VISUAL NARRATIVE OF DEATH IN INDONESIAN CHILDREN FOLKTALES’ ILLUSTRATION

• Main Author: Ika Indrayati, Refita
• Format: Theses
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/30285
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Folklore used as a tool to transfer life lesson from generation to generation. In the midst of modern children's books that carry moral as a main theme, folklore must comes with a new adaptation to compete with other stories. This adaptation forced to change how sensitive theme must be delivered, such as death. This study aims to explore how Indonesian folklore books that narrated death in terms of images, texts, and relationships built between the two elements. Using content analysis, this research takes an example of story containing subtheme as story line from five printed books of Indonesian children’s folktales that published between 2015-2017. The sample then divided into five categories of death themes based on the plot and characters who died; 1) the story of minor character’s death as the driving storyline, 2) the death of the main character as a sacrifice, 3) the death of the main character as a curse, 4) the death of the antagonist, and 5) the death of the main character to overcome the hardships of life. The conclusion is that the depiction of death in folklore for children in general has been smoothed out. Illustration that depicting do not venture into decomposition of human body. Using warm bright colors with metaphorical text, illustrations showing the more pleasing side of death. The role of text in folklore is more dominant, with 80% of them taking directly from texts, and thus makes the relation more symmetrical.