Self-destruction of main character in Christie Golden's "World of Warcraft: Arthas, Rise of The Lich King"
World of Warcraft: Arthas, Rise of The Lich King novel is written by Christie Golden and it is an adaptation from both Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne Real Time Strategy (RTS) computer video game. The novel tells the story of Arthas, the crown prince of Lordaeron Kingdom. This undergraduate thesis discusses about the self-destruction of the main character of the novel as Arthas has changed from the strong-willed crown prince into a cold-blooded death knight and later on became the Lich King that serves only the darkness while killing his old self. This research aimed to know: 1) the ways Arthas commit self-destructive acts, 2) the underlying factors that caused Arthas to commit self-destructive acts. 

In this research, the writer applied Freudian Psychoanalysis and Maslow’s motivation theory to investigate the problems. Moreover, objective approach is being used in this research and it means the writer considered this literary works as a world by itself or independent. The main goal of this approach is to limit the object of the study only from anything that can be found in the source of data. Then, the writer described, defined, and analyzed the data in descriptive method.

The results of this research showed that Arthas has committed several ways to self-destruct himself and there are also few underlying factors that caused him to do it. From the analysis of this research, it can be concluded Arthas has the wishes to kill, to be killed, and to die that lead him into the ultimate form of self-destruction—an act of toying with death. Furthermore, there are also several underlying factors that caused him to commit self-destructive act. The underlying factors behind Arthas’ self-destruction is his failed love relationship with Jaina Proudmoore, his burden as a crown prince of Lordaeron, and few overlooked circumstances while he took the questionable and hasty decisions.