The Reflection of Social and Class Conflict in

Road Way to Wigan Pier By George Orwell

A Proposal

By:

Asep Awaludin

1135030028

FAKULTAS ADAB DAN HUMANIORA

JURUSAN SASTRA INGGRIS

UNIVERSITAS ISLAM NEGERI SUNAN GUNUNG DJATI BANDUNG

 Introduction

A. Background Of Research

Literary work has a different style from daily speech. According to Jakobson (in
Eagleton: 1996) literature represents organized violence committed on ordinary speech. It means
that literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from
everyday speech. According to Jan van, Luxemburg and friends (1986) literature are a study of
literary texts systematically according to its functions in society.

In the creation of literary work to develop human relations with the world, it is caused the
literary life, in reality, social life. In this case, the same with the creation of another thing. Since
the creation of literary work is involves the human with his or her environment, a literary work
cannot be separated from the creator of the subject. A literary work is produced by the author,
and the author is a member of society. The author can be positioned as a social being. There is a
relationship between the author and the society.

As Wellek (1962: 96-97) states that the author has been citizen, has pronounced on
question of social and political importance and has taken part in the issues of his time. A literary
work is the author‟s creation which reflects social reality. It is created over the result of
experience, thought, reflection, and the culture of the author about something that happened in
his or herself, and society. Here, the author is the most important person to define the condition
in his reality of life through his literary work. He or she reveals their mind, represents what they
want in their life and social reality. This is what he later expressed through the literary works he
created. He tried to express something about objective reality that he found. He wanted to notice
to the other parties about something that is regarded as a problem or human (Esten, 1978: 9-10).

Through literary work, an author wants to change the social view of his society to provide
a solution for a better view and attitude in social life. However, the author has a sensitivity in
choosing the substances based on social reality and certainly, the author has a personal view, and
his or her personal view can not be separated from the social context. Goldmann (1980: 97)
states that the author as a collective subject creates literary work to express what they feel and
they think about their social life.
 Through his ability, the author can explore the wealth of society, then he or she puts it to
literary work and enjoyed by the readers. The wealth of literary work is; first, depending on the
author's ability to describe the results of his experience. Second, depending on the reader's ability
to understand a literary work itself. In genetic structuralism theory, a literary work is a structural
activity motivated by the presentation of the subject of literary work to achieve a balance with its
social and natural environment (Faruk, 2003: 61).

Goldmann (1980:97) believes that literature is a structure, and this is contained within the
sense of structuralism. From the statement above, the writer concludes that the author reflected
his real social life and witnessing the fact by using his imagination to create great literary work.
Since the author aware that he or she is a kind of society, and society is the most influential of
literary work, he or she assembles society to be aware of reality and make up the consciousness
to enhance life. Literature does not just fall from the sky, but there is a relation among the writer,
literature, and society (Damono, 1984: 129). Every author can be deliberately to convey his or
her view toward society through his or her work. Then, in this research, the writer will analyze a
novel titled The Road To Wigan Pier.

According Van Luxemburg (1986: 24-25) (1) the form of dialectical materialism, the
content of which is that literary material is taken from social reality which has a fundamental
origin in the form of production; (2) The power of literature which lies in the extent to which it
can be understood within a broader framework of the life of the creator community; (3)
Reification in the world of literature that distinguishes between literary forms and literary
contents, namely forms relating to commodities (works and readers), while content relates to the
value of using literary works in social life. For Marx, literature and all other cultural phenomena
reflect patterns of economic relations because literature is bound by the classes that exist in
society. Therefore, literary works can only be understood if they are associated with these
relations.

Leurenson and Swingewood (1972) there are three perspectives related to the literature of
sociology, namely: (1) research view literary works as social documents which constitute
reflection of the situation at the time of the literature was created, (2) research reveal literature as
a reflection of the author's social situation, (3) research which captures literature as a
manifestation of historical events and circumstances socio-cultural. Sociology of literature is the
science that investigates issues generally in society to determine and interpret the realities of
social life, such as norms, social groups, layers of society, social processes, changes social, social
institutions, and culture and embodiment (Soekanto, 1981: 367).

George Orwell was the best known of the English socialist writers of the 1930s and
1940s. He is justifiably famous for books like Homage to Catalonia and Animal Farm, as well as
1984. Less familiar, however, particularly to the new generation, is The Road to Wigan Pier. But
it deserves to be better known, not only because of his analysis and a searing indictment of
British capitalism in the 1930s.

In simple prose – Orwell was an advocate and brilliant practitioner of „plain English‟ – he
paints powerful literary frescos to describe the abject conditions of the working class in places
like Wigan and the north-west of England. His description of the consequences of unemployment
sears the mind, particularly against the current background of the seemingly inexorable rise of
those „on the dole‟ today. He writes: "A Labour Exchange officer told me to get at the real
number of people living on (not drawing) the dole, you have got to multiply the official figures
by something over three. This alone brings the number of unemployed to roundabout six
million". This was because of the number of 'dependents' of the unemployed.

Orwell describes the three-feet wide seams in which a miner is sometimes compelled to
work, the three-mile agonizing walk to the coalface to start work, the amount of effort required
to extract coal and earn even a meager wage. This would convince most people never to even
seek to go down a mine, let alone perform the herculean efforts of the miners and the working
class generally. Yet the colossal wealth of the possessing classes and British society as a whole
has been built on this.

The period of the production of George Orwell‟s book The Road to Wigan Pier (RWP),
the 1930s, was very crucial and critical on both intellectual and political levels. The book was
published in 1937, that is, the period between the two world wars and after the Great Depression
(1929). At that time both intellectuals and politicians were faced with vexing problems such as
mass unemployment, poverty, and democracy.

Committed writers such as George Orwell took an interest in the way to represent these
problems at that critical moment of human history. Orwell has deployed many strategies to fulfill
this purpose. Each strategy is a contribution to the author's overall argument and at the same
time, it constitutes a further aspect of subversion.

The main aspect of subversion lies in the level of the form itself. The form of the book is
effectively very challenging. Contrary to the conventional view of the fictional novel as an
isolated entity, the study of Orwell's text based on Genette‟s model reveals his challenge of the
basic novelistic parameters, the researcher is interested in analyzing of comparing on structure.
Based on the background of research, the researcher chooses two works, “The Reflection
Conflict Social Class in Road Way to Wigan By George Orwell “.

B. Statement of Problem Based

On the background of problem that has been explained above, the discourse of this study
is about a novel entitled The Road To Wigan Pier by George Orwell. In this research, the writer
wants to analyze the elements of the social of literature for understanding the condition of social
background on George Orwell‟s work. Based on the statement of problem can be formulated into
the research questions as follows:

1. How the reflection of conflict social in George Orwell work‟s The Road to Wigan
Pier?

2. How is Orwell‟s Ideology describe in The Road To Wigan Pier?

C. Research Objective

Based on the research question above, the purposes of the study on this research are:

a. To find out the reflection of conflict social in George Orwell's work's The Road to
Wigan Pier

b. To find out how does Ideology Orwell‟s The Road To Wigan Pier
 D. Conceptual Framework

In this research, the writer expects this study is useful and helpful in developing science
in the literary field. Especially for the student of the English Department who want to know and
analyze the political and social background. This research also provided to the people who want
to get further analysis of the relation between the textual structure of literary work, especially
novel with the contextual structure such as society and culture by using the theory of genetic
structuralism sociology of literature.

The researcher uses in conceptual framework with Literary sociology that comes from
sociology and literature. Literature is a reflection of society. Through literature, the authors
reveal the problems of life. Literary works received influence from society and also be able to
make an impact on society. Sociology can be defined as the science of systematic knowledge
about the life of human groups concerning other human beings is generally called society. The
literature presents a picture of life, and life itself is a social reality. In this sense, life includes
relationships between people, between people with individuals, between people, and between the
events that occur in someone's mind. However, the events that occur in someone's mind that
often the material of literature, is a reflection of someone's relationship with other people or with
the public and foster particular social attitudes or even to trigger certain social events. Sociology
is the study of human social institutions and processes are objective and scientific society.
Sociology is trying to figure out how society is possible, how it progresses, and how they stay
there.
The data has taken from Novel The Road to Wigan Pier written by George Orwell. The
researcher analyzes with approach representation theory and implication theory.

Author Fiction

Marxisme Conflict Social Class

 1. Methodology of Research
The researcher uses a sample of data with analyzes objective about moral massages from
the novel The Road to Wigan Pier and also the researcher uses Sociological approach to
literature the most widely practiced today paid great attention to the documentary aspects of
literature and its foundation is the idea that literature is a mirror of its time. This view assumes
that literature is a direct mirror of the various aspects of the social structure of kinship, class
conflict, and others. In the literature, it is the task of sociology is to connect the experience of
fictional characters and situations created by the author with a state historical origin. Themes and
styles that exist in the literature of a personal nature must be changed into things that are social
for analyzing of the novel The Road to Wigan Pier. The researcher uses a sample of data with
reader-oriented or reader to respond.

2. Source of Data
The Source of data the researcher has taken from the novel The Road to Wigan Pier one
of the world‟s great books and one of the central documents of English culture.
3. Data Sample
The data sample of this researcher is the quotation that shows how The Reflection of Social
and Class Conflict in Road to Wigan Pier and represent of George Orwell those the quotation
are taken the text in the novel, as follow:
No Quotation Indicator

1. The first sound in the mornings was At once is struck by Orwell,s extraordinary
the clumping of the mill girls' clogs reticence: there is no attempt on the part of
down the cobbled street. Earlier the narrator to introduce himself of to explain
than that, [I] suppose, there were how he came to be in this environment; he is
factory whistles which I was never simply 'I", the anonymous lodger in an
awake to hear" (Orwell, 1980: 1) overcrowded bedroom, describing whit
pitiless careless the sordidness of his
surroundings.

2. I never saw this table completed, I never am reading this novel, we can ever
but I saw its various wrappings at forget the Brookers and their dreary lodging-
different times. At the bottom there house above the tripe-shop. What affronts
 was a layer of old newspaper Orwell is not so much the squalor of his
stained by Worcester Souce; above surroundings, the mean food, and unsavory
that, a sheet of sticky white smells, but the feeling of stagnant
oil0cloth; above that a green serge meaningless decay of having got down into
cloth; above that a coarse linen some subterranean place where people go
cloth, never changed and seldom creeping round and round. It is he adds
taken off. Generally, the crumbs characteristically a kind of duty to see and
from breakfast were still on the smell such places now and again, especially
table at supper. I used to get to smell them, lest we should forget that they
know individual crums by sight and exist.
watch their progress up and down
the table from day to day ( Orwell,
1980: 9)

3. We are living in a world in which From the illustration above that, anyone who
nobody is free, in which hardly thinks about it will, the writer mention that
anybody is secure, in which it is Orwell in this novel realizes that socialism is
almost impossible, to be honest, the solution to the problems. This is so
and to remain alive. For enormous obvious that Orwell sometimes wonders why
blocks of the working class the socialism has not been implemented yet. The
conditions of this book, and there is question must, therefore, be why socialism is
no chance of those conditions on the retreat instead of on the advance. Not
showing any fundamental only are people not socialists, in certain cases
improvement (Orwell, 1980: 170) they are even directly hostile towards
socialism. Orwell will try to play the devil's
advocate and argue like a person, who is
positive towards socialism and who is
sensible enough to realize that socialism can
work, but who always withdraws whenever
socialism is mentioned.//vt

4. Often, in my opinion, he is a truer Regarding the revolution, for many socialist,

 Socialist than the orthodox Marxist, it is not a question of the masses liberating
because he does remember, what themselves and the socialists joining the
the other so often forget, that movement. To them, the revolution is some
Socialism means justice and reforms that "we", the clever ones, impose on
common decency. (Orwell, 1980: "them" the lower classes. Orwell knows that it
176) is not fair to judge a political theory from its
followers. However, is that most people do,
and that is why socialism is on the retreat?

4. The technique of Collecting Data

To collect the data that is needed, the research, first of all, read all The Road to Wigan Pier, and
then the researcher read again the novel while determining the Reflection Social Class Conflict
in The Road to Wigan Pier novel. After that, the researcher collects the cite of the novel that
related to the analysis need and Social Class Conflict effect which has been determined.
`The data of this study were collected using the following steps :
a. Read the novel
In the first step, the researcher read the novel.
b. Reading some related data
The researcher will search and read many references about the Social Class Conflict
effects in the library and also a website that provides much information.
c. Coding
The researcher will give the code for each data that related to Social Class Conflict
effects.
 5.The technique of analyzing data
According to Maleong, “analyzing data is organizing process and arrangement data to
structure and category it means that to arrange, to collect, to give code and give category'' (2010:
12).
The researcher studies all the relevant to the research data collected from the novel and
theories, the researcher finds representation with the text The Road to Wigan Pier and
implication each event from the novel The Road to Wigan Pier.

Analyzing data:

1) The researcher uses collecting of the data with the method of reader-oriented
2) Interpreting the data particularly taken The Road to Wigan Pier by Gorger Orwell
3) Representation moral massages from the novel The Road to Wigan Pier.
4) Literary critical from the novel The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell.
5) Finding a conclusion based on the result of the research.
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