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AN ANALYSIS OF POSTMODERNISM IN SPARKS’ A WALK TO REMEMBER
By Furin
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, the writer presents background of the study, the identification of the
problems, limitation of the problems, formulation of the problems, objective of the study, and
the signification of the study.
A. Background of the Study
Postmodernism is a concept that appears in a wide variety of disciplines or areas
of study, including art, architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communication,
fashion, and technology.
Delimitation of modernism comes from the aesthetic movement broadly labelled
“modernism”. This movement is roughly conterminous with twentieth century Western
ideas about art. Modern is the movement in visual arts, music, literature, and drama which
rejected the old Victorian standards of how art should be made, consumed, and what is
should mean. In the period of the “high modernism”, from around 1910 to 1930s, the
major figures of modernism literature helped radically to redefine what poetry and fiction
could be and do: figures like Wolf, Joyce, Eliot, Pounds, Stevens, Proust, Mallarme,
Kafka, and Rilke are considered the founders of twentieth-century modernism.
(http://en.wilkipedia.org/wilki/postmodern_literature)
Modernism in A Walk to Remember Nicholas Sparks self-identifies as a
“postmodernism author”: in his critical work he often writes about “postmodern
medievalism” and “postmodern millennialism”. In A Walk to Remember, Hegbert is a
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protomodern thinker, an allegory of modernism emergence out of the earlier matrix of
medieval culture. He is comparable to Roger Bacon and William of Occam, English
Scholastic Philosophers who (in Sparks’ view) were precursors of British empiricism. A
Walk to Remember then could be explored as a work by a postmodern author, allegorizing
the emergence of the ‘modern’ during the Middle Ages. A starting point for
understanding modernism and postmodernism would be Ray Linn, A Teacher’s
Introduction to Postmodernism (Urbana, IL: National Council for teachers of English,
1996).
In this thesis the writer is going to analysis one of Nicholas Sparks’ popular novel,
that is A Walk to Remember. The writer is motivated to choose that novel as subject of
study in this thesis because the author Nicholas Sparks was considered as one of the great
novelist in the world, especially in New York, USA., and his novel “A Walk to
Remember” is popular American novel which has been translated into many languages
such as French, Dutch, English, German, Indonesia, etc.
In this novel the writer finds many postmodernism perspectives to describe
knowledge which has correlate with science, reasoning, part/ whole, god and language.
B. Identification of the Problem
Related to previous narrative, there are some problems which appear in relation to
the analysis of Nicholas Sparks’ A Walk to Remember. The writer finds that the novel A
Walk to Remember contains postmodernism issues. Many issues of postmodernism that
can be analyzed are poignant inevitability of reasoning, science, part/ whole, god, and
language. Thos problems will be analyzed on the postmodernism theory.
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C. Limitation of the Problems
There are some issues that can be identified in Sparks’ A Walk to Remember.
Based on the identification of the problems above, the writer limits the problem in order
the discussion is not to abroad. Because in that novel there are many problems of
postmodernism such as reasoning, science, part/ whole, god, language, etc. The writer
focuses on language game in the novel. Second, the writer focuses on postmodernism
issue especially about mettanarative and legitimating. Here the writer would like to use
the Lyotard’s postmodernism perspective.
D. Formulation of the Problem
Based on the limitation above, the problems to analyze are formulated as follows:
1. What are the kinds of postmodernism in the novel A Walk to Remember?
2. How Nicholas Sparks does criticism the modernity?
3. What is the description of postmodernism in the novel A Walk to Remember?
E. Objective of the Study
The writer formulates the objective of the study systematically in sentences
below:
1. To find out the point of view in the novel A Walk to Remember.
2. To describe the Nicholas Sparks criticism of modernity in the novel.
3. To describe the postmodernism in the novel A Walk to Remember.
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F. The Significance of the Study
The significance of the research can be described as follows:
1. This study is expected to give contribution and additional reverence of the
postmodernism to the literature.
2. To provide the information for the reader what want to analyze a literary work
especially postmodernism novel.
3. To implement the new theory in analyzing the novel, that is postmodernism theory.
G. Presentation
The writer divides this study into five chapters, including the bibliography. The
first chapter is introduction which consists of the background of the study, identification
of the study, limitation of the study, significance of the study, and the presentation.
The second chapter is theoretical framework which consists of postmodernism and
its development, Lyotard postmodernism, and postmodernism as literary work.
The third chapter presents research method. It includes the type of the study,
source of the data, data collecting technique, and the data analyzing technique.
The fourth chapter is the analysis. It will discuss about postmodernism point of
view, Sparks’ critics, the relation between Sparks and his literary work the novel entitled
A Walk to Remember.
The fifth chapter presents the conclusion of the research.
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CHAPTER II
THEORETICAL FRAME WORK
A. Postmodernism and Its Development
Features of postmodernism culture begin to arise in the 1920s with the
emergence of the Dada art movement. Both World Wars contributed to postmodernism; it
is with the end of the Second World War that recognisably postmodernism attitudes begin
to emerge. The theory gained some of its strongest ground early on in French academia.
In 1979 Jean Francois Lyotard wrote a short but influential work The Postmodernism
Condition: A report on knowledge. Also, Richard Rorty wrote Philosophy and the Mirror
of Nature (1979). Jean Baudrillard, Michael Fouchault, and Roland Barthes are also
influential in 1970s postmodernism theory.
As theory which born through immeasurable of life aspects, postmodernism
covers various science areas. Assuming that France as the source of intellectual tradition.
(Ritzer, 2003: 60-61)
B. Postmodernism as a Literary Work
Postmodernism literature argues for expansion the return of the reference of
fragmentation rather than the fear of it, and the role of reference itself in literature.
Postmodernism literature expanses father existing stress, in one side, between pastiness
and past absence and also nowadays or present day presentness attendace, and on the
other side, between actual past event and the event process act become the fact by all
historian. The reverence of intertextual anakronic at modern masterpiece in science area,
philosophy, and aesthetics which refer at contemporary relevance problem which also
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have emerged at a period of previously, relation between theory and praxis, word and
object, or science and universe. (Hutcheon, Linda. 2001: 115)
C. Language in Postmodernism Literary Work
Important to postmodernism’s role in languages is the focus on the implied
meaning of words and forms the power structures that are accepted as part of the way
words are used, an important concept in postmodernism’s view of language is the idea of
“play” text. In the context of postmodernism, play means changing the frame work which
connects ideas, and this allows the trouping, or turning of a metaphor or word from one
context to another, or from one frame or reference to another. In postmodern thought, the
‘text” is a series of “markings” whose meaning is imported by the reader, and not by the
author, this play is the means by which the reader constructs or interprets the text, and the
means by which the author gains a presence in the reader’s mind. Play then involves
invoking words in a manner which undermines their authority, by mocking their
assumptions or style, or by layers misdirection as the intentions of the author.
(“http://en.wilkipedia.org/wilki/postmodern_in_language”)
D. Data Collecting Technique
The writer applies a technique, which is called library research. The writer goes to
some libraries to read the source carefully and critically. The writer will make important
notes and papers, and the writer takes some data available in the cyber space. And then,
the data are collected, consulted, and revised.
E. Data Analyzing Technique
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In technique of analyzing data, writer uses technique through text analyses, which
is described in sentences. The writer tries to provides clearer information and describe the
social condition by searching various kinds of sources that deals the topic being analyzed.
After the data collected, it will be analyzed and interpreted by using postmodernism
perspective.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sparks, Nicholas. 1999. A Walk to Remember. Warner Books, Inc. New York, New York,
USA.
Hornby, US. 1974. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. Revised and
Updated. Great Britain: Oxford University Press.
Hutcheon, Linda. 2001. The Politics of Postmodernism. London and New York.
Lyotard, Jean Francoise. The postmodernism Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester
University Press, 1984.
Ratna, Kutha Nyoman. 2004. Teori, Metode, dan Teknik Penelitian Sastra, dari
Strukturalisme hingga Post-Strukturalisme. Yogyakarta: Pustaka Pelajar.
Ritzer, George. 2005. The Postmodern Social Theory. Kreasi Wacana, Yogyakarta.
The Sarup article referred to Chapter 6, “Lyotard and Postmodernism,” in Medan Sarup’s An
Introductory to Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism, University of Georgia Press,
1993.
Source: http://en.wilkipedia.org/wilki/postmodern_literature
http://en.wilkipedia.org/wilki/postmodern_in_language
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