Main Character’s Conflicts And Defense Mechanisms In The Novel “Tentang Kamu” By Tere Liye

The study dealed with the main character’s conflicts and defense
mechanisms found in a novel. The objectives of this study were to find out the types
of conflict of the main character and the defense mechanism that is reflected in
solving the problem. The sources of the data were taken from the novel “Tentang
Kamu” By Tere Liye. This was descriptive qualitative because this study focused
on the analysis of spoken language in the novel. This study used the theory of Islam
(2016) as the main theory which explained two types of conflicts such as external
conflict and internal conflict, and used theory of Cramer (2006) to describe the
defense mechanisms such as denial and identification. After anylizing the data, it is
found that there external conflict which is described as person vs nature whereas
the internal conflicts is person vs himself which describes the features of sadness,
anger, betrayal, anxiety, love and regret as experienced by the main character. The
conflict between person vs. herself (internal conflict) becomes the most common
conflict faced by the main character then it was followed with the defense
mechanism of denial and identification.