Fitzgerald’s Critiques on American Capitalism in His “The Great Gatsby”

The research aims to describe Fitzgerald’s criticism presented through the novel, and to identify the capitalism concept portrayed in the novel. The research reveals the existence of the capitalism in the form of literary work. Method in the research is the qualitative descriptive method with the literary sociological approach. Data in the research are the characters and narrator’s expressions performed and uttered throughout the work. The expression are situated in several fragments in the work and they are analyzed continually. The research result indicates that capitalism is portrayed through the attitudes of the charachters in the novel. They represents the materialism and capitalism which has certainly created the gaps in the social life by indicating the different places of the West Egg and East Egg. The other gap is the different status that the characters belong to. The capitalism is repeatable in our current life because morally the community nowadays has also been corrupted as has been presented in newspapers everyday, as the examples murder, rape, divorce, and abuse. Moral decadence is the result of lack of spiritual values, the impact of money or materialism, lack of performing religious duties, and like violating the social rules

Improving the Students’ Reading Ability at the Eighth Grade Students of SMP Negeri 5 Polut through Running Record Method (A Classroom Action Research)

This research is a classroom action research that focused on improving the students’ reading ability through Running Record Method. Two cycles had been conducted, where each cycle consisted of four meetings. It employed reading test as instrument. A number of subjects of the research were 30 students conducted of 11 women and 19 men.  At diagnostic test, the average of students’ score in determine main ideas and contents of reading ability before implementation Running Record Method is poor (50.75), but after implementation Running Record Method in cycle I the assessment of their reading ability improves (60.44), is greater than diagnostic test. This means there is an improvement of the students’ reading ability. But, this is classified as fairly, so the researcher decides to organizer in cycle II. Assessment of cycle II is greater than from cycle I (72.89 > 60.44) it classified as good which means there is improvement of the students’ reading ability