“The comparative social aspects of selected stories between Steinbeck and Fitzgerald

This paper aims at comparing two great authors of American fiction, John Steinbeck and Francis Scott Fitzgerald. Both authors have similar and different to express the stories. Steinbeck has social background in Southern America among villagers, gardeners, fishermen, labors, and domestic life. He noticed the Indian’s struggle against the existing immigrants to overcome the economic and social condition in Gulf California, La Paz. It was documented in novel The Pearl (1947). He also wrote Travels With Charley (1962) which reflected him and motherland. On the other hand, Fitzgerald lived in metropolitan city by jazz age, glamour, parties, white collar, and public life. He expressed the social situation of biggest cities in America and Europe such as New York, California, Paris, Rome, and London, which described in novel The Great Gatsby (1925) and Tender Is The Night (1934). The writer of this paper used Genetic Structuralism Approach. It considered that the literary works as social product related to author’s background and social reality at the time and situation currently. As the social product, literary works appeared theme from issues flourished among society, namely social criticism. The data of fictional story, author’s background, and social reality were collected by using the Llibrary Study and analyzed in descriptive method. Data analysis also supported by theory of the Comparative Literature to describe the selected stories of Steinbeck and Fitzgerald. The writer in comparing the literary works of John Steinbeck and Francis Scott Fitzgerald identifies similarities and differences them. Those similarities are the fictional stories are real and natural, the plot of forward, authors’ personality strong reflect into the story, both authors have a strong sensitivity to the social reality, and authors honestly describe the social life of American people. The differences are at least five aspects, including characters of story, physical background of story, theme of story, social facts of American, imagination and authors’ background.