Literature and Reflection of Life

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CHAPTER II THEORICAL FRAMEWORK

A. Literature and Reflection of Life

Literature 5 presents a life portrait and the essential part of social reality, which includes human interaction, society and events that happen in one individual. Sometimes, it can be reflected in a community, in which describes a particular culture. The role of literature in social world is to recreate some relations, such as social, race, moment, milieu and so forth; thus it reveals the conflict and the strained situation among the communities. A literary work is “a mirror” of human life; however, it portrays bad and good things of human. As quoted from the dictionary of literature terminology, “a literature work is a portrait of society life; moreover, it portrays the author’s personal life” . 6 A literary work is a possibility world that produced by an author. In producing the work he or she has to provide a worth and saleable work for the society tastes, and the work will be success if it can reflect the time, so the society will appreciate the work as long as it represents their social, culture and economic life. In any case, an author is also the member of society, which has to establish a communication between the author and the reader. Through the communication, the literary work can be distributed to the reader as the devotee of literature. In the 5 The term literally is “acquaintance with letters” as in the first sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary, from the Latin “littera” meaning “an individual written character letter”. The has generally come to identify a collection of the texts of work of art, which in Western culture are mainly prose, both fiction and non – fiction, drama and poetry. Anonymous, Literature, Accessed on April 11, 2008. http:en.wikipefia.orgwikiLiterature, p.1 6 Laelasari and Nurlailah, Kamus Istilah Sastra, Bandung : Nuansa Aulia, 2006, p.136 15 communication process, the author has been sending a massage to the reader. 7 In this case, the literary work is described as the message and its content must be recognized between them in order to be comprehended accurately. Literary work is representation of a world; consequently, the reader has to embody it actively. As a result, the reader will find the author’s ideology within the work. Actually, the author has a particular language to inform the ideology to the reader. So, the reader has to be smart in interpreting the author’s ideology. The literature is able to be informative and creative, it does not only offer the information; yet, it is related to the esthetics experience, which includes into the art and transformed through the language. According to Swingewood, literature is not only created to overcome the scientific object analysis; however, it also gets into the ground of social life to reveal the way of human to recognize their society. Meanwhile, the other sociologist; Hogart, said that “without the full literary witness, the student of society will be blind to the fullness of a society life”. 8 In this case, literature does not full express the life, because the author occasionally does not make it on purpose; nevertheless, literature still describes the inveisible aspects of society life. However, literary work has an important duty to be a pioneer that gives admission to occurred social symptoms in society life. Literature is the social institution that uses language medium. Moreover, it “provides life” and almost of the life consists of social reality; occasionally, it 7 Sapardi Joko Damono, Kita dan Sastra Dunia,Baca Artikel. Accessed on Jun 12, 2008. http: www.mizan.comportaltemplateBaca Artikelkodeart222, p.4 8 Ibid. 16 “imitates” the nature and world of human. 9 One of literary work that portrays a society life is fiction. This genre dominates to perform the complete narrative aspects and involves the society culture. The language that used in fiction is easy and understandable; generally, it is also used by the society. 10 Accordingly, it can be interpreted that fiction is fairly sociologic and represent the society social, cultural and economic life.

B. Sociological Approach