CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the study Literature is one of ways to express the creativity
that is built upon social reality.
Literature gives a portrait of realcondition and situation in which it is written. Therefore, what is exactly exposed
and written in literary works usually represent
the reality of the society. There would be always some messages, points of view and ideas that try to be delivered by
literature (Fananie, 2000: 133).
By the literature, an author
expresses the problem of life. When the author made literature, he was not in an empty
condition, in that the author is apart of society members, he should be influenced by
ideas, tradition or culture, the great event,
and the imbalance condition in the society. As the society member, he can not be out of his society where he lives. As
that result, those can be the portrait of the real condition there. The author tries to
create his world view to the society as collective
subject.
Some concepts of the relation
between literature and society are rather straightforward. Literature is regarded asa
reflection of, as well as a force in, a society,
or simply a separate part of social life (Endraswara, 2008:58). Others argue that the enterprise of literature is
more complex and potentially captures diverse
forms of interaction between various parts of and players in a society.
Thus, the roles of literature in
a society and of society in literature remain open to debate. That literature is best understood
only as aesthetic creation may silence the debate yet leaves many questions unanswered.
2 Literature also deals with human beings. It
concerns with human beings’ effort to
make adjustment and change their society. In this respect, Faruk (1994:12) says that sociological approach on
literature is mostly carried out today to
put great attention to the documentary aspects of literature. This is based on
the idea that literary work reflects a
certain condition of the society. This view contends that literature is a direct
reflection of various social structure, family relationship, class conflict, and social
change.
Literature and society cannot be
separated each other because literature has
close relation with society. Moreover, authors themselves are members of the society. The story which they write is based
on the historical event of their society.
They react on the changes of the
social condition of their society. They express their feeling and knowledge through literary
works. Literature, therefore, might function as a “mirror” of human beings’
life which reflects the authors’ point of view on social phenomena they meet in their
society (Fananie, 2000: 117).
From social phenomena or problems
occurred in the society, poverty is the most
common one. Poverty is problem of human that has been discussed for a long time till now in the world because it is
concerning with welfare of individual or
society. Someone living in poor families is often socially isolated or
painfully aware of the shame and stigma
associated with poverty. Generally, the poor society is weak in the ability to access
social-economic activities so they are left behind.
The term of poverty has many
interpretations (Badruddin, 2009). The first, it is portrait of less material includes food,
clothing, housing, and health care. The 3
second, it is the portrait of social
needs include lack of education, information, and inability to participate with society.
According to Suparlan (1993: 03) poverty is a condition in which a person or community
is deprived of, or lacks the essential
for a minimum standard of well being and life. It is the inability of people to interact with environment to fulfill
their basic needs.
Those mean that poverty is not
only material needs but also non material needs. World Bank has standard about poverty,
some one is called poor people when
their income is under $2 every day. By this standard of world bank, it means that 3,8 billon people is categorized poor in
the world in 2001. Mostly, it happened
in the developing countries such as Africa, Indonesia, India and etc.
Many sociologists and politicians
state that poverty is a social problem but there are factors and ideology making society
poor (Badruddin, 2009). The firstis conservatism
assumes that poor people because they do not work hard, no future planning, lack of enterprise, fatalistic, and
wasteful. The secondis liberalism assumes
poor people because they do not have enough skill and education to get job as the result they get little change of
work. The thirdis radicalism assumes that
poverty is one of characteristic in the world of capitalism because in the capitalist society only few people become rich
and others are poor. The capital is only
concentrated in the rich man, so poor man does not have chance to actualize their potency in economic sector.
Here the researcher wants to
describe poverty as it is captured in the novel.
“Q and A" written by Vikas
Swarup tells about waiter from Mumbai, he is an orphaned, uneducated and poor man namely Ram
Mohammad Thomas. At the 4 beginning of the novel Ram has just won a
billion rupees on the popular television quiz program. But the producer of the quiz
program cannot afford to pay out the prize
of money and then the producer of the quiz program bribed local authorities to declare Ram a cheater because the producer
doesn’t believe that he can answer all
of question because he is only uneducated, orphaned and poor man. then Ram is thrown in jail.
Q and Ais picture of poor man who
always gets unfair treatment because poor
man is socially isolated or painfully aware of the shame and stigma associated with poverty. This novel is
absolutely embedded portrait poverty in India
with its crawls, or slums, starvingstreet kids, alcoholism, murder, robbery, prostitution, and portrait of the rich people
who always live in their marble and granite
four-bedroom flats, they enjoy while poor people who live in squalid, tattered huts.
The purpose of this study is to
explains, examines, and evaluates the causes
and effects of poverty and describes poverty in the novel related to real condition of India. The researcher focuses
more to the India social condition as revealed
in the novel.
Prior to the researcher’s
decision to conduct this study, the researcher has found one thesis that is related to his topic
of the study. It is written by Mufida Inayati
entitled Slavery Reflected in Mark Twain’s The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn (2006). She analyzed the
social phenomenon about slavery that happened
in the United Stated in th century. In
her research she found that slavery was
same as take the right of anyone else forced and slavery usually 5 happened
in the lower class and poor society. She explored the slavery problem using three perspectives they are: literary
sociology, social culture and then concentrated
to the main character.
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