CHAPTER 2
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
In this chapter, the writer will explain about all theories and elements used to
clear up the way of analyzing in the chapter 3. The writer uses Marxism theory as the
main theory to analyze the class struggle done by the representative of the Lycans,
Lucian, to achieve the safety point of his life and also for his entire tribe. The Marxism
theory, will discuss also about alienation, hegemony and class struggle. These will be
completed by the approach of several intrinsic elements in literary work such as
character, characterization, plot, symbolism and allegory.
2.1 Marxism Theory
This theory was pioneered by two figures with different kind of fields, Karl Marx
(1818 – 1883), as a German philosopher, and Friedrich Engels (1820 – 1895), as a
German sociologist. Marx was the son of a successful lawyer in his era but he could not
taste the success of his father instead living in the middle of poverty which became the
main issue at that time. Even though both Marx and Engels were living in the same
country, Engels was the first to leave Germany and moved to England because he had to
run his father’s business. Meanwhile, Marx was expelled from his country as a symbol
of a political exile to Britain in 1848. They firstly met each other when Marx read
Engels’s article in their work place.
Marx and Engels did not want to name their thought as “Marxism” but they
preferred to say it as “Communism”. They criticized the political issue about the
deprivation done by the private parties. In their point of view, the private parties did not
7
have right to own all where the government is the one deserve to own all. That’s the part
of politicization of the private parties and really suffers people. That’s all based on the
following statement:
They themselves called their economic theories ‘Communism’ (rather than
‘Marxism’), designating their belief in the state ownership of industry,
transport,etc, rather than private ownership. Marx and Engels announced
the advent of Communism in their jointly written ‘Communist Manifesto
of 1848 (Barry, 2009, p.150).
As a supporting material about communism, Marx added the definition of Communism
based on what he thought towards the world in the closing chapter of Hegelian series
epic in the book by Peter Singer (1996) Marx in the following:
Communism is the genuine resolution of the antagonism between man and
nature and between man and man; it is the true resolution of the conflict
between existence and essence, objectification and self-affirmation,
freedom and necessity, individual and species. It is riddle of history solved
and known itself as the solution (Singer, 1996, p.85)
In the beginning of his existence, Marx never saw his works as a monotonoustheoretical but tried to attempt a better world for people to have a better life. He did not
want to make his works as a permanent condition that could never change. These ideas
appeared when he and his friends were impressed with Hegel’s study of philosophy
about the dialectical ideology which emphasized that everything in this world was about
the approval and denial. Everything was always the same. Hegel in his philosophy just
wanted to analyze the condition and situation in the world not to change it. This thing
was the reason why Marx had an idea to change this way of thought towards this
philosophy. He studied more and finally found an inconsistency. He thought that
8
Hegel’s thought just became too theoretical and needed a change to be more practical
and simple to be understood. There had to be a social change in the society.
As this following statement:
Ia tampak amat terkesan oleh Hegel, tetapi ia juga terganggu oleh
sebuah inconsistansy: mengapa masyarakat yang nyata, masyarakat
Prussia, kebalikan dari masyarakat rasional dan bebas seperti yang
dikatakan Hegel? Jawaban yang diberikan oleh Marx dan temantemannya ialah: Hegel hanya merumuskan pikiran. Yang masih
diperlukan adalah pikiran itu menjadi kenyataan. Dengan kata lain,
teori harus menjadi praktis. Pemikiran harus menjadi unsur
pendorong perubahan sosial. (Suseno, 1999, p.48)
(He looked amazed by Hegel’s philosophy but also disturbed by the
inconsistency” why real people like Prussia became a reverse of rational
and independent people just like Hegel said? The answer given by Marx
and his friends that Hegel just formulated an ideology. What we need was
to make it real. In other words, a theory should be practical. An ideology
should become a factor that provokes a social change.)
(Suseno, 1999, p.48).
In the book, “A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory 4th edition by
Selden, Widdowson and Brooke (1997, p.88), it is proven that Marxism was not that
easy to be summarized and known but it is more than that. There was a body of
revolutionary theory of tenet to change the world and it is totally different with the
definition of philosophy that always became too theoretical. The world’s existence was
coming from human’s consciousness and they were the one who could make it. Marx
stated his opinion in his famous quote:
It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but,
on the contrary, their social being that determines their
consciousness. The philosophers have only interpreted the world in
various ways; the point is to change it (Selden, et al 1997, p.88)
9
Many Marxist figures declared that there are two main parts of Marxist thoughts
which are could be called as “Descriptive” and “Prescriptive”. According to a Journal
about Marxism Marxism and Method by Daniel Little, there are two main parts that
Marx thought as the theory of “Marxism”; “descriptive” and “prescriptive” elements.
The descriptive element was a way of seeing the world based on the history and the
epistemology. While the prescriptive element is a call to action, invoking the working
class to impose down what Marx believed as the oppressor class or the ruler class.
He continued that the part of the descriptive element of Marxism is the idea that
the history of the world is governed or created by the class struggle. The powers of
economic element led people to be forced survive in the difficult condition in the world
and they all developed to achieve the last stages which was “Communism” as the last
stage. People especially who came from the working class can’t avoid it. While
descriptive element emphasized the critique of capitalism. He believed that the source of
wealth in society was came from the labor of the workers. This was also known as the
labor theory of value (LTV).1
Marxism was really close to the economy and materialism because in Marxism,
the capitalism and communism were very existing. These main aspects really affected
the people’s life especially for those who didn’t get rights to live better. There are
several elements of Marxism that could be used to analyze the condition of society.
Those elements could complete each other and became crucial parts in Marxism itself.
According to an article about Marxism by Gonick, there were four different elements to
be a method to understand how societies change.
1
(http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~delittle/Marxism%20and%20Method%203.htm)
10
The first element was materialist approach to history. This was not about the way
people be motivated but deeper to know the way our economy existed. This related to
the production in the society. The second element was the importance attached to class
division, especially in interacting to the social classes in the economy. This was about
the worker and the ruler, the seller and the labor power, the owner of the means of
production to become their private assets, enabling them to exercise property rights over
what was produced, how, whom and also where. This includes the family system, the
political and legal system, the culture and the reigning ideology and also the set of ideas
that most people come to accept. The third element was about the dialectical approach to
historical change. Social tensions and conflict within a society produce a struggle
between elements of the old order and elements of the new order, out of which may
emerge a new form of society which is a synthesis of old and new. The fourth element
was Marxism was a commitment to socialism. With this commitment came the belief
that it was not sufficient to study the world. Marxism held that the capitalist economy
inherently contradictory and those crises that generate conflict and struggle for change
are inevitable.2
There are three main Marxism basic key principles which are:
1. Materialist interpretation of history:
how history is a product of struggles
between the social classes.
2. Critique of capitalism: an economic minority control and manipulate the
economic majority.
2
(http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.org/articles/marxism)
11
3. Advocacy of proletariat revolution: discusses how in order to overcome the
challenges faced by a working class, this class needs to start a revolution and
gain political power.
The theories above supported the ideas in Barry (2009, p.150); “The aim of Marxism
is to bring about a classless society, based on the common ownership of the means of
production, distribution and exchange”. These all wanted to make clear that the purpose
of Marxism is to make society without different classes counted but the balance of
classes. No class who ruled whom but everything was just the same. Everything could
not be owned privately but commonly.
Marxism also could be said as a materialist philosophy which really paid
attention to something that could be seen and could be touched in the world. As the
following statement:
Marxism is a materialist philosophy; that is, it tries to explain things
without assuming the existence of a world or of forces beyond the natural
world around us, and the society we live in. It looks for concrete,
scientific, logical explanations of the world of observable fact. (Barry,
2009, p.156)
The term of materialist aspects were really close to Marxism. There were some elements
inside that could be seen in Marxism and also everything that was related with the
economic things until shaping class difference in the society.
2.1.1 Social Class Structure in the Society
In the beginning when the issue about class started to exist, many people thought
that class was closely related to people’s status: the status to determine the place for
people to live whether they were poor or rich and a status to classify people who had a
12
lot of money to rule the world and a class who only could try to escape from the reality.
In Marxism, this issue didn’t became the main point but more seeing the way people
were shaped and how people could be counted as “don’t have” and “have”. Marx argued
that intelligence; power and working ability were not the main causes of difference class
in society. As the following statements:
Marxisme menolak pembedaan ini atau untuk lebih tepat,
menempatkannya pada peranan yang lebih rendah. Masalahnya, dalam
kenyataanya, bukanlah menyatakan bahwa ada orang miskin dan ada
orang kaya, akan tetapi menentukan apakah yang menyebabkan kekayaan
dari beberapa orang dan kemiskinan orang-orang yang lain.
Bilamana kekayaan dan kemiskinan hanya tergantung dari kemampuan
individual dari seseorang pada intelijensi, kekuatan, dan kemampuan
bekerja, maka tidak ada kelas. Konsep kelas didasarkan pada ide bahwa
perbedaan dalam status sosial tidak tergantung hanya pada individuindividu, akan tetapi dipaksakan kepada mereka atas cara yang khusus.
(Duvenger, 2003, p.188)
(Marxism refused this difference or more correctly, placed this role to be
lesser. The problem was not about stating that poor people and rich people
existed but determined what were the causes of the richness and the
poverty of many people in the society.
If the richness and the poverty was only depending on the individual skill
of intellegence, power and working ability, so that there would be no class.
The class concept was based on ideas that the social status differences do
not depend only on the individuals but forced to them with some partical
ways.) (Duvenger, 2003, p.88)
There was not any Marx’s work that discussed about the class definition. He just
pictured the concrete ways done in order to achieve the safety place in the society. He
explained how the capitalist could rule the oppressors but without the abstract definition
of social classes. In a brochure “The Great Initiative” that was published in 1919, Lenin
wanted to try to describe the real definition of class as the following:
Apa yang kita sebut kelas adalah kelompok besar dari orang-orang yang
dipertandai oleh posisi yang dipegangnya didalam suatu sistem yang
dibatasi secara historis oleh produksi sosial, oleh hubungannya (pada
13
umumnya ditentukan dan dikuduskan oleh hukum) dengan alat-alat
produksi, oleh peranannya didalam organisasi kerja sosial, dan dari sini
alat-alat pengaturan dan porsi kekayaan sosial yang dipunyainya.
(Duvenger, 2003, pp.190-191).
(What we called a class was a large group of people who were
characterized by the positions that they held in a limited system
historically by the social production, through the relationship (commonly,
determined and sanctified by law) using production tools, by their roles
inside the social working organization and from this equipment and the
arrangement of its share of social wealth.) (Duvenger, 2003, pp.190-191)
The main idea of Marxism about class was that every social class was formulated
through positions through the production. This was really crucial and could change the
position in the society easily. The power of production was really important in this case.
Production meant everything for people in the society all the more so can make people’s
life better by having more quality in production. This was based on the quote written in
book “Sosiologi Politik” by Maurice Duvenger that:
Hubungan-hubungan sosial terikat rapat kepada kekuatan-kekuatan
produksi. Dengan memperoleh kekuatan produksi yang baru, manusia
mengubah cara produksinya, cara dimana mereka menunjang hidupnya;
mereka mengubah hubungan-hubungan sosialnya (2003, p.191)
(Social relations were bound tightly to the powers of production. By
acquiring these new powers of production, human changed their
productions, the way they supported their life; they changed their sosial
relations) (2003, p.191)
According to Robert and Helen Lynd in the book “Sosiologi Politik” by Maurice
Duvenger, there were six different classes in the society which are (1) a class from upper
to upper (the upper upper class), (2) a lower class from the upper class (a lower upper
class), (3) a middle upper class (an upper middle class), (4) a middle to lower class (a
14
lower middle class), (5) an upper class from the lower class (upper lower class), (6) a
lower class from the lower class (a lower lower class). (2003, p.191)
We could make it simpler to identify the classes in Marxism by grouping the
people into two main sides, “upper class” and “lower class”. The upper class belonged to
the “the bourgeois” and the lower class belonged to “the proletariat”. Basically, the
proletariat owns nothing in the society but they had a labor power. On the contrary, the
bourgeois had the means of production to rule the proletariat, as the following statement:
Marx also stated “a freeman and a slave, noble and civil, master and
servant, in short between the oppressed and oppressing, always stand
oppose one to another in clearly seen in society or being hidden. Bourgeois
society which grown from feudal society, have not vanquish the different
between those classes. They just make others new class with a new style of
oppressing. Nowadays the gap between them is getting deeper; they are
separated into two big opposing fortress that ready to fight one to another;
bourgeois and proletariat. (Barry, 2009, p.156)
Before the capitalism era ended, Marx stated that there were three classes not
two classes in the capitalist society. They were labor class (they lived from wedges),
firm classes (they lived from profits) and property owner class (they lived from property
chains). (Suseno, 1999, p.113). It was changed after the capitalism era where the
property owner class disappeared and became similar as the firm class.
Private ownership of the means of production was the main basis of the division
of society into classes. Every society that was organized on the basis resulted in two
kind of classes but still in the same conflict area: class that had the means of production
and class that only depended on their working ability to survive in a difficult life.
According to Marx, there was a creative aspect inside the ability of human to work.
15
There would be something remaining behind it. That was a positive point and would be
a more value. As stated in the following statement:
“Marx yakin bahwa ada unsur kreatif di dalam pekerjaan manusia,
yaitu, melalui kerjanya, manusia menambahkan sesuatu pada apa
saja yang dihasilkannya; Bilamana kita disingkirkan dari suatu
objek yang dihasilkan oleh manusia apa saja yang dipergunakan
untuk menghasilkannya (bahan mentah, menghidupkan kaum
pekerja, termasuk “amortisasi” dari masa mudanya, masa tuanya,
masa senangnya, resiko kecelakaan, kesakitan dan seterusnya),
masih tinggal sesuatu, yaitu, apa yang telah diciptakan oleh
manusia dengan kerjanya. Marx menyebut sesuatu ini, “nilai lebih”
dari kerja manusia.” (Duvenger, 2003, p.192)
“Marx believed that there would be a creativity behind the human’s
job, was, through their job, human added something on what they
resulted; If we were removed from a object that produced by the
human whatever they used to produce those (raw material, turned on
the workers, including “amortization” of their youth, old age, joy,
accident risk, sickness and so on), there was something remaining,
was, something that had been produced by the human with his job.
Marx called this thing, “more value” from the human’s job.”
(Duvenger, 2003, p.192)
Marx thought that the capitalist class just gave the working class less wage, only
for maintaining life, not more. The capitalist deprived all the working class’s rights.
In analyzing the society condition, Marx created an idea about Base and
Superstructure which was named as “Economic Determination”.
16
(Figure 16)
(http://www.d.umn.edu/~cstroupe/ideas/base_superstructure.html)
Marx used the metaphor of “Base” and “Superstructure” to show that the
economic relation of production in a society determines the forms of the state and social
consciousness. The ‘base’ referred to political economy’ where all the economic systems
were based on such as capitalism or socialism who ruled the production, distribution and
exchange. This could truly prove the existence of capitalism where you could have the
private ownership, employment with employers and employee and also people who
worked for them. Meanwhile, the superstructure refers to the social insitution in a
society which played a part in spreading cultural values such as the family, religions, the
educational system and also the mass media. 3
The point was if we had the aspects in the base structure, we could drive the
superstructure. It could drive also the culture values in the society. It would make a gap
3
(http://www.d.umn.edu/~cstroupe/ideas/base_superstructure.html)
17
between who was the determiner and who was determined. In the book of “Communist
Manifesto”, Marx and Engels stated about these ideas through this following statement:
What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production
changes in character in proportion as material production is changed? The
ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
(Engels & Marx, 2004, p.30)
2.1.2 Class Struggle and Class Conflict
For the Marxists, class antagonism was the reflection of the class struggle, and
was determined by the production system and the ownership system, which both were
the effect of the technology condition or sometimes we called it as “productivity
powers”. We could make the structure of politic phenomena in this production system:
technology – production system and the ownership system of material – social classes –
class struggle – political antagonism. This class struggle would happen if the working
class felt that their destiny was ruled and created by the capitalist class and that was so
suffering for the working class as the class under the capitalist class.
The working class wanted better life and escaped from the depression made by
the capitalist. The capitalist rules the working class and forced the proletariat to work but
all the production was owned by the capitalist. The capitalist only gave a little part of the
production to at least make the working class could stay alive. This exploitation was the
main reason why proletariat wanted to do the protest and tried to get what they wanted.
Marx stated that this struggle was a new term of defense of the proletariat as the
depression side and the bourgeois as the suppression side. The proletariat did not have
any capital to establish a new work place but they only had a power to work. This was a
picture of antiquity where the proletariat was treated like a slave not good condition.
18
This actually was different in every country or place; this followed the rule and the
shape the country itself, as the following statement:
Di dalam negara purbakala, perjuangan utama adalah antara tuan dan
budak; di dalam negara kapitalis, adalah antara borjuis dan proletariat.
Di dalam setiap hal, musuh didalam konflik tersebut adalah pemilikpemilik pribadi atas alat-alat produksi dan mereka yang modalnya adalah
semata-mata kemampuannya untuk bekerjam akan tetapi perjuangan
dasar ini mengambil rupa yang sebagai ragam menurut bentuk negara, di
dalam setiap jenis negara. (Duvenger, 2003, p.205)
(In the ancient country, the main struggle is between the master and slave;
in the capitalist countries, is among the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. In
every case, the enemy in this conflict is private owners of the means of
production and those whose capital is simply the ability to work but the
basic struggle is taking the form of a variety of forms according to the
state, in any kind of state.)
(Duvenger, 2003, p.205)
The main cause of the class struggle in the society was a class conflict. One of
the most powerful sociological explanations of social conflict is that of Karl Marx, who
posited a class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie intrinsic to capitalist,
industrial society. This notion is powerful in being dynamic, intuitively persuasive, and
appearing to fit well with history. This notion is powerful in being dynamic, intuitively
persuasive, and appearing to fit well with history. According to an article in Hawaiian
edu, Marxism, Class Conflict and the Conflict Helix, there are six elements in Marx’s
view of class conflict:4

Classes are authority relationship based on property ownership.

A class defines groupings of individuals with shared life situations, thus interests.

Classes are naturally antagonistic by virtue of their interests.

Imminent within modern society is the growth of two antagonistic classes and
their struggle, which eventually absorbs all social relations.
4
(http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/CIP.CHAP5.HTM)
19

Political organization and power is an instrumentality of class struggle and
reigning ideas are its reflection.

Structural change is a consequence of the class struggle.
Based on the points above, it is seen obviously that class conflict happens because of
the economic issue such as property ownership issue or political organization. Those
things drive people to do struggle and make the structure in the society changed. The
class admission in the society is important to determine the power in economic point of
view.
2.1.3 Alienation
In the capitalist country, working was not a need that could be easily done. It had
become something that people were afraid to do. That was an opposite when people saw
working as a place to improve their skill and also to fulfill what they needed especially
to give their family a good life but they did not get it. The government had taken all the
rights to have a better place to work and to interact with other people through working
because they all were marginalized from their environment where they were supposed to
be. Suseno in his book said that many people in the capitalist system didn’t work as they
should do but more looked like a pressure for them. They all worked not only because
they liked that job but because they were forced to do. The purpose of this was not only
because they wanted to actualize themselves in the working environment but to earn
money for living. They all would be alienated from they were belong. This was based on
the statement:
Jawab Karl Marx, dalam sistem kapitalisme, orang tidak bekerja secara
bebas dan universal melainkan semata-mata terpaksa, sebagai syarat
untuk bisa hidup. Jadi pekerjaan tidak mengembangkan, melainkan
20
mengasingkan manusia, baik bagi dirinya sendiri, maupun orang lain.
(Suseno, 1999, p.95
(Marx answered, in capitalism; people didn’t work freely and universally
but under-pressure, as a condition for living. So working was not
actualizing, but just alienated human, both for their own or others)
(Suseno, 1999, p.95)
Actually the essence of human life was depending on the human itself. Our life
was control by ourselves. Yet Marx believed that Capitalism has changed that essence
and the product and industry that belonged to the Bourgeois/Capitalist were controlling
human especially working class or Proletariat. So in short, Capitalism involved an
alienation of ourselves. Under the system of wage labor, the workers became a
commodity and object which he or she sold for getting money. This was what Marx
stated in the following statement:
For Marx, however, this alienated form of human activity is incarnated in
the material products of our labor. The product of labor is labor which has
been embodied in an object, which has become material; it is the
objectification of labor. This, rather than Feuerbach’s abstract 'speciesbeing', is the true objectification of mankind's essence (Hawkes, 1996,
p.97)
Hawkes in his book added fact that what the labor earned and made was not
belong to the labor but owned by the capitalist. That was all because the capitalist just
considered all the production made by the labor or the workers, could be sold and
became money as their benefits. As the following statement:
Under a capitalist economy, however, this objectified essence of ourselves
does not even belong to us. The product made by the worker belongs to the
capitalist who considers it as a commodity to be sold. This leads Marx to
emphasize that capitalism involves an alienation of ourselves, as well as an
objectification. (Hawkes, 1996, p.97)
21
2.1.4 Hegemony
"Hegemony" was most likely derived from the Greek egemonia, whose root is
egemon, meaning "leader, ruler, often in the sense of a state other than his own". Since
the 19th century "hegemony" commonly has been used to indicate "political
predominance, usually of one state over another”. According to Perry Anderson's (1996)
The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci, "hegemony" acquired a specifically Marxist
character in its use (as "gegemoniya") by Russian Social-Democrats, from the late 1890s
through the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. This sense of hegemony, as articulated by
Lenin, referred to the leadership exercised by the proletariat over the other exploited
classes:" As the only consistently revolutionary class of contemporary society, (the
proletariat) must be the leader in the struggle of the whole people for a fully democratic
revolution, in the struggle of all the working and exploited people against the oppressors
and exploiters".
This thought came from the Italian communist thinker, social activist and the
political leader, Antonio Gramsci (1891 – 1937). He rejected the economism, insisting
on the independence of ideology from economic determinism. Gramsci also rejected
crude materialism, offering a humanist version of Marxism which focused on human
subjectivity. He saw the proletarian revolution was the choice. There would be no more
space between the proletariat and the bourgeois. He criticized the domination of the
ruling class. The ruling class even though used ideology and thought could rule the
down class by the political approach without using power of strength or any kind of
physical thing. He argued that this term as a control exercised by a dominant class. The
struggle could happen depending on how people who were placed in the down class
could move and struggle. As the following:
22
As a result of this revelation, there will no longer be a need for an
ideological false consciousness. The antinomies between subject and
object, ideas and matter, will therefore dissolve, and the totality will
become visible. For the moment, then, philosophy’s task is to show the
proletarians that the reified, fragmentary and contradictory world in which
they live is simply the product of their own objectified activity; ‘to deduce
the unity – which is ot given – of this disintegrating creation and to prove
that it is the product of a creating subject.
(Hawkes, 1996, p.114)
Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1930) investigated why the dominant class
(colonizer in the context of Post colonialism) was always successful to promote their
own interest in the society. So, they can continue their domination without physical
forces but with more ideology and propaganda systems. Gramsci stated, “hegemony
initially a term referring to the dominance of one state within a confederation, is now
generally understood to mean domination by consent. (Ashcroft, Bill et al, 2007, p.106)
Gauri Viswanathan, who shows how ‘the humanistic functions traditionally associated
with the study of literature – for example, the shaping of character or the development of
the aesthetic sense or the disciplines of ethical thinking – can be vital in the process of
sociopolitical control’ (1987, p.2). Such control was maintained by the British
government when it took responsibility for education in India after the Charter Act of
1813. Searching for a method of communicating the values of Western civilization to
Indians which avoided offending their Hindu sensibilities, the administration discovered
the power of English literature as a vehicle for imperial authority.
2.2 Symbolism
A symbol is the use of a concrete object to represent an abstract idea. The word
symbol is derived from the Greek verb “symballein” which means “to put together and
23
the related noun “symbolon” which means “mark”, “taken” or “sign”. The term, symbol,
when used in literature is often a figure of speech in which a person, object, or situation
represent something in addition to its literal meaning. Conventional or traditional literary
symbols work in much the same way, and because they have a previously agreed upon
meaning, they can be used to suggest ideas more universal than the physical aspect
itself. A symbol may appear in a work of literature in a number of different ways to
suggest a number of different things. Most commonly, a symbol will present itself in the
form of 1) a word, 2) a figure of speech, 3) an event, 4) the total action, or 5) a character.
(Birkets, 1996, p.605) According to Birkerts (1996, p.608), the purpose of symbol is to
point the reader toward a larger, more generalized, order of significance. Culture is also
an aspect that used to make a symbol exist, as the following statement:
Symbol’s purpose is to point the reader toward a larger, more generalized,
order of significance. Universal or conventional symbol; they have been
accepted as having specific public meaning throughout culture. But
symbol can be contextual depending for their meaning upon the
conventions of a particular group. (Birkerts, 1996, p.608)
2.3 Character and Characterization
Character and characterization are intrinsic elements in the literary work. It is
used to analyze a literary work. Both character and characterization have different
meanings. According to Gill (1995, p.127), A character is someone in a literary work
who has some sort of identity, an identity which is made up by appearance,
conversation, action, name and thoughts going on in the head. Meanwhile, According to
DiYanni (2004, p.55), a character is a person’s feature, traits or abilities. After seeing
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those definitions above, we can say that character has its characteristic towards
characterization.
To analyze a character in a literary work such as inside a novel, we also must
now about the characterization of the character. Basically, a method that the writer uses
characterization in a literary work to be a tool to create the character and to reveal the
character’s personality deeper. According to DiYanni (2004, p.56), there are some major
technique to reveal characters in fiction, through the description with or without
judgment, physical appearance, action, speech and consciousness. By seeing the
definition above, a character can be assumed from the characteristic.
2.3.1 Major and Minor character
There are two types of character actually which are Major and Minor character.
According to DiYanni (2004, p.55), major characters holds an important role in a story
because major character is the center of the story’s action and theme. Major character
dominates the story because the character appears in the most actions of the story. Major
character is the one who has a conflict in a story. Normally, major character is called as
“protagonist”. On the other hand, Minor character is a character whose fiction is to light
up the major character whose roles usually remain the same. A minor character is also
called as a “supporting character”. (DiYanni, 2004, p.55)
2.3.2 Static and Dynamic Character
If it is put more for the role of each character, character can be divided into two
kinds of character which are Static character and Dynamic character. According to Arp
and Johnson (2006, p.79), static character remains essentially the same person from the
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beginning of the story to the end. Static character doesn’t take too many changes and
still stable until the end of the story. On the other hand, a dynamic character is a
character that take a change in the outlook or character in the story. Arp stated that a
dynamic character, in contrast, is the one that does experience an important change in
the course of the story. It can be concluded that dynamic character takes more roles of
changes in the story such as bad to be worse or good to be better. It will make a
significant effect to the story.
2.4 Plot
In definition, plot refers to the deliberate selection and arrangement of the
incidents that the playwright presents. The key concepts here are the terms selection and
arrangement. According to DiYanni (2004, p.45), there are two types of plot which are
chronological and flash back. Chronological is a type of plot that provides the incidents
chronogically, while flash back is a type of plot that tells the story by providing the
present events then take the readers or viewers to the past event. DiYanni (2004, pp.4445), classifies the stages of plot which contain in most of stories. The first is exposition
which provides the base information, such as: setting and major characters. This stage is
preliminary situation which will take the story to the next series of conflict. The second
is complication which serves a series of conflict or threats which the conflicts are getting
worse and then take a moment with the greatest tension. The third is climax. This is the
stage which has the greatest tension. It provides event that has no turning back point.
The fourth is Falling action. This is the stage where the conflict is getting better. The last
is resolution which is the stage when the conflicts are resolved.
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