Minke’s Struggle for Social Equality Potrayed in Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s “FOOTSTEP”

Abstract

The title of this thesis is Minke’s Struggle for Social Equality Potrayed in Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s “Footstep”. This topic is very interesting because social equality in literature is a reflection of a social life in a certain era. Besides, this novel is written by Indonesian author, Pramoedya Ananta Toer and tells story of his homeland and its people in Dutch Colonial Reign. Pramoedya has won many awards such as PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award, Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, and is frequently discussed as Indonesia's and Southeast Asia's best candidate for a Nobel Prize in Literature. The aims of this research are to find out the struggle for social equality in this novel, toward whom the criticisms are directed, the reason why this novel was banned and the author idealism that reflected in the main character. Basically, most of Pramoedya’s works contains of social criticisms and his idealism. This thesis uses a qualitative descriptive method, because it analyzes social equality of the main character that reflected the author idealism in a written words or verbal expressions from the characters and behaviors. The writer also uses the primary data, which is the novel Footsteps and takes secondary data such as references from the author biography, theories books, and internet. Pramoedya’s idealism of equality that reflected in the main character. In brief, the writer wishes that Minke’s struggle for social equality would provide some knowledge for all readers.