The depiction of loss in Alice Hoffman's The Wolrd That We Knew

This thesis aims to unveil the concept of loss depicted in Hoffman’s The World That We Knew and unfold the types of coping used by each character in dealing with their loss. There are two main problems proposed: (1) how is the concept of loss portrayed in The World That We Knew?; (2) how does each character deal with their loss in The World That We Knew? The qualitative approach applies in the thesis since the analysis is entirely focusing on data interpretation. The researcher takes the data primarily from dialogues, narratives, and conversations in The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman. The researcher also uses related studies, journals, books, and articles as supportive data. The data were taken from grouping sentences, conversation, and narrative based on the research questions. Then, the researcher analyzed the grouped data using Wendy B. Faris's characteristics of magic realism to portray the concept of loss and Lazarus & Folkman’s coping model to describe the types of coping methods used by each character. The result found that Alice Hoffman portrayed the concept of loss through magical realism. It is proven in the use of some magical realism elements in narrating each type of loss; they are; losing a mother, losing a partner, and losing a sibling. Each type of loss is told through magical realism elements such as the human’s sixth sense (seeing a ghost and angel) and human’s unlogical ability (talk with birds, predict the future, and make a human). The researcher also found how each character deals with their loss. The researcher categorized it into two types of coping; problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping. Problem-focused coping includes revenge and problem-solving, while emotion- focused coping contains hallucination, radical action, denial, blaming, help others, and social support. Therefore, the researcher concludes that the author uses magic realism in narrating the traumatic event, and in dealing with it, each character is found to use several coping types.