Social Stratification Review of Related Theories

bearing on what is written by a member of that class ”. Charles E. Bressler 1994: 214 also says that “a critic must place a work in its historical setting, paying attent ion to the author’s life, the time period in which the work was written, and the cultural milieu of both the text and the author, all of these corcerns being rela ted to sociological issues”. Bressler 1994: 218 adds “One of critic’s tasks, then, is to rec onstruct an author’s ideology or the author’s ideological milieu”. These quotations clearly states that in analysing any particular works by using Marxism theory, the information about the author of the literary work such as social class, etc. can give certain contributions to the analysis. Marxist criticism methods are related with the social background of the author and the social assumption when a particular literary work is released. The background of the author affects in the message of the work. In this study, the social background of Kahlil Gibran affects the poems “We and You”. How Gibran, as the author, stands in the poem proves his position in society. This section explains about the review of social backgrounds of the author, Kahlil Gibran and the situation during his lifetime which was impacting to his works, including the poem “We and You”. Kahlil Gibran was born in Besharri, Lebanon in 1883. He lived in a religious Manorite Catholic family. Taken from a review of biography of Kahlil Gibran which is written by Suhail Ibn and Salim Hanna 1975: 599, “Besharri, Lebanon, where Gibran was born in 1883, was part of the Ottoman Empire. That Empire tottered in the late nineteenth century, verging on certain collapse”. The Ottoman Empire conquer the Lebanon from 1516 to 1918. Suheil Bushrui and Joe Jenkins also give some information about the social condition when Kahlil Gibran was born, they say Gibran was born in “a year of transition.” While the Ottomans were still in control of his homeland, the British had invaded Egypt and the Sudan, and in 1883 were struggling against the Mahdi….In the sphere of technology the machine-gun and the first skyscraper were built, while in the realm of ideas Wagner, Marx, and Turgenev passed on and Kafka, Keynes, and Kahlil Gibran were born Bushrui and Jenkins, 1998: 15. Living as a poor family, Gibran and his family decided to find a better life. They emigrated from Lebanon to Boston, America in 1895. Suheil Bushrui and Joe Jenkins 1998: 15 state “Gibran’s family, headed by a drunken and despondent father and poised on the brink of poverty, also tottered; but to save it from imminent collapse, his mother, sister and half-brother emigrated to America.” Similar with Eugene Paul Nasar’s statement 1980: 4 that Gibran’s family “left their homeland partly to escape the poverty and restrictions of Ottoman rule, partly to escape from a drunken husband and father”. In America, Gibran learned about art and philosophy specifically in literature and painting. The most i nfluencing poet for Gibran’s work was William Blake. Gibran was also called “The William Blake of Twentieth Century”. When Gibran moved from Boston to New York in 1911, he joined a Syrian community and focused on the development and the condition of people in his country. He was alsovery critical to the government, especially the Ottoman Empire which can be seen in his most of his works. “Gibran’s political activity began to capture his attention as he joined the Golden Links Society, a group of young Syrian immigrant men who worked for the improvement of Syrian citizens’ lifestyle around the world ” gibrankahlilgibran.org, 2012.