| dc.description.abstract | Literature is a portrait of our real life and cannot be separated from the life
itself because there is a close relationship between literature and life. One form of
literary works besides poetry and drama is novel. Novel is lengthy fictitious prose
narrative portraying character and representing an organized series of events and
setting. Every novel is an account of life. It includes the conflicts, characters, actions,
setting, plot, and theme.
In this novel, Absalom, Absalom!, tells the story of Thomas Sutpen, the son of
a poor white in western Virginia who has a grand design, and the effect of his actions
has on future generations in Yoknapatawpha County. Sutpen represents the work
ethics of the South, along with its decline and failures. This novel is about the South
and shows the suffering, endurance, racial discrimination, decadence, and ruin in the
life of the Sutpen family.
This thesis discusses about the injustice of the woman’s exploitation as the
development of the theme and explores Sutpen’s moral fallings that are shown by his
actions toward the female characters. However, this thesis only focuses on the moral
decadence of Thomas Sutpen in actions toward female characters, especially four
female characters: Eulalia Bon, Ellen Coldfield, Miss Rosa Coldfield and Milly
Jones.
The purposes of writing this thesis are to comprehend William Faulkner’s
works, especially Absalom, Absalom! and to study more about the history of the
South that is analogous to the story of Thomas Sutpen. The psychological and
sociological approaches are used to analyse this novel. Psychological approach is
used to analyze fictitious characters through the action of the characters in the novel.
Besides, sociological approach is applied to analyze the condition of the society in
the novel and also the interactions of the characters in the novel; the way one
character interacts with the other characters and the way people can interpret
on the interactions. Inductive method is used to observe, collect and analyze some
particular data from the source and then a conclusion is drawn from the analysis. This
thesis applies library research. Data and information are collected from several books,
dictionaries, encyclopedias, and Internet. However, the main data are taken from the
novel itself.
English Department, Faculty of Letters, Jember University
Key words: moral decadence, female characters | en_US |
