Name: Abdul Aziz

NIM: 07410009

The analysis of social conflict in officially dead by Richard Prescott

1. Background of the study

Literature is a something that gives pleasure. It has certain magic, which bring us from
the real world to the interesting place. Literature aesthetic thing that cannot divided and
described. It’s just like other aesthetic things such as music, dance,, painting and movie.

Literature is creativity of art, which has beauty aspect like the diction of the word, the use
of rhythm, and others. According to Williams J. long (2005:5) stated that literature is the
expression of life in the word of truth and beauty; it is the writer record of man’s spirit of the
though, emotion, expression

In analyzing a literary work. We can increase our knowledge and skill: intellectual,
emotional, and reflexes. If we do not have those skills, we will not achieve our goals in analyzing
in a literary work as expressed all the ideas expressed in any literary work as expressed by writer.

Kenney. 1966: 7. State that by the analysis, you will develop intellectual and emotional
skills, co-ordination, and reflexes to the point where you will be able to use them without
stopping to think what you are doing.

According to Kenney we can find several literary elements, such as: plot, character,
imagery, point of view, setting, theme, etc. the element cannot be separated from one another.
We can see the statement below:

To analyze a literary work is to identify the separate part that make it up (this
correspondents roughly to the nation of tearing it to places) and to determined the relationships
among the parts, and to discover the relation of parts to the whole (Kenney, 1966: 5).

in this study, the researcher tries to analyze the social conflict in Richard Prescott’s novel
“officially dead” the reason why the researcher take this topic is that the researcher wants to
know the social conflict in this novel and also the meaning of it. The researcher can learn from
the story how that Colin Fenton tries to keep his business eventually he has less money, spirit
and motivation always be with him.

This short story of “Officially Dead” by Richard Prescott is a series, comprising both
original and simplified stories, is published at five levels, This is a story of Colin Fenton, a small
time business man who goes away on business & encounters a chap that is his double - John
Bentley. Colin is paid by Bentley’s wife to pretend for one night to be Bentley, so that he is able
 to rob a jeweler. Unfortunately on the way to provide this alibi Colin has a car crash & dies. It is
up to Mark Ashwood who fins the crash to discover the truth and inform Colin's real wife.

The explanation above has inspired the researcher to conduct a study entitle “ an analysis
of social conflict in Richard Prescott’s (the officially dead) “ the researcher hopes this study will
be useful for readers ; at least it can be knowledge especially the one dealing with literature
study an give some profitable contribution from them.

2. Problem of the Study

Based on the background of the study above, the researcher has statement of problem which can
be formulated as follow:

1. What are the social conflict in “the officially dead”

2. what is the reaction of his wife when he was dead

3. Purpose of the study

The purpose of this study is to give the writer a better understanding of conflict in the work,
about human nature in it. Besides, this study is hoped to be useful for everyone who want to
know literary criticism, especially the students of faculty of letters who want to deepen their skill
in literary criticism using intrinsic approach

4. Scope and limitation

To be more specific, the researcher limits the study as follows: this study focus on the novel
“officially dead” by Richard Prescott, in order to analyze social conflict found in the novel.

5. Significant of the study

By writing this paper, the researcher hopes that the result of this thesis will give contribution
theoretically and practically. Theatrically, this study can give some more about literature,
especially concern with social conflict.

Practically, this study will be useful for the researcher in understanding and appreciating in
literary work especially those are related to social conflict. Moreover, the researcher enables to
analyze social conflict in better way.

It expected to help to readers to understand the social conflict not only in novel but also the
literary works. Hopefully, it stimulates the readers to have reading habits.

In addition, this study can help the English student, as references, who want to analyze social
conflict in the novel.

6. Methodology

Research design is divided into two kinds. There are quantitative and qualitative researches.
Those are different in many ways. According to Neumann (2000: 122) quantitative is emphasizes
on interpretative or critical social science, qualitative research speak a language of cases and
contexts. In this study, the research used qualitative because the data collected was in the form of
words rather than number.
According to the Neumann (2000. 122) qualitative research has some characteristics. Some of
the Importance one and also the fact in this study related to every characteristic:

1. Captured and discovered meaning once of the researcher becomes immersed in data.

2. Concepts were in the form of themes, motifs, generalizations, and taxonomies.

3. Measures were created in ad hoc manner and are often specific to the individual setting or
researcher

4. Data were in the form of words and image from documents, observation, and transcripts.

5. Theory could be casual and is often inductive

6. Research procedures were particular, replication was very rare.

7. Analysis proceeds by extracting themes or generalization from evidences and organizing

data to present a coherent, consistent picture.

7. Theory

Before conflict is explained in detail, the theory of plot is also described. Plot is the sequence of
events that has casual relation between one event and another, so that all events have unity. It is
important to explain because the theory of plot is connected to complication and conflict.

According to Kenney, plot itself has some structure: beginning (exposition), middle
(complication and climax) and the end (denouement).

As far as conflict is concerned, in a story, usually, usually there are three kinds of conflict:
physical or elemental conflict, social conflict, and internal and psychological. The first refers to a
man in conflict with nature. The second refers to struggling against himself, his conscience, his
guilt, or simply trying to decide what he’s going to do (Edward, 1968: 30-31). The detail
explanation is presented in the next chapter.

The analysis conflict we have to relate it to the plot, because the basic of the plot is the conflict.
It can be seen from A.L. bader’s statement as quoted in the book Pembinaan kritik sastra
Indonesia by Sukada which says “basic plot terletak pada konflik” (Sukada, 197:68) ( plot is
based on the conflict)

Data analysis

In this study, the writer using the following steps:

1. Selecting and identifying the related data either words, phrase even sentences to enable
the analysis

2. Researching other related materials as the guidance and comparison in analyzing and
interpreting the data.

3. Analyzing and interpreting the data to get the result of the study

4. Describing the result in correlation with the analysis of the study to get more detail
description.

In this part, the reader is provided with analysis of social conflict of the novel “Officially death “.
And the researcher also needed to know about type of conflict. Those will be helpful in
 analyzing the character in a novel resembles the human nature, which related as if they were
human rather than as well we know them in nature. Here there is personality values suggested.

8.1. Social conflict between john and his wife

John turned into the Street, and John and Linda Bentley walked towards a white van at
the far side of the pub car-park.
‘Goodnight, John!’ Linda cilia.
As soon as colin Fenton was out of sight, the Bentleys started arguing. John, who had
drunk rather a lot of beer that evening, began to shout at his wife.
‘What did you think you were doing?’ he yelled. ‘What’s your game’? Why were you
flirting with that guy?’(Page 10 – 11)
Of this story tell us about social conflict between Colin Fenton and his wife. When he drank
some beer, he always hurt his wife. So no matter how beautiful and kind she is, her husband
always hurt her because of black water.

Society is very different sort of thing from good sense and right ideas. It based upon them of
course. But the society, grateful, winning superstructure which we all know demand different
qualities. Have your friend got these qualities which may be felt but defined (Howells, 1958:
126)

8.2. The condition of society

The main Character in this short story is Collin Fenton himself. He lives with his wife, and
also he build a business with her which named C.J.F software solution, developed computer
program and sold them to a number of large businesses.

Collin and his wife, Julie, were partners in business. Their company, C.J.F. Software
Solutions, developed computer programs and sold them to a number of large businesses.
Collin looked after the company’s finances, the marketing of the computer software, and
the organization of training courses. Julie was a software developer (page 7)

Of this condition, they inspired us to have a business with family or relative. It makes
better communication. Eventually, the communication between spouses is informal.

8.3. Social Aspect

As Social human being should interact with each other. A social accurse whenever one person
tries to prevent or intervene in some way to the action of others. Therefore conflict can be about
anything such as different values or way relation each other . the conflict include people need the
goal, then experiences a conflict and will tell others that he has a conflict.

Here example:
We could be twin brothers,’ the other man said. ‘~‘
They introduced themselves. The other man’s name was John Bentley. He had a soft London
accent’. ~)
‘There’s a seat free at our table, if you’d like to join us,’ he said. ‘I must introduce you to my wife.’
Linda Bentley was sitting on a long seat in the corner farthest from the television. She moved along
the seat to make room for Cohn.
‘It’s incredible,’ she said, looking at Cohn and her husband. ‘You two are identical you’re perfect
-

doubles!’
 Linda was dressed in black clothes. She had fair hair, large green eyes, and a broad smile. She wore
a lot of
Make-up and she wore a lot of heavy gold jeweler. Her skirt, Cohn noticed, was very short indeed. She
could not have looked less like his own wife, but he liked the way she looked.
‘I’ve not seen you in here before, Cohn,’ John Bentley said. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Bath,’ Cohn said. ‘My wife and I own a small computer software company there. I’m in Brentwood
for a couple of days, teaching a course.’
‘Oh, I don’t know anything about computer software,’ Linda said. ‘You must be very clever.’
She smiled at him and Cohn laughed. ‘No,’ he said, ‘my wife’s the clever one.’
John enjoyed being with the Bentleys. He liked their friendly way of talking. Over the next hour, he
drank more than he had planned to drink. As a result, he became very talkative. But after some time, he
noticed that John Bentley had become silent. Bentley was probably bored with hearing him talk, Cohn
thought. But Linda kept asking him questions about his business.

In the description above we can find the social aspect between Collin Fenton with the society. So
someone can not live a lone in this world, without society someone can not grow up perfectly. So that
why, we could be friendly, talkative and other way of good talking.

9.Conclusion
After the writes has analyzed the problem, the writer will make a conclusion that this short
story describe the conflict which faced by the main character. That is Colin Fenton him self and
his social atmosphere.

Analysis conflict can not be separated by human life because it is always in context with
someone’s attitude and or society. For example Colin Fenton his wife, his company and the
society.

Based on theory of social confli0ct by Parvin (1984: 4), thus social conflict of a part
psychology in which social theory attempt to understand the complex relationship among
different aspect of an individual function including such perception and motivation. The social
conflict present the characteristic of the person or of people generally, that account for consistent
pattern of behavior

There are two conclusions can be taken from this analysis, first is concerned with Colin
Fenton personality, the second, it built by Collin Fenton and the society. Collin Fenton in the
social is optimistic, active, hard worker, and drunken people.

Reference
Angleton, terry. 1983. Literary theory an introduction. Minnesota university press

Karaf, groys, 2004. diksi dan gaya bahasa. PT. Gramedia utama Jakarta

Neuman W. Laurence. 2000. Social research method: qualitatatif and quantitative

approaches.USA: A. person education company

Officially dead. 2003. PT Dian Rakyat Jakarta