Symbolic Violence Represented in Royyan Julian’s Bulan Merah Rabu Wekasan

Abstract

This paper addresses and explores the ways Indonesian people experience the Covid-19 pandemics as represented in the short story Bulan Merah Rabu Wekasan written by Royyan Julian. The setting of the story is a rural area, an isolated village with poor infrastructure and less economic access. By applying literary criticism and Bourdieu's concept of symbolic violence this study shows the symbolic violence committed by the dominating group represented by three characters to the dominated group or the poor people in the village. The symbolic violence got its momentum in the situation of Covid-19 pandemic, in which the characters from the dominating group make use of their position as formal and informal leaders to do symbolic violence through language and image with the common people as victims. This study limits the aspect of symbolic violence, while the story has potentials of other aspects, for example, social, psychological, cultural and stylistics that can be observed by other researchers for future research.