Although it is classified as science fiction, Alphonso Cuaron’s Children of Men (2006) is presenting a near future society not far removed from our present one. Set in a future England where people are no longer able to have children, society has split into the ruling class and the downtrodden. This paper examines the sequence where Theo goes to meet with his cousin Nigel at the “Ark of the Arts”. Through the careful use of mise-en-scene, Alphonso Cuaron is critiquing the present day class system and its systematic exclusion of the proletariat. The ruling class has segregated itself off from the masses, this can be seen when Theo is riding through the city in the confines of the luxury Rolls Royce. He is able to see how the upper class
Now that masculinity has being defined, it is possible to demonstrate how these books expose the belief that England is suffering from a decadence of its leadership and, as a result, of its moral values. The metaphors of the corruption of England are clearly presented by both authors. The arrival of Dracula, a foreign threat, to England is accompanied by the worst storm in a century. A dark mist that obliterates the light of day comes over and, when it dissipates, the count’s ship is already at the port. This obscurity is the absence of God’s light. The process of corruption has begun and it starts from
Throughout the course of the semester, we have studied various texts, and applied various themes in order to further interpret said texts. As a class, we have studied, and discussed, what makes working class prevalent in a theme, how it is, and was, used in regards to studying the Victorian Era. While the concept of working class issues may not be as prevalent in the Goblin Market as they are in other works, they are still nonetheless, prevalent. One main theme that plays into the issue of working class in the piece is the theme of temptation in the Victorian Era, in which the Goblin Market is based. The Goblin Market piece illustrates many routes women in the Victorian Era had to take just in order to survive in the time period, illustrating class divisions, as well as how class identities clashed together in the piece alone, and more.
Priestly is using this as a metaphor to target the upper classes about the way they treat the lower classes.
In the 1990s Telecommuting became popular. (“Wikipedia”, n.d., para.1) It allowed a way for employers to have workers that still accomplished the day to day task necessary to run a business and also allowed employee’s to work without traveling into a dedicate office building or store. In today’s society, I have noticed that there are more job posting for software developers in the United States that offer working remotely versus working at an office building. The purpose of the dissertation is to find out the habits and work ethics of successful remote workers so that a hiring manager could target those traits while interviewing potential candidates for telecommuting work.
It is fairly apparent that a number of political overtones dominate Emile Zola's novel Germinal, which is the 13th book of nonfiction within the writer's Les Rougon-Macquart, a 20-volume series of novels. The author published this work of literature in 1885, less than 50 years after Marx and Engels unveiled the Communist Manifesto which was still plenty of time for a number of the ideologies propagated in this manuscript to take hold of popular culture and political theorists alike. In fact, one could successfully make a claim that the central theme of Germinal actually revolves around the conceptions of class antagonism that is an inherent part of an exploitative, bourgeois society such as that depicted in the French coal mining town in 1860, the setting for Germinal. A thorough analysis of this literary work illustrates that there are several instances of class antagonism, which are central to the plot of this book and provide its primary theme.
Throughout history, a divide has always existed between the rich and poor in society. However, during the Industrial Revolution in Victorian England, this rift reached its peak. The working class labored for long hours and received miniscule wages, whereas the bourgeoisie grew abundantly wealthy through the labor of the working class. Published in 1848 and 1854 respectively, Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto and Charles Dickens’ Hard Times both comment on these troubles. While Hard Times is a novel which tells a story and The Communist Manifesto is a short publication which tries to bring about social change, both writings offer a sharp critique of the class antagonism brought about by capitalism at the height of the Industrial
The social position of children over time has greatly changed, this evident through the work Philippe Aries. During the Middle Ages (10th-13th Century) Aries (1960) argued that ‘the idea of childhood did not exist.’ He used works of art as evidence to show that children of that time appeared without ‘any of the characteristics of childhood; they have simply been depicted on a smaller scale.’ Children were in effect ‘mini-adults’ with the same rights, duties and skills as adults. They even dressed the same and carried out the same work.
In the words of Karl Marx, the founding father of Marxism, Marxism principally believes that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” In essence, Marx asserts that every day is a tale of conflict between society’s upper and lower class. While controversial in the real world, this notion is not far-fetched in the realm of literature. For example, Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use” shows prominent signs of tension between classes. When examined from a Marxist perspective, Walker’s characters in “Everyday Use” highlight how each class values items and how survival needs and societal expectations differ among classes.
Through the theoretical approach of Marxism, The Beauty and The Beast (2017) is a Disney film that depicts the divide between class structures in a traditionally oriented society. The Marxist theory is used as a tool to analyze the film in order to have the ability to examine the core concepts of the theory and investigate the theme of the film in its entirety. The film depicts two class structures that consist of lower, peasant-like villagers and a middle-class structure. The film depicts various social hierarchy’s that attempts to challenge humanities perception of power through the theory of Marxism. This paper will describe how the theoretical approach of Marxism applies to the Disney film, The Beauty and the Beast (2017) through
Ground-breaking, momentous, and a time of great struggle, the Industrial Revolution was famous for its innovations and infamous for the sobering reality it inflicted upon the standard family. Mid-18th century Britain brought poverty to everyday urban workers. With it, came an increase in child labor like never seen before. In order for a normal family to survive in the urban lifestyle, all members of a family had to work. This included children as young as four years to work as chimney sweepers, miners, and most popularized in 18th century Britain, factory workers. By the year 1800, children under the age of 14 in Britain’s factories accounted for 50% of the labor force (“Industrial Revolution, Child Labor”). Though the number continued to grow, all did not go unaccounted for. Romanticism, an effort opposite the movement, gave recognition to the emotional conflicts overlooked. Romanticism shed light on the daily struggles of the everyday man, woman, and the most neglected up until that period of time, the child. Throughout history, others have written about childhood, but Romantic poets began to question what it meant to be a child. The question, though not answered directly, later became revealed in their works where it exposed their belief systems. The role of the child in British Romantic Poetry represents the early life of Romantic poets, and the qualities they possessed in childhood.
The genre of comedy, throughout the history of dramatic art has always served to not only entertain audiences, but to make them aware of their own individual flaws, or flaws that exist in society. (Weitz, E.) Comedy has no precise definition, and its boundaries are broad. One function of comedy however has remained the same - to hold up a mirror to the society of the time but through pleasure, inviting audiences to reflect and also providing amusement. Set in the late nineteenth century, the play An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde (1895) epitomises comedy, as both a literary and dramatic genre. Wilde was masterful in his ability to combine aspects of evolved comedic traditions and dramatic conventions to critique Victorian society. Drawing on characteristics of Greek and Roman tragicomedy, the choices in the play’s plot involves elements of tragedy as well as scenes that serve as comic relief and give the audience a sense of finality through a happy resolution. (Bureman, L) Focussing on the upper class stratum, Wilde employs a comedy of manners Molière style, of the Restoration Period in the seventeenth century in the play by combining forms of comedy with aspects of realist drama. The portrayal of archetypal figures such as Lady Chiltern and Lord Goring satirize rigid moral value of the time and expose their hypocrisies, through dialogue involving irony, wit and humour. Elements of farce and disguises characterized by ‘commedia dell’arte’, a form of comedy first developed in
Throughout the Industrial Revolution, the lower class’s population continued to increase as more and more people became poor and fell into poverty. Although the upper class was prosperous and wealthy, they failed to assist the struggling population; this only made the problem worse. As the issue of poverty became more critical, it became a topic that authors commonly wrote about. George Orwell, Charles Dickens, and Jonathan Swift were authors who presented the problem of a poor community and a neglectful upper class to the people through the use of allegory and satire. This helped to easily convince and influence their readers. Through the use of satire and allegory, George Orwell, Charles Dickens, and Jonathan Swift effectively address the pressing issue of the upper class’s ignorance and mistreatment towards the lower, struggling class.
This paper attempts to offer a Marxist reading of Conrad 's Heart of Darkness (1899) and Defoe's The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) . Specifically , this paper highlights how the concept of commodification helps us to understand the dialectic struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat which are both considered the products of their socioeconomic and material circumstance with an emergent capitalist culture. By depicting how capitalists in the two novellas commodify objects or humans and by investigating the struggles between the 'haves' and the 'haves-not' .
“Although class struggle is most clearly seen in public confrontations, the family is the mechanism which reproduces class attitudes, and parent-child relationships, as worked out in the ‘extraneous’ sections of this novel, demonstrate how the personal becomes the political. If we approach the novel through the ethics of family, therefore, we do not detract from its value as an exploration of class-relations, but instead of seeing it as an ‘industrial novel’ flawed by political naivety and superfluous sub-plots, we can see it as an attempt to understand the interaction of class and gender. In particular, its opposed class-based images of fatherhood prompt us to re-think the political concept of
In The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the fourteenth century, the social classes are changing due to the events of the time. The Black Plague has just killed about two-thirds of Europe’s population and the Hundred Years War has ravaged the land. Due to the lack of a labor force, a middle-class is forming that begins to shift the values of society. Marxist criticism, based on the philosophy of Karl Marx, focuses on social class struggles and how literature reflects those struggles. It searches to identify who is in power, where the money is, what groups are oppressed, and what values are enforced by the social classes. The pilgrims heading to Canterbury reflect the power and money of the higher social classes but refute the