Kids’ adventure and bravery seen through Hero’s Journey in Erich Kästner’s Emil and the Detectives

This thesis is an elaboration of a general idea to analyze a children's novel by Erich Kästner under the title Emil and the Detectives. This thesis focuses on two analyses. First is how the characters describe in the novel is reflects in the novel by using the New Criticism theory. Second, this thesis analyzes how the storyline of the novel Emil and the Detectives reflects in Joseph Campbell's theory of Hero's Journey. This thesis uses descriptive qualitative method to get the results about how Emil and other characters pass through the heroic plot and bring out the bravery. Data is collected through character analysis and characterization to determine the character's traits, then analyzes the character's journey in the form of stages of Hero's Journey by Joseph Campbell. The result of this thesis is explained that Emil and his friends, named the Professor and Gustav, each character has a different traits but they also have the same characterization, it is the bravery that brings them into the journey of a hero but their adventure did not go through all the stages in the theory of Hero's Journey by Joseph Campbell.