CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
A.
Background of the Study Literature
is a written work which expresses and communicates thought feeling, and attitudes toward life. According
to Chamamah (1994:12), the term literature
is often ‘used’ to call culture symptomsthat can be found in all of the society, although socially, economically, and
religiously the existence of literature is
not inevitability.
Literature is identical with
life. It can be seen that literature is a true picture or replication of human’s life. It
describes what and how human life and usually
it reflects the events which happen in the society. Because literature cannot be created in vacuum, it is not simply
the work of a person, but of an author
fixed in time and space, answer to a community of which he is an important (Wilbur, 1962:123). Abrams stated
the same opinion that any literary works
are produced in a certain community so that they never separate the literary phenomenon from its social environment in time
or space. Therefore, considers the
social phenomena in any literary criticism are undoubtedly significant since literature can be an effective way to reflect
and even change a social issue in any community
around the world. Those who support this argument believe that literature is much related to, and influenced
by, the two factors of “the spirit of the time” and “the national spirit” (International
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 1968:47).
14 As human beings, we like to see, tell, and
hear things that happen around us. When
we see movies, listen to the radio, or read novels. We consider these things can increase our experiences of things
in our imagination that might never have
a chance to do otherwise. The movie, radio, novel, or television also brings to us a new knowledge about something beyond
our imagination. Sometimes we also can
see the true reality of the phenomena surround us through movies or novels.
Novel as one of the literature
genre usually concerns with human being and
often provides valuable message for us through the given story. In reading a novel, we will not only get enjoyment but also
bring us into a vast, close, and fresh
relationship to life. It is really a truth that what has been written on a
novel is the mirror of life of human
being. By reading a novel, readers are capable of seeing “real reality of life’, not the higher,
the lower, or inner reality.
Novels, according to John Peck
and Martin Coyle (1986:102), present a documentary
picture of life. Along side the fact that novels look at people in society, other major characteristic of genre
is that novel tells a story. In fact, novels
tend to tell the same few stories time. Novelist frequently tends to focus on the tension between individuals and the
society in which they live, presenting characters
that are odds with that society. This focus includes the ideology, economical system, culture that is used and
exists in the fixed time and space of the
author.
Marxist literary criticism
considers literature as a product of ideology of certain time and space of a society. Marxist
criticism always sees literature as a 15
reflection of the society which also
makes important general statements about culture and society in the 1890’s. Even so, it
is correct to think of Marxist criticism
as a twentieth-century phenomenon. The basic tenets of Marxism are not easy to summarize, but two well-known
statements byMarx provide a sufficient point
of departure, that it is not the consciousness of men that determined their being, but on the contrary, their social being
thatdetermines their consciousness (Shelden,
1993:70).
Marxist criticism is different
from all form of idealist, formalist, and aetheticist criticism by itself-belief that
‘Literature’ is a social, material practice which related to the other social practice. It
differs from other historical or sociological
approaches to literature mainly it view of the nature of story itself.
For Marxism, ‘history’ does not a
single category or seamless whole. It is grasped, rather, as a field of conflicting interest and
forces (Fowler, 1987:141).
There are two things which
distinguish Marx view ofhistory and society from his predecessor and contemporaries. The
first element is the emphasis of the socio-economic
element in any society as an ultimate determinant of that society’s character. ‘Socio-economic’ mean the social
relations created by the kind of economic
production preponderant in a given society. In capitalist society, this is the relationship between capitalist and
proletarian. It is founded on exploitation and is this relationship of potential or
actual conflict. This basic structure engenders
as number of social institutions and beliefs which act to regulate or dissipate the conflict and keep the mode of production
in being. Under a capitalist economy
system, this socio-economic element can be found on a bourgeois 16 parliament
and judiciary, an education system geared broadly to the needs of capitalist production, and the values which
uphold these institutions. These entire elements
which arise on the socio-economic base arecalled the superstructure of society (Forgacs,
Http://Social.Chas.nesu.edu.2006).
The second element which bears
crucial on most Marxist thinking about literature
is the concept of ideology. The term ideology generally conveys the sense of a collective representation of ideas
and experience as opposed to the material
reality on which experience based. It doesnot necessarily refer to the system of values held or put in circulation by
the ruling class to establish consensus
on society. It is necessarily a ‘false consciousness’, a phrase used by Engel’s. It has, however, been used frequently
by Marxist in both these senses.
Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is
a novel which describes a person and his
society. Robinson Crusoe is a work of Daniel Defoe that first published in 1719 and sometimes regarded as the first novel
in English. The book is a fictional autobiography
of the title character, an English castaway who spends 28 years on a remote island, encountering savages,
captives, and mutineers before being rescued.
The novel was first published on April 25,1719. The positive reception was immediate and universal. Before the end of
the year, this first volume had run through
four editions. Within years, it had reachedan audience as wide as any book ever written in English
(http://www.w3c.org. 2006).
This novel tells us about Crusoe
who leaves Englandon a voyage in September
1651 against the wishes of his parents that hope him to continue their heritage as middle class member. The ship that
carries Crusoe in his first voyage 17 is taken over by Salè pirates and Crusoe
becomes the slave of a Moor. He manages
to escape from the slavery of the Moor witha boat and becomes friend of the captain of a Portuguese ship off the
westerncoast of Africa. The ship is on route
to Brazil. There with the help of the captain, Crusoe can buy a plantation.
He joins an expedition to bring
slaves from Africa,but he is shipwrecked in a storm about forty miles out to sea on an
island near the mouth of the Orinoco river
on September 30, 1659. His companions all die; he manages to fetch arms, tools and other supplies from the ship before
it breaks apart and sinks. He proceeds
to build a fenced-in habitation and cave, keeps a calendar by making marks in a piece of wood. He hunts, grows
corn, learns to make pottery, raises goats,
etc. He reads the Bible and suddenly becomesreligious, thanking God for his fate in which nothing is missing but
society.
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