CHAPTER 2
THERORETICAL FRAMEWORK: PLOT,CHARACTER,SYMBOL
AND DECONSTRUCTION THEORY
2.1. Introduction
In this chapter I will use some literary theories to support Deconstruction
analysis, such as: plot, character and symbol. To be able to deconstruct a story using
deconstruction theory, first we have to know more about the plot of the story. If I do not
understand about the plot in the story we can’t analyze the problem in that story, so I use
plot as the supporting theory to support the analysis. I also use character to support the
analysis, because after the analysis of the plot I will see and understand the character
clearly to support the deconstruction analysis of the story. Not only plot and character, I
also add symbol as the supporting theory, because I find some symbols that are
necessary to analyze in the story, so I use symbol as the supporting theory as well.
2.2 Plot
Plot is a structure or a group of incidents in the story that are combined from the
beginning until the end of the story. “Plot is about cause and effect, plot is more than just
a sequence of events”. (Kennedy, 2009, p. 22). According to Kennedy plot is about
what is happening in the story that has cause and effect relationship, so in one story we
will find the problem and also the reason. Hall (2002, p. 29) also said that “plot is what
happens in a story, the story’s organized development, usually a chain linking cause and
effect. Plot is the first and most obvious quality of a story”.
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Therefore, according to Hall plot is about the story line that happens in the story
which has problem and also reason. Plot also has the beginning and the end. The most
important element in analysis is plot, because without plot we cannot understand the
meaning of the story and we also don’t know about the story line if we don’t know about
the plot. With plot we can get the real information in the story, such as the true or false
story behind it. Further, Beaty and friends define plot as follows: “plot simply means the
arrangement of the action, an imagined event or a series of such events.”(Beaty et al.
2005, p. 15)
It is clear that the job of plot is to show up the action that happens in the story,
including the beginning and also the end of the story. The story or plot is what is
happening in that story and how it happens and how the story ends.
Beaty et al (2002, p. 15) divided plot into five parts, they are exposition, rising
action, turning point or climax of the action, falling action and conclusion.
2.2.1 Exposition
According to Beaty exposition is a part of plot that begin some important
elements in a story, such as “character, situation, time and also place”. (Beaty et al.
2002, p. 15)
2.2.2 Rising action
rising action is the part of plot that is used for making the conflict or situation
more complicated in that story, it also commences the new action that has not happened
in that story to help the plot to be more complicated. (Beaty et al. 2002, p. 15)
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2.2.3 Turning point or climax
As the follow is the example of plot :
“ Turning point is the third part of the story, the appearance of zebra
storyteller : until now the cat has had it all his way, but his luck is about to
change. From this point on the complications that grew in the first part of
the story are untangled – the zebra story – teller, for example, is not
surprised when he meets a siamese vat speaking Zebraic “because he’d
been thinking about very thing.” (Beaty et al. 2002, p.15)
According to Beaty, climax is also a part of plot that is used to change the
complicated story into the situation of the problem. The story that has reached to the top
of the story, the story will have a reason of the conflict in that story. The story will be
finished if it has reached the climax of the story.
2.2.4 Falling action
“This is the fourth part of the story to reverse movement” (Beaty et al. 2002, p.
15). Falling action is a part of plot that is used to make the story have a clear way out of
the problem. This part of story is the element of plot which leads into the conclusion of
the story.
2.2.5 Conclusion
This part of plot is used for concluding the story from the beginning to the end of
the story into one paragraph. It makes the story to be more specific and shorter than the
sources story, so this element of plot will help the reader easier to understand the story
without having to read the whole story (Beaty et al. 2002, p.15).
2.3 Character
Character is a representation of an imagined person who works in the story and
who is the person that we know after reading the plot. Plot is showing the character,
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character also causes a plot. Character and plot need each other. Without plot we cannot
find the character, and otherwise there is no character in a story if the story doesn’t have
plot.
“Character is an imagined person in a story, whom we know from
the words we read on the page.” (Hall, 2002, p. 56)
According to Hall character is a created or fictious person that we don’t know
before we read the text, we will know the person after we read the text and understand
the meaning of the story.
“Character is someone who acts, appears, or is referred to as
playing a part in literary work,” (Beaty et al. 2002, p. 102)
Therefore, character is a person who does many important things in the story,
does various actions, special person in the story. The character will help the reader to
understand the meaning of the story. Character is an important element in a story.
Beaty also divided character in to two part of character they are “major and main
character” (Beaty et al. 2002, p. 102).
2.3.1 Major character
Major character is the main character of the story that is dominant in the story. It
is also more often discussed in the story, the major character is more important than the
other characters. It is included in the following quotation:
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“ The major character or main character are those we see more of over a
longer period of time, we learn more about them, and we think of them as
more complex and therefore frequently more “realistic” than the minor
character” (Beaty et al, 2002, p. 102).
2.3.2 Minor Character
Minor character is one of the persons in the story that is created for helping the
plot to be more variable and more complex. Minor character is a person who works as a
helper in the story. It is shown in this definition, “the minor character is the figure, who
fills out of the story.” (Beaty et al, 2002, p. 102)
2.3.3 Round Character
Accordiong to Hall, round character is a person who always does revolution.
This character never stays in his/her statement or idea. It will become better or
sometimes this character also will become bad character. The changes do not depend on
the situation or condition, this character changes as they could and as fast as they want.
(Hall, 2002, p. 58)
2.3.4 Flat Character
Flat character is simple; it never changes or does revolution. The character is the
same in the beginning until the end. In many movies or drama this character might be
stereotypes. It can be seen as follows, “Flat or two dimensional characters may be
stereotypes, much television drama relies on stereotypes: the tough, steet-wise, detective
and his sidekick, the idealistic rookie.” (Hall, 2002, p. 58-59)
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2.4 Symbol
The word symbol, most simply, means a sign like a circle containing a cigarette
crossed through by a diagonal line. Everybody knows that this sign is s symbol for Not
Smoking. Traffic signs, or national flags, then logos of sport teams are all symbols.
These symbols belong to a particular culture it. They are changeable as a culture
changes, and often they work by association. A Rolls-Royce, associated with wealth, can
act as a conventional symbol of wealth. The homeless person’s large, overstuffed plastic
bags, an accessory of poverty and homelessness. (Hall, 2002, p. 172)
Symbol is also a part of theory that is used to represent an idea in the story, from
the physical entity until the process of the story. Symbol is also used to communicate the
meaning of a thing. Sometimes in a story we can find a symbol, by only seeing the
symbol we can understand the meaning of the thing that is written.
“ symbol is often used sloppily and sometimes pretentiously, but properly
used the term suggest one of the most basic things about poems, their
ability to get beyond what words signify and make larger claims about
meanings in the verbal world.( Beaty et al. 2002, p. 729)
Therefore, according of that statement symbol is used to describe the meaning of
a thing functioning as a symbol. By seeing the symbol we just know the meaning behind
that, because we already know the meaning of the symbol, so symbol is used to describe
a thing.
“Symbol is something that remains itself while it stands for
something besides itself – the way a cloth flag is literally fabric while
symbolically it stand for our country.” (Hall, 2002, p. 173)
It is showing that symbol is something that is used for showing its meaning by
using symbolic thing. Only by seeing the symbol the readers already know it. For
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example a crown is a symbol for a King. By only seeing the crown we already know if
there is a King, because crown is the symbol for the King.
“A literary symbol is something that means more than what is suggests on
the surface. It may be an object, a person, a situation, an action, or some
other element that has a literal meaning in the story but that suggests or
represents other meanings as well.” (Arp and Johnson, 2006, p. 216)
It is clear, Arp and Johnson (2006) said symbol is used to understand the
meaning that is not written in the story, but it is shown with a symbol. The symbol is not
only for human being but also the other thing that I can see and something that I can
feel. The symbol is also used for showing the progress of the thing.
2.5 Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a concept developed by Jacques Derrida. He was born to an
Algerian Jewish family in El-Biar, Algeria, in 1930. At the age of 22, he moved to
France and began studies at Ecole Normale Superiur in Paris focusing on the
phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. He was interested in analysis of criature, writing of
philosophy itself. In 1967, he published three books they are Speech and Phenomena, Of
Grammatology, and Writing and Difference. In 1960s he published several articles such
as: Tel Quel, French’s forum of leftist avant-grade theory. During the first half of the
decade, he taught at Sorborne in Paris. And also Derrida taught at the Ecole Normale
Superieur from 1965 to 1984, dividing much of this time between Paris and American
universities such as Johns Hopkins and Yale. He used to be the director at the Ecole des
Hautes Etudes en Science Socialies in Paris. Since 1986 he had also been Professor of
Philosophy, French and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine
and continued to lecture in academic institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. In 2003,
Derrida was diagnosed with aggressive pancreatic cancer, which reduces his speaking
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and traveling engagements. He died in Parison hospital on the evening of Friday, october
8, 2004. (Kara, 2006, p. 1-10)
According to Derrida on Peter Barry’s book (2009, p. 71) deconstruction is the
process of understanding a text besides itself with a destination to identify the text as it
cannot identify itself. It also can be seen as follows:
“a text can be read as saying something quite different from what it
appears to be saying.. it may be read as carrying a plurality of significance
or saying many different things which are fundamentally at variance with,
contradictory to and subversive of what may be seen by criticism as a
single ‘stable’ meaning. Thus a text may’betray’ itself.”(Barry, 2009, p. 69)
According to Derrida, deconstruction is an approach literary work to read a text
by looking at some words contained in a text that do not have meaning and doesn’t take
any analysis about it. This theory will analyze the words by subverting and find some
contradictory words that will make the words become important and meaningful in that
literary work. After subverting the words, it will become something that will have some
new meanings that can be different from the condition before the subverting.
Derrida also divided deconstruction theory into three stages, they are “Verbal
stage, Textual stage and also Linguistic stage.”(Barry, 2009, p. 71). Verbal stage is the
first stage which is looking at the reading point, this stage is looking for the paradoxical
and contradictions in the text. It also has some ambiguity elements. In the end it will be
purely verbal level.
“The verbal stage is very similar to that of more conventional forms of
close reading, as pionereed in the 1920s and 1930s in Empson’s Seven
Types of Ambiguity, and elsewhere. It involves looking the text for
paradoxes and contradictions, at what might be called the purely verbal
stage.”(Barry, 2009, p. 71)
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The second stage is textual stage. Textual text is the deconstruction process that
is looking for shift or breaks in the writing. This second stage is closely related to the
sentence structure, the attitude, and also the situation in the text. This stage is also
looking for the inconsistencies in the tone, vocabulary and also the point of view in the
text or story.
“The textual stage of method moves beyond individual phrase and takes a
more overall view of the poem. At this second critic is looking for shifts or
breaks in the continuity of the poem: these shift reveal instabilities attitude
and hence the lack of a fixed and unified position.”(Barry, 2009, p. 72)
The final stage of deconstruction process is linguistic stage. The stage is looking
for the meaning in the word or sentence that has been written. Not only close to the word
or sentence that has been written, this stage is also looking for the communication in the
story. In communication there is something that has been said and might do something
that might have contradictory meaning.
“The ‘linguistic’ stage, finally, involves looking for the moments in the
poem when the adequacy of language itself as a medium of communication
is called into question. Such moment occur when, for example there is
implicit or explicit reference to the unreliability or untrustworthiness of
language.” (Barry, 2009, p. 73)
According to Derrida on Mc Donald’s book, deconstruction is a process to add
signifier for signified which has been absent (Kessey. 1994, p. 382). Deconstruction also
has three major categories and six minor categories. The major categories are differance,
supplement, and deconstruction. Further the first minor categories of differance are
difference and defferal.Next, the second minor categories of suplement are mark and
substitution. And finally the third or the last minor categories of deconstruction are
effacement and trace.
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2.5.1 Differance
According to Derrida, differance is an attendance and nonattendance between
“interval” and spacing” or signified or signified. Moreover, a position between
characters could make language possible and have posible to make the difference two
phonemes.
“Differance is a term that Derrida coins to suggest the “interval” or the
“spacing” between presence and absence, signifier and signified, or more
technically, the trace that make it possible to distinguish two phonemes,
and so the “space” that makes language possible.” (Mc.donald, 1994, p.
382)
2.5.1.1 Difference
Difference is discontinuity and sharing out of the commence story. So this
category is only focused on the opening. Difference is the opening of deconstructive
form of the story. It is looking on the intelligence of discontinuity and division in the
beginning of the story. (Mc.Donald, 1994, p. 382)
2.5.1.2 Deferral
Defferal is a step that is looking on the process of postpone and derivation to the
other word. It means that postpone and derivation that is including in the word before,
like difference. “Defferal focuses on the peripetal or revesal process of delay and detour
in the second phrase.” (Mc.Donald, 1994, p. 382)
2.5.2 Supplement
According to Derrida supplement is a way to add more information and
explanation itself to make a language have new meaning and the meaning is different
meaning from the source language. “Supplement is Derrida’s term for imagination, for
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the sign and language system that “stand-in” or substitutes itself, for insuffienciency of
the origin in difference”(Mc.Donald, 1994, p. 382).
2.5.2.1 Mark
Mark is something that has been put in the origin language that makes the source
language have meaning and it also modifies the situation and also the character. “Mark,
or the “hinge” (folding point) is a phrase of a beginning again, a new discontinuity, the
entrance of a catalytic agency or presence that signified the possibility of a major
reversal.” (Mc.Donald, 1994, p. 382)
2.5.2.2 Substitution
Substitution is a process to put something in the origin word or text that will
make the word change and different from the origin word. It does not only change the
word but also mix the word in the same time. Therefore a word that has been substituted
will be hard to identity of which one is the original word. “Substitution is the phrase of
the major reversal of the “shift to the opposite,” to the double or stand-in for the original
absence.” (Mc.Donald, 1994, p. 382)
2.5.3 Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a way to put signified for signifier which has been absent.
Deconstruction is the process to subvert something in the original text to be something
that has new meaning. (Barry, 2009, p. 71)
2.5.3.1 Effacement
Effacement is a process to find the word that has been lost with automatically
way and get new process to analyze from the lost one. “Effacement is the consequence
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of being-substituded, the loss of identity, the phrase of disappearance or sparagamos.”
(Mc.Donald, 1994, p. 382)
2.5.3.2 Trace
Trace is the last process of a story begin from the first of the story until the end
of the story which has been effacement, by remind the character that have new identity.
“Trace is the final peripetal phrase of the dramas, of what remains
after effacement, the phrase of beginning again, the simulacrum of
presence, recognition of the absence at the heart differance and the
mimetic or fictional form of presence.”(Mc.Donald, 1994, p. 382)
In the last page of the theoretical framework I also add a table of the major and
minor categories in order to make the reader easier to understand about the
deconstruction theory. (Mc.Donald, 1994, p. 382)
DIFFERANCE
SUPPLEMENT
DECONSTRUCTION
Difference
Mark
Effacement
Deferral
Substitution
Trace.