SOCIETY’S IGNORANCE TOWARDS ADDICTS’ PREDICAMENT IN J. K. ROWLING’S THE CASUAL VACANCY: A DYNAMIC STRUCTURALISM STUDY

Regardless of whether or not drug addicts undergo a rehabilitation treatment, they are still often stigmatized in the eyes of society. This is particularly shown in J. K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy, where Pagford Parish Council and the society of Pagford in general condemned a certain group of residents in the Fields for being drug dependent, despite their best effort to recover through a rehabilitation program in Bellchapel Addiction Clinic. This study then intends to examine the stigma that later shaped Pagford’s collective consciousness towards drug addicts. In addition to that, the society of the real-life setting and the background of the author are also taken into account. These elements form certain structures, and in analyzing both the literary structure and extra-literary forces, the writer implements Jan Mukarovsky’s Dynamic Structuralism. The result of the overall analysis is that as an authoritative group, Pagford Parish Council was capable of shaping the town’s collective consciousness. Thus by remaining ignorant of the addicts’ predicament, they had embraced a consciousness in which they disregarded the community’s collective responsibility to provide for the wellbeing of the individuals. This situation had placed them in a moral decline, seeing that such self-created breakdown in society means a breakdown in morality. In support of these findings, the extra-literary forces from the author’s society and background have also factored as a ground for increasing social awareness of drug addicts’ stigmatization