LOVE AS A MOTIVATION OF LIFE FOR THE MAIN CHARACTER REFLECTED IN NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE’S “RAPPACINI’S DAUGHTER” (PBING-22)

CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Love is more than a feeling. It is also a motivational force that compels us to do an action. The experience of love is unique for every person, and one might use that feeling to measure the success of a relationship. Love is fuelled by a mixture of sexual attraction and gratification, the security of the developing attachment, and excitement due to exploration of human being. The sexual attraction wanes, lead to the conflict and withdrawal. Lovers can find themselves securely attached and caring deeply about each other or experiencing some forms of distress, boredom, loneliness or hostility and yearning for a more satisfying relationship.

"I love you" with a feeling is essential. The ability to express those words in a nonsexual context to men, women and children is a good indicator of emotional health. To be able to love men, women and children is part of being healthy adults. Love is a passionate spiritual-emotional-sexual attachment between a man and a woman that reflects a high regard for the value of each other’s person. It is a way not only to feel the extraordinary joy but also to experience self-discovery.

Love might be the conceptualized as an attachment-formation process. Hazan and Shaver (1987:9) state “love is the attachment system in human undergoes modification during the course of adolescence, so that its original objects, the parents are relinquished, and the individual is able to integrate new objects, new attachment figures.” The attachment system is just one among a number of interrelated behavioral system which include exploration, care giving, sexual mating and affiliation.

No one knows what the real meaning of love is. Everyone has his/her own meaning depending on his/her point of view. Love brings spirit for everyone. Besides positive motivation, love also can give negative motivation. Sometimes someone who falls in love will act illogically. He/she will do anything to make his/her partner happy, even though it is beyond imagination. Happiness, sadness, worries, and jealousy are parts of love. Love is all you need, and you will not know, across the crowded world or even on a first date, that the person is absolutely the one.

Love can be used as the object of psychological analysis. “Psychology is a science that studies living being’s behavior and mental processes” (Herrnstein as quoted by Crider, 1983:4). This is in line with what Jung states as quoted by Koesnosoebroto (1988) that it is absolute that psychology can be applied in analyzing literary work, since human’s psyche has potential power of all knowledge and arts. Thereby, literature and psychology are really inseparable. Psychology explains the underlying reason for character’s behavior elaborates between conflict and psychological condition and evaluates their behavior and motive in doing something.

There are some fields of basic psychology, one of them is motivation. Motivation is an area of psychology that has gotten a great deal of attention.

Kenney (1996:36-37) states that “general motivation covers such basic human drives as love, hunger, greed and so on.”

Love becomes the most interesting story for all people. So many literary works tell about love. The story about love is described in songs, poems, short stories, dramas, novels, films and even paintings. One of the most dramatic love stories is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story entitled “Rappacini’s Daughter”. The story tells about a dramatic love and its motivation to the main character’s life. The writer thinks that the story will be interesting to be analyzed.

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