Personality disorder of george lansing in Thornton Wilder's the eighth day

Dianawaty, Louise Maria (2003) Personality disorder of george lansing in Thornton Wilder's the eighth day. Bachelor thesis, Petra Christian University.

Abstract

The Eighth Day is a kind of mysterious story about the murder of a character, Breckenridge Lansing that finally leads to the changes of the lives of almost all of the characters in the novel. This becomes the reason why the thesis writer is interested to choose George Lansing, the hidden murderer in the novel, as the character to be analyzed. His personality disorder becomes the issue that the thesis writer wants to discuss because it is related to the case of the murder. Therefore, she questions why George Lansing suffers the personality disorder as seen in his attitude throughout the development of the novel and what the consequences of his personality disorder are. She finds that his family becomes the causes of George?s personality disorder, and it influences George?s character traits into a person with schizotypal personality disorder. Therefore, she needs literary theories like characterization and conflict as the main approach, and also psychological concepts of schizotypal personality disorder and parenthood as the supporting theory. The analysis discusses George?s early character traits, the changes of his character traits as he suffers schizotypal personality disorder, and the consequences of becoming a schizotypal person. He becomes hallucinated and paranoid, depends on others, becomes eccentric or peculiar, and lacks of self confidence. Then, at the end of this analysis the thesis writer concludes that George kills Breckenridge as the ultimate result of his schizotypal personality disorder, which is mostly caused by Breckenridge?s treatment to educate George. Besides, George?s mother and his sisters have also contributed to worsen his psychological problem.

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