analysis of consciousness in male lead’s behaviors from a short story: Midnight by Rainbow Rowell

Abstract

Background: Short story has been a popular literary work although it is not as complicated as other literary works. Short story is usually centered only in one single event and limited in scope, but it is written with much greater precision than a novel. This research is intended to analyze certain behaviors of one character from a short story. Purpose: The aim of this research is to find out what kind of Freud’s concept of consciousness appeared in this short story, and how is the concept of consciousness represented in the story. Design and methods: This research is a qualitative research using semiotics and Freud’s Concept of Consciousness as tools of analysis. Results: The result of this research revealed that all the three conscious concepts by Freud appeared in the story. The total data found are 19 data, with 8 data that belong to the conscious, 4 data belong to the preconscious, and 7 data belong to the unconscious. Based on the data found, it is concluded that the male-lead’s behavior represents the conscious concept of human’s mind by Freud. This research also revealed that the Freud’s concept of consciousness in the story is displayed predominantly through narration which consist of 15 data, while through dialogue are 3 data, and the through monologue only consists of 1 datum. This result indicated that the signification characters of the story tends to be enclosed.