Abstract
Issues surrounding the social reality of Indonesian villages, particularly the abuse of power and the lack of transparency in village governance, remain serious and unresolved problems. The short story Belajar Membaca Desa by A. Djoyo Mulyono represents and critiques this reality through its portrayal of poverty, corruption, and an individual's struggle in which literacy serves as a tool for expression and understanding of village conditions. This study aims to describe the short story as a mirror of village social reality using a qualitative descriptive method, Sapardi Djoko Damono's sociology of literature approach, encompassing literature as a reflection of society, the social function of literature, and the author's social context, as well as Todorov's structural narrative analysis to examine narrative function, causality, and the physiological, psychological, and sociological dimensions of characterization. The results indicate that this short story critically represents the reality of village life through its depiction of the village head Kuwu Dulatip's corrupt behavior, which is met with resistance by the character Sudung as a representation of an empowered lower-class community member who fights back through language and literacy. The study concludes that literary works have the potential to serve as a medium for fostering critical awareness and driving social change through narratives that are directly and continuously connected to the realities of the modern era.
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