CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study Discussion on
literature cannot be separated from understanding the definition of literature
itself. Literature is particularly defined as the writings or works or books
valued as works of arts which can be the result of human’s experience about the
world, such as the phenomena of humanity. Literary works might include the
social problem in a society or be directly derived from human being, like
emotions, values, knowledge, or ideas through his imaginations.
Moreover, literature can help
people to understand human sentiments, human interest, human problems, human
desire, etc. In addition, literature also has aesthetic values because in
studying or reading literary works, people need concerns to understand and
evaluate what the literary works mean. Besides, literature is very important
for building intellectual and moral knowledge.
Connolly in Koesnosoebroto
(1988:1) when introducing literature also asks questions for the reasons of
reading literature. He answers that people read because of a hunger of
information, or amusement, or solace, because of an appetite for truth that
seem to grow by what it feeds on. People read to find themselves and their
world, to assess their special roles in the universe to learn the meaning of
the personal struggles in which they engaged. As the result, literature not
only gives art values in its works but also offers other effects, such as by reading and understanding the literary works;
people can get more information, knowledge, and fabulous experience.
On the other hand, literature
creates human life’s image so that it has very close relationship to human life
and problem, reflects life as social reality, thought, behavior and attitude of
human being itself. Wellek and Warren (1978:94) said that literature is a
social institution, which uses language as its medium. Literature is an
expression of life and consists mostly of social reality. A literary work
written in particular period of time is usually connected with the norms and
customs of a society at that time. Therefore, what is exposed in literary work
is mostly not quite different from what is in the real society. Indeed, literature
is a social phenomenon. The creation of literature is a social art.
Through literary works, writers
intend to communicate with a number of persons -a group, a class, a nation, the
world at large. The values posited by a work of literature are posited as
significant to a group, a class, a nation, or to everyone.
The more clearly defined is the
social group in whose name it will speak. It will be more comprehensive and
clearer, and significantly this group is seen in relation to the social
totality (www.dickens-literature.com/l-biography.html accessed on November
2006).
There are three genres of
literature, they are, poetry, prose, and drama.
One form of prose is novel. Novel
is popular before nineteenth century. It is recognized as a major literary
form. It is a prose which is work quite length and complex and attempts to
reflect and express human experience. The subject matter of novel may be taken
from patterns of life, imaginative time or place.
Novel tends to be extroverted and
personal. Its chief’s interest is human character as it manifests itself in
society. Novel as branch of literature has some
pleasure or exciting stories. Also, it is an expression and a picture of life.
As the result, the novel is proven to have more concern on human beings so
that, novel gives more value or contribution of the social reflection in human
being’s daily life. A good story of the novel is written by novelist who always
presents a story more detail so that it can show to the readers a detailed
picture of a story based on the truth of history, imagination, or the writer’s
reflection to something because he or she could not be separated from his or
her surrounding condition. In addition, detailed picture within a novel can be
presented through its intrinsic and extrinsic elements.
In good literary works, people
can analyze or evaluate the novel based on the intrinsic and extrinsic aspects.
Intrinsic aspects can be analyzed through the elements of the novel itself. The
elements of novels include character, setting, plot, theme, point of view, and
style of language. Whereas, extrinsic aspects can be investigated through the
relationship of the content of the novel with the outside terms, such as the
history, the background of the author, the author’s worldview, and social
political milieu where the works are created. In this case, a critic can use
some approaches, such as sociological, psychological, structuralism, etc to
analyze a literary work.
Structuralism is one form of approaches
which can be used to analyze literary works. Other form of structuralism is
genetic structuralism; this approach is developed to ignore the pure
structuralism analysis which analyzes literary works from the intrinsic aspects. Genetic
structuralism tries to analyze the literary work from two sides; intrinsic and
extrinsic aspects. In other word, this approach is principally focused on a
literary work’s genetic, the origin of literature appearance and its
sociological aspect, also, the culture as its background with defenses of the
intrinsic aspects in the literary work itself.
In this research, the researcher
wants to analyze Charles Dickens’ novel by using genetic structuralism. Charles
Dickens is a creative writer with a variety of arts who has written a lot of
famous novels in the world such as Oliver Twist (1837), David Copperfield
(1849), Hard Times (1854), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations
(1860), etc. In many novels, the author tried to arrange and choose the
appropriate and beautiful words, maximally in order to become an interesting
story to his readers so they are motivated to read his works and look for the
message so that the reader will find and catch the point of what the author has
written. He is one feature of the English Victorian novelists who seeks to create
a full and intricate picture of a complex social world; is fully aware of disorder,
injustices and hardships of the world he lives in.
Samekto (1976:65) explains that
Charles Dickens was the first writer who created didactic novel. This period
produced more literary works of prose and Charles Dickens produced “problematic
novel”, in which the main goal was to against the imbalance in society by
showing it so that the society could feel the situation. And also, Dickens’
works are full of criticism of the government policy for the citizens of
England.
Charles Dickens’ Hard Times is a
novel that was aimed to highlight the social and economic pressures some people
were under in England’s Industrial Revolution. Hard Times is a social-protest
novel which attempts to lay bare the malignant impact of nineteenth-century
industrial society upon the people living in English factory towns. This
condition caused the social changes in the society; the appearance of the
social class differences is one form of the impacts. As the result, Dickens
gives the picture in his novel with the real condition at that time.
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