THE SPIRIT OF NEW AGE MOVEMENT REFLECTED IN PAULO COELHO'S THE ZAHIR: AN ANALYSIS OF EXISTENTIALISM ( SEMANGAT GERAKAN ZAMAN BARU TERCERMIN DALAM NOVEL THE ZAHIR KARYA PAULO COELHO: ANALISA EKSISTENSIALISME)

Abstract

Existentialism is a term showing the spirit to find the existence of human being. In this case, if human being wants to be a man who has the spirit of existentialism, he has to live by his way of life beyond any kind of social validity including the rules coming from the conventional religions. New Age Movement (NAM), a religious movement, disbelieves the practices of Christianity. NAM does not have new age church, new age founder and new age organization. NAM spreads widely in many forms including art. Paulo Coelho's The Zahir is an art believed imitates the ideas of NAM. According to Abrams ,art is the imitation of the universe,” this is called mimetic theory. Therefore, mimetic approach is needed as a way to describe the spirit of existentialism in NAM which is reflected in The Zahir. According to Heidegger, the way to be an authentic being or a man who has the spirit of existentialism can be shown through many concepts of being. Therefore, in a fiction, the concepts of human existence can be known by describing the characters' idea of their being. In this research, Heidegger's theory of Dasein is used to analyze the spirit of existentialism reflected by the main character in The Zahir. In the end, this research finds that the main character in The Zahir is a man who has spiritual awareness. He rejects the rules coming from Christianity including the ideas of God and Sin. Besides, he shows that he is a man who has the totality to show his authenticity of being free although he lives socially in the shared world.