AN ANALYSIS ON THE NEEDS OF ERIN GRUWELL’S SELF-ACTUALIZATION IN RICHARD LAGRAVENESE’S FREEDOM WRITERS

Abstract

Script is a written text of play, film or broadcast. It is written to be performed. Freedom Writers was a novel written by the freedom writers in 1999 inspired by The Diary of Anne Frank and directed by Richard Lagravenese in 2007. In this thesis, the researcher focused on analyzing the movie based on true story. This thesis is going to examine human needs, such as human self actualization which is reflected on Gruwell’s attitude in Freedom Writers. Erin Gruwell is an English teacher of the freshment at Wilson High School in Long Beach, California. She is the main female character of this story. Although she is a student teacher at Wilson High the year before, this year she will teach on her own. Not only will she teach on her own, as a teacher with less experience, she was given the "unteachable" students, those who are more concerned with gang activity and matters of "turf," rather than the study of Shakespeare, subjects and predicates. The high school students assimilate into racial groups in the classroom, fights break out, and eventually most of the high school students stop attending class. Erin is surprising for the nature of her classroom, where students live by generations of strict moral codes of protecting their own territory. In the end of this story, Erin Gruwell can fulfill her needs for self-actualization. She can be a real teacher. This thesis concerns with Erin Gruwell’s self actualization as a teacher, it uses psychological approach and using Human Motivation and Personalities Analysis to analyze it. This is the theory which concentrates to human motivation and assumes that human life needs a motivation. This thesis combines two kinds of psychological elements, human motivation and human personalities proposed by Abraham Maslow called as Hierarchical Theory of Needs. Psychological approach is used to dig up the psychological problems that existing in the story. An inductive method is also used. The method is started by observing the particular facts, and it is included into the general idea. This topic is interesting to discuss because it is about the level of human needs. When a human being wants to get her/ his self-actualization, she/ he must pass the human layers through five hierarchies of needs which have to be complied; they are: physiological needs, safety needs, love and belongingness needs, esteem needs, and the last and the highest is the needs for self actualization. There are some problems that are discussed in this thesis. First is how the human needs influence Erin Gruwell’s self-actualization. The second is how Erin proves her self-actualization to all of the people, especially to the teacher in the school, her father and her students, and the last is how Erin applies her self-actualization in her surroundings. In the last chapter, the results of the analysis are written. Erin Gruwell has achieved her self-actualization as a teacher. Through a long process, eventually she can get her dreams. In conclusion, Erin Gruwell gets her self-actualization, which is described through many ways to reach her self-actualization. She has strong desire and strong ambition. No matter what problem it is, she tries her best to solve the problem. If she wants to get her self-actualization, it is better to dig up her potential, trying to find what she wants and needs. She can be what she wants to be and put it in mind that a true self-actualization will come true if it is pursued.