August Pullman's struggle as a new student with facial disfigurement in R.J. Palacio's Wonder

Being new student is a challenge for everyone starts attending school. The challenge can be multiplied for new student with facial disfigurement. This study attempts to analyze the main character, August Pullman in R.J. Palacio’s Wonder. It focuses on challenges faced by August as a new student with facial disfigurement and how August struggles to overcome the challenges. New criticism is applied as the theory to analyze the collected data. The researcher used descriptive qualitative method in analyzing the data and presenting the finding of the study. The findings show that August’s challenges are people’s staring, people’s malicious talk, verbal bullying, physical bullying and people’s avoidance. August overcomes these challenges by ignoring the stares, ignoring the spread words, responding to verbal bullying, avoiding the bully, and making jokes.