THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SOCIAL AND LOVE RELATIONSHIPS IN O HENRY’S SHORT STORY “THE THIRD INGREDIENT”

O Henry’s short story entitled “The Third Ingredient” presents love and social relationships issues involving three characters, they are Hetty Pepper, Cecilia, and the mysterious young man. The available researches tend to focus into the aspect of love relationship between Cecilia and the mysterious young man only, while at the same time Hetty Pepper is positioned only as the character who helped to bring them together. Based on that reason, this research discusses both love and social relationships inside the short story in order to present the construction of the story more fully. In this research, the writer presents a qualitative approach by using binary opposition concept of Claude Lévi-Strauss to find the clear difference between two women main characters under those relationships themes. The intrinsic elements of the short story in which the research is focused are the character and characterization and the plot. Based on the analysis, the writer concludes that the characterization of Hetty Pepper and Cecilia is depicted in an opposite way in relation to the love and social relationships. At the same time, the mysterious young man involved in social relationship with Hetty Pepper and in love and social relationships with Cecilia has a significant role to show the different role of those two women characters to create a love and social relationship. Based on the analysis of the plot of the short story, it can be concluded too that the different motives presented by the characters bring into the different results