THE ANXIETY OF THREE MAIN CHARACTERS IN MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM’S THE HOURS

ABSTRACT
Aini, Salilah N. 2015. The Anxiety of Three Main Characters in Michael Cunningham The Hours. Thesis. English Study Program, Faculty of Social and Cultural Sciences, University of Trunojoyo Madura. Advisor: Dr. Suryo Tri Saksono.

The Anxiety of Three Main Characters in Michael Cuningham’s The Hours
The Hours was the novel which won both Pulitzer Prize and Pen/Faulkner awards in 1999. This novel written by the one famous American author, Michael Cunningham. There are three main characters in The Hours which all of the main characters are women who experienced anxiety. Relating to this anxiety, this study was intended to answer two formulated research problems. Namely, (1) what were the kinds of anxiety of three main characters in Michael Cunningham The Hours? (2) how the ways three main characters to overcome their anxiety in Michael Cunningham The Hours?. Therefore, this study was focused on women as the main characters’ utterances and author narration which was indicated anxiety and the ways to overcome anxiety. The analysis was done by using psychoanalytic theory by Sigmund Freud.
Furthermore, to conduct this study, the qualitative research was used to analyze the data in which the key instrument is the writer itself. The writer used several steps of collecting data in this study. The first, the writer was reading The Hours, then the writer also was understanding The Hours, and the last the writer was finding the data by given underline in the character’s utterances and author narrations which was indicated anxiety relation. After collecting the data, the writer reduced the data, and then displayed the data, and for the last, the writer makes conclusion.
After analyzing this novel, the writer only found the two kinds of anxiety experienced by the three main characters in this novel. There are realistic anxiety and neurotic anxiety. Then, the three main characters used defense mechanism and instinct to overcome their anxiety. The defense mechanism which was used by the three main characters are repression, displacement, sublimation, fantasy, stereotype and reaction formation. While for instinct they used life instinct and death instinct.
Keywords: Psychoanalytic, Anxiety, Instinct, Defense.