentence.
(3) Theme structures contributed to see what was going on in the selected
poems of Robert Frost. It withdrew the similarity of marking Theme in the clause in the poems as the marking Theme in the common sentence which
indicates the aesthetic perspective of the poem.
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5.2 Suggestions
In relation to the conclusions, suggestions are staged as the following. (1) This study will be relevant used by the students in trying to make a poem by
considering the pattern of themes found in the Frost Poems.
(2) This study will be the exploration of more detailed analysis of Theme
Structures and the Pattern of language development in reading text
specifically, and discourse generally.
(3) To other researchers are suggested to expand the analysis of thematic
structures and development in texts more detailed. This study will help in
