Importance of Marxism

As an English major, I find it very important to learn about different types of criticisms and how they relate to different works of literature. Ideas of Marx and and the economic power that drives literary works or can be applied to literary works even ones that fall under the genre of children's literature, such as "Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer" were particularly of interest. I thought the most compelling aspect was applying the ideas of power struggle, class difference and economic importance to certain movies and literature and seeing how these works carried Marxist ideas right from the beginning.

Through all of the readings, whether they be Marxist or a Marxist criticism, I feel that I have learned different perspectives on society and the economy can influence that society. Marx's interest in a three class system based on how much money a person makes and opportunities that have been presented to them based on this wealth and his purely economic reasoning for social processes put a society and their ideology into perspective. Part of what I found so compelling was the idea of Utopia that arose after observation of this stagnant society. I found it interesting that although these ideas of communism seem to work on paper, they do not work when actually applied to society. I found this idea most interesting because looking at how things are now, one would think a perfect, equal society would be good, but an obvious need for power and greed will ultimately lead to a dictatorship. This idea reflecting human ways and thought was very compelling.

The part of that I found least compelling, I thought was, the need for economy and the importance that was placed on it. I thought Gramsci's criticism of Marx made more sense because it focused more on what makes on human and the beauty that we can create. Ideology is not based solely on money, it is based on culture. Although there is dominance, it is not all about money, it is embedded in our media, art and literature.

However, this aspect of the semester did not really help me to write my paper because I focused on genre theory and did not really relate my research to any Marxist ideas. Although the writing process itself was very interesting in that I learned a lot about genre theory and how to look at literary works in different ways. I do think however, that learning to look at works as a Marxist reading helped spark looking at other works in different ways.