Gejolak sosial yang berkembang dalam dunia modern membuat peran moral semakin mempengaruhi masyarakat. Situasi-situati moral yang berkembang menyebabkan kesulitan moral sehingga studi tentang nilai moral seharusnya dilakukan. Berdasarkan uraian tersebut novel sebagai cerminan kehidupan masyarakat digunakan sebagai sumber data penelitian tentang penerapan nilai moral. Novel  Merdeka Sejak Hati menarik dikarenakan mengandung nilai moral yang mudah dipahami yaitu tentang perjuangan seorang pahlawan nasional. Nilai moral yang mendominasi dalam novel tersebut adalah nilai moral keberanian, nilai moral kemurahan hati, nilai moral kejujuran, dan nilai moral kesetiaan. Keempat nilai tersebut selaras dengan teori yang digunakan yaitu moralitas James Rachels.

Penerapan nilai moral menjadi rumusan masalah yang utama dalam penelitian ini. Selanjutnya, nilai moral tersebut akan diketahui fungsinya berdasarkan data yaitu berupa dialog, kalimat, dan penggalan paragraf dalam novel dengan tujuan dapat menjadi refleksi bagi pembaca

Oleh karena sumber data penelitian ini adalah karya sastra, maka pendekatan yang digunakan juga mengacu pada pendekatan penelitian sastra yaitu sosiologi sastra dengan pisau analisis moral. Teknik pengumpulan data yang digunakan yaitu baca dan catat. Teknik analisis data yang digunakan yaitu content analysis untuk mengolah data berupa teks karya sastra dan menganalisis sesuai rumusan masalah.

Social turmoil that develops in the modern world which makes the role of morality has more influence to the society. The development of moral situations causes moral difficulties, thus a study of moral values ​​has to be done. Based on the description, the novel as a reflection of the life of society is used as a data source about the implementation of moral values​. Merdeka Sejak Hati novel is intriguing because it has moral value which is easy to comprehend, specifically about the struggle of a national hero. Moral values that dominate the story are moral of courage, moral of generosity, moral of honesty, and moral of loyalty. Those four values are relevant to the theory that is used, namely morality by James Rachels.

The implementation of moral value becomes the main outline of the problem in this research. Furthermore, the function of moral value will be discovered based on the data found in form of dialogues, sentences, and fragment of paragraphs in the novel with the aim of being a reflection for the reader.

Since the data source of research is a literature work, therefore the approach that is used also refers to the approach of literature research, namely sociology of literature with point of moral analysis. The techniques for collecting data are through reading and taking note. The technique used for analyzing data is content analysis to process data in form of text of literary work and analyses it according to the outline of the problem.

Based on the result of analysis, data of moral values found in Merdeka Sejak Hati used the theory of morality by James Rachels, it can be concluded that the four virtues of moral theory are moral of courage, moral of generosity, moral of honesty, and moral of loyalty indicates compliance with the data found. Moral value of courage becomes the prominent moral value found in the novel. Lafran as the main character becomes the figure that shows the highest number of value. Each value obtained from the results of data analysis is then analysed using moral functions so that their usefulness for the characters in the novel is known.
Keywords            : Moral, Merdeka Sejak Hati novel, Rachels