A STUDY ON LARA CAMERON’S AMBITION IN SIDNEY SHELDON’S THE STARS SHINE DOWN

Abstract

This thesis concerns with one of characterizations in literary work. The Stars Shine Down is a novel written by Sidney Sheldon tells about the main character, Lara Cameron, who undergoes a miserable experience in the childhood. It drives her to be ambitious to make her dreams come true. Therefore, it is interesting to analyze what Lara Cameron‟s ambitions are, how she wants to achieve and figures out her desire, what motivate her to gain her ambitions as well as how her ambitions affect her life. The method of analysis used in this thesis is inductive method. It analyzes the data from the specific cases to general conclusion. Meanwhile, the data are collected from library and cybernetic research and dictionaries. This thesis applies psychological approach to analyze the main characters, motivation. The psychological theory employed in this thesis is taken from Maslow‟s Hierarchy of Human Needs to know what motivates the main character to strongly achieve her ambitions. The result of the analysis reveals that the main character, Lara Cameron is successful in the development of real estate in Glace Bay. She builds a new store building, a cottage, and shopping malls. She expands her ambitions to have land in Chicago. She builds Cameron Palace hotel, Cameron Plaza hotel, and Condominiums. She continues to conquer New York city. She builds many great buildings including hotels, offices, houses, and skyscraper buildings and Cameron Towers. She has got all her ambition. Based on the analysis, Lara Cameron has those ambitions because of several reasons including physiological, safety, love and belongingness, esteem and self-actualization needs. However, her ambition affects her life both positive and negative effects. She has wealth and popularity and a lovely husband. On the other hand, she has to give her virginity to a banker, Sean MacAllister, and a lawyer, Paul Martin in the early career. Her strong ambitions make her perfectionist, so that many people around her particularly do not really like her characters, and unfortunately her ambitious character itself has made her fail. In conclusion, being a highly-motivated woman is very important to gain success and achievement. However, being an over ambitious woman is also very dangerous since it make her get fail.