Re-defining Hero as depicted in Lyra in Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass

This study is a general idea toward Phillip Pullman’s adventure novel, The Golden Compass. Many literary works states that a hero is a strong, honorable man and hard to defeat, but Lyra as main character is portrayed as a different figure with her innocence and immaturity. This study has two points of analyses. Firstly, this study analyze how Lyra’s figure as identifiable hero from the description of her physical-packed and action-packed in the novel by using theory of characters and characterization along with the concept of formula of adventure story by John G Cawelti, especially about hero to find that Lyra is a hero in the novel. Secondly, the deconstruction analysis as the main analysis of this study is analyze how Lyra leads herself as a hero and this theory also help this study to describe the hero pattern of Lyra and to describe some facts why Lyra is different from mostly identical hero by using Margery Hourihan’s theory of the deconstructing of hero. This study use descriptive analytic method in order to get the valid description about how Lyra leads herself as a hero and all of her hero pattern. Thus, the important result of deconstruction analysis of this study is to redefine the hero’s perception in the adventure fiction especially in Lyra’s character in The Golden Compass novel.