Anxiety Disorder in Josh Malerman’s Bird Box

Abstract

The aims of this study, were to find out what kinds of anxiety are felt by the main character and how the main character overcome her anxiety. This data was taken from a novel, the title is “Bird Box” by Josh Malerman. This research was conducted using a qualitative descriptive method to describe a phenomenon and its characteristic that related to the topic of this research. Moreover, the researcher applied the psychoanalysis approach to analyze the data. Analyzed anxiety of the main character, showed that she has her own self-defense mechanismin reducing her anxiety. Furthermore, the researcher used theory based on classic psychoanalytic and types of defense mechanisms for anxiety by Freud. The result of this study, the researcher founds that the main character was felt three kinds of anxiety according to Freud, they are reality anxiety, neurotic anxiety, and moral anxiety. The researcher also found that the main character used three types of self-defense mechanisms by Freud, namely: repression, regression, and rationalization. It can be concluded that the researcher founds 18 sentences that the main character showed three kinds of anxiety and 7 sentences in the novel founds about types of defense mechanismfor reducing the main character’s anxiety according to the theory of Freud.