if a class thinks the thoughts imputable to it and which bear upon its interests right through to their logical conclusion and yet fails to strike
at the heart of that totality, then such a class is doomed to play only a subordinate role.
Lukacs,
“
Class Consciousness”. Such false consciousness, manifests in the workers’ passivity, aimlessness and,
although they may have won some few battles, they “are doomed to ultimate defeat,” to borrow Lukacs words. This means that the control over the mass population, in this
respect, the working class, that leads to the workers’ false consciousness is a real challenge to the consciousness of the working class itself. Therefore, arousing the
workers’ class consciousness means challenging the prevailing socio-historical, ideological and economic condition that have been historically established in society
by the ruling power.
In order to overcome such false consciousness, Georg Lukacs points out that once the workers are conscious, they must organize the whole society in accordance
with their own interests, not the interests of the privileged-few.
2.2.4. Theory of Marxist Literary Criticism
The approach of this study is Marxist literary criticism approach. The basic principle of the approach is that we employ Marx’s criticisms in analyzing the text.
Engels in his letter to Margaret Harkness, as cited by Barry 156, said that “The PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
more the opinions of the author remains hidden, the better the work of art.” Marxist literary criticism maintains that:
a writer’s social class and its prevailing ‘ideology’ outlooks, values, tacit assumptions, half-realized allegiances, etc. have a major bearing
on what is written by a member of that class. Barry 158 Therefore, a Marxist maintains that all works of arts are not independent from their
economic and social contexts in which the author lives. Instead, it is “constantly formed” by the social contexts, consciously or unconsciously. The aim of Marist
literary criticism is thus to find out the tendency of political and economic contexts toward the work of art. Marxist literary criticism is based on the philosophical
assumption that “consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence...Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life” Marx
568-9. Barry further adds that the social contexts not only form and influence the
content of the work of art, but also “the formal aspects of their writing.” In summary,
what Marxist critics do are: 1. They make clear distinction between the “overt” manifest or surface or what
is seen and “covert” latent or hidden content of certain literary work. And then they relate the covert content with the central idea of Marxism, such as
class struggle. 2. Marxists literary critics also relate the work of art with the author’s social and
political circumstances, or the author’s social class. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
3. This approach is also used to describe “the nature of a whole literary genre in terms of the social period which ‘produces’ it.”
4. Marxist literary critics also relate the social assumptions with the work of art. 5. The last, is to politicize the literary form. It means that they are to find out that
the literary wirings are determined by political circumstances. Barry 167-8 It is then highly interesting to apply Marxist literary criticism in analyzing
certain textual information given that we can analyze wholly and thoroughly by considering aspects dependent to the novel and the author itself, such as, the author’s
political and social backgrounds and the socio-political situation of the time when the author wrote the text. It is interesting for me, specifically, to apply Marxist literary
approach since the analysis will not be independent of the historical situation of the time the novel was written. Therefore the benefits are threefold for me .The first I can
enjoy analyzing the novel. Second, I can at the same time study the history of the time and place of the writing of the novel, and the third, I can exercise and learn
Marxist ideas in order to comprehend and analyze various issues, not merely from textual information, but from whatever means of information.
2.3. The Contexts of the Novel
