Marxist Criticism Essays (Examples)

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Thus, Nora was controlled by Torvald in even her most mundane actions and behavior.
Nora was also economically indebted to Dr. Rank and Krogstad, immediately explicating why she was willing to be controlled by these men. Her fear of being discovered by Torvald that she had borrowed money from Krogstad made her submissive to Krogstad's demand that Nora influence her husband to allow Krogstad to keep his job ("Do as you please. But let me tell you this -- if I lose my position a second time, you shall lose yours with me"). Dr. Rank's lack of respect for Nora's position as wife, mother, and most importantly, woman, showed how Nora's preoccupation with money and material wealth made her look an "easy prey" or shallow in thought by men such as the doctor.

Nora's relations with the male characters in the play demonstrated how her belief in materialism and money made….

In the car Nick sees him look sideways as though lying and thinks "And with this doubt, his whole statement fell to pieces, and I wondered if there wasn't something a little sinister about him, after all" (65, Chapter 4). Nick's middle class ideology leads him to scorn those who would strive to get ahead. It is the traditional view of the underclass toward upstarts from within. In the end, he loses "love" (Jordan). The text does not validate his character as an ideal.
The relationship of Tom and Gatsby clearly reinforces the class system. Tom articulates a power-oriented racist vision, saying "It's up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things" (13, Chapter 1). This Nordic racism is symbolic of a biased class consciousness out of which Tom operates. He wants to retain his class power. It creates….


Another fundamental element of liberal theory and ideology is the right for each individual to pursue and hold private property. According to Locke, each individual has the opportunity and the right to work to better oneself through the accumulation and improvement of their own private property, "it is allowed to be his goods who hath bestowed his labor upon it," (Locke, 21).

This is also a crucial feature in the foundations of capitalism as well. It ensures that as long as one works and labors hard enough, he or she will be entitled to a certain amount of private property to compensate for that labor, "As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property," (Locke, 22). It is with this idea that many societies have promised their underprivileged or poor the chance to rise above their inherited ranks and….

Marxist Perspective for Understanding Society
Although the United States and other Western nations fought a cold war against Communism for a significant part of the twentieth century, Western nations were not immune to the influence of Karl Marx, an intellectual and ideological founder of Communism. Even during the Cold War, Marxism entered disciplines in social sciences in the United States and students of sociology, history, political science, and a few other disciplines can no longer ignore Marxist perspective for understanding society today. Indeed, key components of Marxist perspective -- all of them revolving around the basic premise that societies can be defined by class struggle -- are very helpful in analyzing how a society functions. And Marxism today is not confined to the writings of Marx only but has been enriched by other scholars who helped to make Marxism a very useful and important tool for evaluating complexities of societies.

Marxism….

Indeed, if one considers newsworthy events, violent revolution as a mode of change appears much more instinctive to human beings than communicative action.
Foucault's Theory of Power

For Habermas, Foucault's theory of power is over generalizing and universalizing. He thus dismisses the latter philosopher's theory as reductionistic and contradictory. Once again Habermas uses philosophical reason rather than mechanical evolution as a basis from which to change the corruptive power held by authorities and institutions. Foucault on the other hand sees power and reason as intertwined with each other. Thus there is no good or bad within power structures themselves, but rather in how they are implemented. Habermas however finds this problematic, and argues that there is then no ground from which to effect the necessary change in of these power structures in order to make them more beneficial for society.

In Foucault's view, there are dangers inherent in holding a large amount….

This was however, not the view held by the Catholic Church in their view of the novel. The view of the Catholic Church, was that "the latter element" -- that is, human wretchedness -- had appeared "to carry the day" in a way that did injury "to certain priestly characters and even to the priesthood itself." Moreover, the novel portrayed a state of affairs so "paradoxical" and "erroneous" that it would disconcert "unenlightened persons" who formed "the majority of the readers."
Summary and Conclusion

Greene was not disconcerted by the view of the Church and simply remarked that he did not own the copyright and therefore could do nothing to change what was already written. The following quote from the work is quite poignant and after having read about the life of Greene can just as easily be assigned to come from within him as from within the mind of the….

Popular culture defines what is desired by any given sociological group based on pressure by peers. Every moment of the day, we are saturated by culture. hen we turn on the television, not only are we watching the programs but we are inundated by advertisers trying to convince the viewer that there is some new product that needs to be purchased or a new movie that needs to be seen or a new service that is essential to the happiness of the consumer. On the Internet, each inquiry provides banner headlines where we are also bombarded with advertisements and attitudes. Similarly, there are billboards and ads on cars and radio commercials while we drive to and from work. It is characteristic of a capitalistic society that so much of our culture has to do with the consumption of goods and services (Yar, Lecture 2, slide 2). Everywhere someone or something….

Fences
Playwright August ilson won two Pulitzers in his illustrious career. In The Pittsburgh Cycle, ilson wrote a series of plays each depicting a different decade in the lives of African-Americans living in the United States. Of these, Fences, takes place in the 1950s and features the problems not only of the African-American experience, but also the situation of societal oppression indicative of that period. At the heart of the play is protagonist Troy Maxson. His actions result in comedy and tragedy for all of the characters around him, making him the center of this universe that ilson has created, representing the tumultuous time period in which the play takes place. August ilson has stated that the character is based upon his own step-father, David Bedford providing the story with an autobiographical context. ilson uses his own perception of his step-father in order to illustrate a story about the difficulties of….

Images in "Strike"
A Marxist engineer and architect by formal training, Sergei Eisenstein used his training to create the "montage." Though Eisenstein's work suffers some criticism for its use of bludgeons to convey blunt propaganda, his seminal work is deemed the basis for montages in the work of such eminent directors as Hitchcock, De Palma and Coppola. Arousing strong emotional impact from the juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated images, multiple effective montages are evident in Eisenstein's first film, Strike.

Sergei Eisenstein (1898 -- 1948) was one of the most famous filmmakers of the early 20th Century (Archive Media Project, LP). His formal training as an engineer and architect in St. Petersburg greatly influenced his eventual career in filmmaking. In addition, his Marxist ideology and his Russian heritage highly influenced his work. Eisenstein experimented with several cinematic devices and due to his contributions, was embraced by the ritish Film Institute as one of….

Storni, Alfonsina. "You ant Me hite." The Norton Anthology of orld
Vol. F. Ed. Sarah Lawall and Mayard Mac. New York: Norton, 2002. 2124-2125

The poem titled "You ant Me hite" written by Alfonsina Storni explores the issue of women mistreatment by men. The women complain how men expect them to be virgins when they (men ) are not.

Atwood, Margaret and Martin, Valerie.The Handmaid's Tale . Anchor.1998

In this book the author portrays how women are only valued for their fertility and they are allowed access to education in the patriarch society. This work is important to the research since it shows how women were mistreated by being regarded as sex symbols as well as not being allowed access to education.

Staves, Susan. Married omen's Separate Property Rights in England, 1660(1833. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1990.

This work is a recollection of the actual case studies and examples of various property settlements from several literary works.….

Because society compromises the value of the woman, it is allowed the life of domesticity and life. The speaker however remains forever beyond this because she chooses self-realization instead.
In Heaney's "Punishment," feminism can be seen from the male viewpoint, as it were. The corpse of a bog girl, an adulteress, educates the narrator regarding issues of gender and politics. The narrator, far from the conventional male reaction of disgust, instead becomes infatuated with her. It is as if he is the male representative of the feminist viewpoint; that women offer value and education rather than objects of sex or symbols of domesticity. The intimacy between the speakers involve no blame. Instead of man and woman, they are equals, in strong contrast with the society that would condemn them both for their actions and their association.

ources

Academy of American Poets. A Close Reading of "I Cannot Live With You." 2007. http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/310

Tagle,….

Alexander Set
Radical multiculturalism holds that cultural groups should be the measure for considerations of justice as a group offers the individual the indispensable good of being rooted in a community. The problem is that groups always set-up unequal in-group out-group relations that are detrimental to society.

The problem is that conservatives claim it undermines cohesiveness, but cohesiveness is exactly what all social movements in the last hundred years have attempted to bring about.

In this context this means that the gains of one group are not balanced by losses of another group.

The civil sphere includes structures of feelings, symbols, psychological identifications, and sympathies determine how resources are allocated in society. The public sphere is more of how this publically stated (the two can be different).

Common identity is malleable depending on the times. The move for woman's voting rights and equal rights into the national identity is an example.

Incorporation is acceptance of others….

Marx and Locke
PAGES 5 WORDS 1756

Monticello, the mansion that Thomas Jefferson designed in the hills of Virginia near the State University that he founded, has three portraits that are to be found on the wall of President Jefferson's study that have remained there for 200 years. These portraits are of three writers Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton and John Locke. Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence and acquired the Louisiana Purchase form the French, refers to these three as "the greatest men who ever lived." e see Lockean reasoning reflected in the Declaration where Jefferson says that we hold life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be self-evident truths. A similar reverence was afforded Karl Marx in the Soviet Union, where many streets and several smaller cities were named after Marx and his fellow communist Frederick Engels. One could argue that the primary ideologies of the 20th-century were those of Locke and Marx, as….

Marx Rhet X Marx the
PAGES 5 WORDS 1388

45). ith the ideology of the ownership class necessarily becoming the dominant ideology throughout the world not simply through the spread of industry and capitalism but through dramatic changes in international trade and economies brought about by capitalist/industrialist changes in single countries, the bourgeoisie acquires (or acquired) dramatic power to shape global events and politics through their shaping of the thoughts that can be had and the modes by which they can be expressed -- through their control over rhetorical interpretations and expression, in other words.
Implications of Marx's Rhetorical Theory

Using a Marxist approach to rhetorical theory has a variety of benefits and drawbacks to theorists and critics working from many different perspectives. The benefits to such a perspective are clear, if somewhat ominous -- they give concrete and measurable ways in which to develop an understanding of thought itself, and of how thoughts are created and expressed (and how….

..render up myself...Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night...And for the day confined to fast in fires, / Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature/Are burnt and purged away." (I.5). At first, Hamlet believes the ghost is from Purgatory because of the vividness of these images. Then Hamlet constructs a test for the ghost as he worries: "the devil hath power/to assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps/Out of my weakness and my melancholy, / as he is very potent with such spirits" (2.2). In short, Hamlet begins to doubt the doctrine because the ghost ostensibly from Purgatory has asked him to commit a murder, to kill a king.
Hamlet seldom displays a consistent attitude to Purgatory in the play. In his most famous soliloquy, Hamlet says that death is a place from which "no traveler returns" indicating he doubts the ghost (III.1). Hamlet wrestles with….

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4 Pages
Term Paper

Sports - Women

Gender and Marxist Criticisms of

Words: 1110
Length: 4 Pages
Type: Term Paper

Thus, Nora was controlled by Torvald in even her most mundane actions and behavior. Nora was also economically indebted to Dr. Rank and Krogstad, immediately explicating why she was…

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6 Pages
Term Paper

Sociology

Marxist Reading of the Great

Words: 1740
Length: 6 Pages
Type: Term Paper

In the car Nick sees him look sideways as though lying and thinks "And with this doubt, his whole statement fell to pieces, and I wondered if there…

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3 Pages
Term Paper

Government

Marxist Liberalism True Liberalism Through

Words: 948
Length: 3 Pages
Type: Term Paper

Another fundamental element of liberal theory and ideology is the right for each individual to pursue and hold private property. According to Locke, each individual has the opportunity and…

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6 Pages
Essay

Sociology

Marxist Perspective for Understanding Society

Words: 1760
Length: 6 Pages
Type: Essay

Marxist Perspective for Understanding Society Although the United States and other Western nations fought a cold war against Communism for a significant part of the twentieth century, Western nations…

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3 Pages
Term Paper

Sociology

Habermas an Alternative to Marxist

Words: 950
Length: 3 Pages
Type: Term Paper

Indeed, if one considers newsworthy events, violent revolution as a mode of change appears much more instinctive to human beings than communicative action. Foucault's Theory of Power For Habermas, Foucault's…

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6 Pages
Term Paper

Mythology - Religion

Graham Greene the Power and

Words: 1677
Length: 6 Pages
Type: Term Paper

This was however, not the view held by the Catholic Church in their view of the novel. The view of the Catholic Church, was that "the latter element"…

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6 Pages
Case Study

Business - Advertising

Sociology of Popular Culture

Words: 1773
Length: 6 Pages
Type: Case Study

Popular culture defines what is desired by any given sociological group based on pressure by peers. Every moment of the day, we are saturated by culture. hen we turn…

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5 Pages
Research Paper

Sports

Historical Biographical Criticism

Words: 1651
Length: 5 Pages
Type: Research Paper

Fences Playwright August ilson won two Pulitzers in his illustrious career. In The Pittsburgh Cycle, ilson wrote a series of plays each depicting a different decade in the lives of…

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5 Pages
Term Paper

Film

Creation of Concepts Through the Combination of Images in Strike

Words: 1585
Length: 5 Pages
Type: Term Paper

Images in "Strike" A Marxist engineer and architect by formal training, Sergei Eisenstein used his training to create the "montage." Though Eisenstein's work suffers some criticism for its use…

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6 Pages
Annotated Bibliography

Sports - Women

Storni Alfonsina You Want Me White the

Words: 1783
Length: 6 Pages
Type: Annotated Bibliography

Storni, Alfonsina. "You ant Me hite." The Norton Anthology of orld Vol. F. Ed. Sarah Lawall and Mayard Mac. New York: Norton, 2002. 2124-2125 The poem titled "You ant Me hite"…

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1 Pages
Term Paper

Sports - Women

Feminism Heaney and Dickinson Feminist

Words: 380
Length: 1 Pages
Type: Term Paper

Because society compromises the value of the woman, it is allowed the life of domesticity and life. The speaker however remains forever beyond this because she chooses self-realization…

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4 Pages
Book Report

Sociology

Alexander Set Radical Multiculturalism Holds That Cultural

Words: 1485
Length: 4 Pages
Type: Book Report

Alexander Set Radical multiculturalism holds that cultural groups should be the measure for considerations of justice as a group offers the individual the indispensable good of being rooted in a…

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5 Pages
Term Paper

Government

Marx and Locke

Words: 1756
Length: 5 Pages
Type: Term Paper

Monticello, the mansion that Thomas Jefferson designed in the hills of Virginia near the State University that he founded, has three portraits that are to be found on the…

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5 Pages
Term Paper

Black Studies - Philosophy

Marx Rhet X Marx the

Words: 1388
Length: 5 Pages
Type: Term Paper

45). ith the ideology of the ownership class necessarily becoming the dominant ideology throughout the world not simply through the spread of industry and capitalism but through dramatic…

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3 Pages
Term Paper

Mythology - Religion

Hamlet A New Historicist's View

Words: 1327
Length: 3 Pages
Type: Term Paper

..render up myself...Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night...And for the day confined to fast in fires, / Till the foul crimes done in my days of…

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