Building Altruism Through Novels

Abstract

Many human values can be found in the literary works, including novel. These values represent human behaviors, one of which is altruism. Altruism is a type of social behavior which is described as behavior motivated by concern for others or by internalized values, goals, and self-rewards rather than by the expectation of concrete or social reward, or the desire to avoid punishment or sanctions (Swank, Jacqueline M., et.al., 2016 cited in Christensen, 2018). Altruism is not easy to find in real life, but not in the literary works. This study aims to find out how altruism is represented in the novel through the behavior of the characters by using text analysis with narrative inquiry as the methodology. The novels analyzed in this study are three novels which are taken randomly (purposive random). The result shows that altruism in the novels appear both in negative or positive impacts for the doers or the characters. Altruism found in the novel is expected to be able to build altruism attitude toward the readers, in this case, students of literature class.