CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
When we learn and study literature, first of all we should carefully observe the various conceptions on literature through its definitions. There are a lot of definitions of literature that have been formulated by many experts; nonetheless, it is not our obligation to know all of them. What we should do is only pick a few of them.
Many authors define the term literature, but no one can get satisfactory answers. In fact, critics have different opinions about this matter. Nevertheless, it is still important to know some of them.
Rees (1973:1-2) defines Literature into two kinds of definitions: in the broad sense and the narrow sense. The first meaning is anything that is written, such as tables, catalogues, text books, and so on. People who have different educational background also have different literature. And the second one is a writing that expresses and communicates thoughts, feelings, ideas, and attitudes towards life.
Meanwhile, Sunaryono Basuki Koesnosoebroto (1988:3), who quotes Francis Connoly, states that there are two kinds of literature: literature of imagination and literature of knowledge. In the literature of imagination, the author is not primarily concerned with the truth of particular events, but he invents a story that embodies truths of human nature, for example: drama, poem, novel, etc. Whereas the literature of knowledge is based on the people’s need of factual information, for example: technical books, text books, and so on.
It is necessary to find out people’s interest in studying literature. Their expression of thoughts, feeling, ideas, and attitudes towards life may become the main reason why they study literature. Literature imitates lives by showing its writer’s vision of life.
According to Rees (1973:13) the readers study literary works because they want to learn about another country’s culture, to appear well educated, to pass the examination and to make them better people. This assumptions match with Francis Colonnoly statement as quoted by Koesnosubroto (1988);
People read literature because of hunger of information or amusement because of an appetite for truth that seem to grow by what it feeds on. Men read to discover themselves and their world to asses their special roles in the universe, to learn the meaning of the personal struggles in which they are engaged. In other words, we want to share experience. The statement above gives us enough explanation that people always hunger of information, so they want to learn education and knowledge in their life including literary works. People learn literary works because they can find a lot of phenomena there which may be related to their experience in society.
One kind of literary works is novel. Benton (1968: 673) in the Encyclopaedia Britannica defines novel as ‘a fictitious prose narratives or tale of considerable length (now usually a long enough to fill one of the real life of past or present time are portrayed in a plot of more or less complexity)’. A novel, as a literary work will become a very useful source for studying literature. X.J. Kennedy in his book “Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama”
