Heroism as Children's Role Model to Counter Bullying: The Case of Manny in Kelly DiPucchio’s Super Manny Stands UP!

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the representation of heroism in Kelly DiPucchio’s Super Manny Stands UP! (2017). The main issue of this research focuses on how the ideology of heroism is shown by the main character through his heroic actions and how this book provides the initial knowledge of being a hero to the readers, especially children, about sympathy and empathy applied by the hero. This children’s picture book tells about Manny as the main character, Manny is a raccoon and he is a very confident and imaginative boy. This story setting takes place at home and school, he frequently wears different colored capes after back from school to imagine himself as a superhero and fight the enemies in his imagination at home. Every cape that Manny wears brings different motivations to strengthen his mentality. To show Manny’s mental strength, bullying occurs at school when a terrible person known as the Tall One causes a stir with another student whom he considers weak. Manny's mentality and courage are tested when the Tall One, a bully, threatens the Small One. Although Manny initially freezes, he recalls his superhero credentials and invincible cape and orders the bully to cease. Superhero stories where the good guy always defeats the bad guy are very simple for children to digest. It is also an easy way to teach children about moral values through the acts of the hero and the villain in the book (Franco et al. 2011; Martin, 2007; Mitchell, 1998). Superhero, as a sign, stands for or represents our concepts, ideas, and feelings in such a way as to enable others to 'read', decode or interpret their meaning in roughly the same way that we do (Hall, 1997). The use of representation theory and a constructionist approach is necessary throughout this research because meaning is constructed and produced by the author using a conceptual system, which means that the culture and society construct the idea (Hall, 1997), and adding the semiotics approach by Barthes (1964) as the supporting theory to analyze the visuals of the hero in the picture book. This is accomplished by looking at the signifier and its context behind it. DiPucchio describes the plot and settings of the Super Manny (2017) story according to what exists in real life, which means in America adheres to liberalism (individual freedom) (Graebner, 1977), and also the conflict of bullying in school still exists nowadays (Bettencourt, Clary, Lalongo, and Musci, 2023). However, DiPucchio is confident that all readers know that kindness matters, and more importantly, live it, but humanity has room for improvement. While the world's problems are big and numerous, we still have the power to resolve those problems and start with simple acts of kindness (DiPucchio, 2017).