34

3| Literary Criticism

UNIT 5: MARXIST CRITICISM

5.0 Intended Learning Outcomes
a. Identify important terms, personalities and dates relative to the definition, principles
and historical development of Marxist Criticism.
b. Explain the basic tenets of the Marxist literary theory.
c. Evaluate the text “Fire Extinguisher” using Marxist literary theory.
5.1 Introduction
“You don’t have to be a Marxist to do a Marxist analysis of Literature”
In this unit we will delve into another theory called Marxist criticism which reads
a text as an expression of contemporary class struggles, and posits that literature is not
simply a matter of personal expression or taste, but somehow relates to the social and
political conditions of time.
Thus, to know more about Marxism as a literary approach, this lesson highlights
the study on its definition, historical context and guide questions which would help you
in doing your Marxist analysis of literature.

5.2 Topics
5.2.1 What is Marxist Criticism?
According to Marxists, and to other
scholars in fact, literature reflects those social
institutions out of which it emerges and is
itself a social institution with a particular
ideological function. Literature reflects class
struggle and materialism: think how often
the quest for wealth traditionally defines
characters.
So, Marxists generally view literature "not as works created in accordance with timeless
artistic criteria, but as 'products' of the economic and ideological determinants specific to that era"
(Abrams 149).
Literature reflects an author's own class or analysis of class relations, however
piercing or shallow that analysis may be.
5.2.2 Historical Context
The beginnings of Marxism started with The Communist Manifesto in the late 19th
century. The main proponents of this school of thought are:

Karl Marx 1818 - 1883 Friedrich Engels 1820 - 1895

C. M. D. Hamo-ay
 35
3| Literary Criticism
Both Marx and Engels hail from Germany. The former studied philosophy and law for college
while the latter dropped out of high school due to conflict with his father.
Marx believed that he continuing conflict between the classes will lead to upheaval and revolution
by oppressed peoples and form the groundwork for a new order of society and economics where
capitalism is abolished. In a nutshell, Marxism hopes to establish balance that makes the world a better,
more secure place for those who have been oppressed and controlled.
In simple terms, these are the main ideas behind the Marxist thought:
1. A person’s value is based on labor exerted or potential labor;
2. Economics determines all social actions and institutions;
3. Class struggle is the basic pattern in history;
4. Power will inevitably be seized through the revolution of the proletariat; and
5. Ultimately there will be an establishment of a classless society.

It was not until the 20th century when the Marxism school of thought would be applied to
literature. Leon Trotsky with the “Russian Revolution Architects” were one of the first literary critics who
first used Marxist ideas to analyze literary texts. (Delahoyde)

To know more about Marxist Criticism, please watch a short clip entitled ’A Brief
Introduction to Marxism’ through this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0GFSUu5UzA

COMPREHENSION CHECK!
1. Write down how you understand the following terms:
a. Bourgeoisie
b. Proletariat
c. Capitalism
d. Oppression
e. Exploitation
f. Class conflict
2. Why is Marx’s theory often referred to as the Conflict Theory?
(NOTE: This will be credited towards your Class Recitation)

5.2.3 What do Marxist literary critics do with texts?

➢ They explore ways in which the text reveals ideological oppression of a dominant economic class over
subordinate classes. In order to do this a Marxist might ask the following questions:
⁻ Does the text reflect or resist a dominant ideology? Does it do both?
⁻ Does the main character in a narrative affirm or resist bourgeoise values?
⁻ Whose story gets told in the text? Are lower economic groups ignored or devalued?
⁻ Are values that support the dominant economic group given privilege? This can happen
tacitly, in the way in which values are taken to be self-evident.
➢ They look at the conditions of production for the work of art. For example, they ask:
⁻ What were the economic conditions for publication of a work?
⁻ Who was the audience? What does the text suggest about the values of this audience?

C. M. D. Hamo-ay
 36
3| Literary Criticism
5.2.4 What other approaches resemble Marxist literary criticism?
Marxist literary criticism often shares with feminist criticism a desire to challenge the power
structures in contemporary society. For feminist, the issue is a marginalized gender; for Marxists,
the issue is not gender but economic power, leading to political power.
Marxist literary criticism can also be viewed as a type of cultural criticism, in that it seeks
to analyze a discourse (of power) that makes up one of the discourses that determine a text's
historical meaning.

5.2.5 Guide questions when using Marxist theory

When using the Marxist approach, focus on oppressive situations that exist in the
literature as a means of seeing historical and economic forces at work. Look for ideas
literature might offer intended to spark a revolutionary moment within a nation. Be keen
on the any signs and/or presence of oppression. (Abrahms, 1999)

Typical questions when using the Marxist lens:

a. Whom does it benefit if the work or effort is accepted?
b. What is the social class of the author?
c. Which social class does the work claim to represent?
d. What values does the piece reinforce?
e. What conflict can be seen between the values does the
f. How do characters from different classes interact or conflict?
g. What role does class play in the work; what is the author's analysis of class
relations?
h. How do characters overcome oppression?
i. In what ways does the work serve as propaganda for the status quo; or does it try
to undermine it?
j. What does the work say about oppression; or are social conflicts ignored or blamed
elsewhere?
k. How is the fate of the individual determined by societal forces?
l. How completely/accurately is society portrayed?
m. Are the identities of conflicting forces acknowledged?
n. Are all social classes represented?
o. What class structures are established in the text?
p. Which characters or groups control the economic means of production?
q. Which characters are oppressed, and to what social classes do they belong?
r. Which characters are the oppressors?
s. Whose story gets told in the text?
t. Who are the powerful people in the society depicted in the text?
u. Who are the powerless people?
v. Does the work propose some form of utopian vision as a solution to the problems
encountered in the work?

C. M. D. Hamo-ay
 37
3| Literary Criticism
5.2.6 Model Analysis
To better understand the sample analysis below, read first the story “Barn Burning” by William
Faulkner. (See copy of the text in Appendix B)

Silence, Violence, and Southern Agrarian Class Conflict in

William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning”
By: LIBERTY KOHN

William Faulkner’s short story “Barn Burning”

demonstrates the political and economic power disparities between
the bourgeoisie, represented by the justice system and aristocratic
landowners, and the proletariat, represented by the Snopes family.
Taking place within living memory of the Civil War, the story is a
critique of the southern sharecropping system and captures the
immorality, greed, and lack of caring by the South’s affluent classes.
Yet the story also suggests that “barn-burning” nihilism is not the
answer to class conflict. As young Sarty’s flight suggests at story’s
end, for a true Marxist revolution, false consciousness, violence,
and self-interest must be erased from people’s actions.
The story opens as Abner Snopes is on trial for burning a
barn. When his young son and main character, Colonel Sartoris
Snopes, is called as a witness, Sarty’s struggle begins. Although he
identifies with his father and has inherited his father’s ideas of the
relationship between the bourgeoisie and proletariat, the story
focuses on Sarty’s burgeoning awareness that his father’s barn
burning is not a legitimate or helpful response to class inequality.
Although Sarty ultimately warns Major de Spain of his father’s attempted barn burning at story’s end,
signifying a break with his father’s values, he supports and identifies with his father in the story’s opening
courtroom scene.
Abner Snopes typifies the powerlessness of the proletariat. In the opening trial scene, he does not
speak until after the judgment is pronounced, underscoring his lack of voice in the political system as a
whole. (He is equally silent after a lone statement in a second trial for barn burning.) He is ordered to
leave the county. After their travel and relocation to Major de Spain’s plantation, Abner states that he
wishes to have a word with the man who will own him “body and soul for the next eight months.” After
leaving Major de Spain’s house, Abner remarks that it was built with “nigger sweat” and that Major de
Spain intends to add some “white sweat” as well. This comment demonstrates that race does not matter
in Marxist class division. Those who own land and control the means of production hire workers to toil
for small wages or life’s necessities while the landowners themselves reap great benefit.
Although Abner’s silence and control seem respectable, they demonstrate that he has been fully
interpellated to accept the class system that offers him no opportunity. Instead of speaking
representatively of himself in court, he chooses silence. He burns barns instead of calling for a
redistribution of the means of production, landownership, and other material inequalities. Although
Abner recognizes the injustices of sharecropping, he cannot imagine an alternative system. This
acceptance of the way things are represents false consciousness. He can imagine only violence as a
solution to class conflict. His violence becomes nihilism, destruction without reconstruction. However, as
the family’s nomadic life proves, nihilism provides only revenge, not economic opportunity.
Faulkner’s language choice during the pivotal scene where Abner steps in horse droppings and
walks across Major de Spain’s rug demonstrates the inevitable social construction of individuals’ beliefs.
As Abner walks toward the house, Sarty notes that his father could have avoided the droppings with a
“simple change in stride.” Once inside, Abner’s foot comes down on the floor “with clocklike finality.”

C. M. D. Hamo-ay
 38
3| Literary Criticism
When Mrs. de Spain addresses him, Abner once again does not speak but simply turns and exits. Abner’s
unchanging stride suggests that he knows no other way to deal with class conflict. His reactions are
socially constructed with a clocklike finality of their own. His silence when addressed by Mrs. de Spain
parallels the silence of the courtroom scenes and underscores Abner’s false consciousness: He believes he
cannot gain power through speaking, only through destroying.
Marxist oppression continues across generations. The women in the family amply demonstrate
the political and economic oppression and false consciousness of Marxist class division. Sarty’s sisters are
often described as cattle instead of humans. Attention is drawn to the cheapness of their clothes. The
women are not allowed to exist as graceful upper-class women. Yet Faulkner suggests that the “inertia”
surrounding them is their own. Like Abner, the sisters’ problems are socially constructed and to some
degree of their own making.
Sarty’s mother and aunt also sustain the system of oppression. They save the little money that
they have to buy Sarty a half-size ax, a gift that symbolizes the movement of the next generation into the
working class and its false consciousness. Later, when Abner believes Sarty will flee to warn Major de
Spain of the barn burning, Abner instructs his wife to hold her son, denying both his wife’s and Sarty’s
ambitions to see Sarty escape the family’s entrapment in the vicious cycle of southern agrarian
sharecropping.
Throughout the story, Sarty himself wrestles with his father’s ideas about class conflict and
violence. In the opening scene, Sarty is hungry, underscoring the family’s destitute status. Early on, we
see him making mental efforts to make “his father’s enemy” into his enemy as well. Upon exiting the trial,
he scraps with the boy who yells “barn burner.” However, as the family pulls away from the trial in their
wagon, Sarty hopes that his father is satisfied and will not continue the cycle of destruction based on
violence and nihilism without the production of economic opportunity.
Sarty’s development is next seen when he and his father walk toward the de Spain house for the
first time. Sarty intuits that his father can’t harm such an aristocratic family. He realizes that his father’s
violence would be a “buzzing wasp” capable of only an annoying sting but no more. Sarty hopes that his
father realizes this as well and will change from what “he couldn’t help but be.” This line suggests that Sarty
understands how his father has been socially constructed to understand class relationships and social
mobility only through the current system based upon inequality and irresolvable conflict.
Sarty’s disavowal of his father’s nihilistic barn burning is the story’s climax. As Abner rushes to
burn the de Spain barn to the ground, Sarty protests by saying that before other burnings, a messenger
was sent to warn the landowners. Abner only continues to prepare for the conflagration. Sarty
understands that he could flee from the system of conflict, poverty, and interpellation in which his family
is trapped. He says, “I could run on and on and never look back, never need to see his face again. Only I can’t.”
Ultimately, Sarty does break with his father. He warns the de Spain household of his father’s actions, and
he runs from his family, spending the night in the woods. The story ends with the sun about to rise,
symbolically letting Sarty begin a new life. He understands that his father’s nihilistic, ideological
stranglehold kept the family from realizing better life of economic and political opportunity.
“Barn Burning” presents an economic
and political system that perpetuates class
conflict, robs the working class of power and
equality, and creates a false consciousness that
destroys the proletariat’s ability to imagine a
different system based upon economic and
political equality. Faulkner illustrates the
interpellation throughout the entire Snopes
family. While Abner Snopes is caught in material
and social circumstances that allow him only
nihilistic protest through barn burning, Sarty
represents the true Marxist mind that realizes

C. M. D. Hamo-ay
 39
3| Literary Criticism
that an alternative system is needed, one where the bourgeoisie do not control the means of production
and the proletariat are not in eternal insurgency.
Although Sarty himself may be too young to think in such precise Marxist terms, the story “Barn
Burning” itself suggests that successful economic and political systems must redistribute the means of
production and allow society to recognize the equality and humanity of all people.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

EVALUATION #5
Name: _________________________________________ Program, Year & Section: ______________
Professor: _______________________________________Date of Submission: __________________
OBJECTIVE TYPE
(This will be administered via Google form on Monday, April 30, 2021 @ 3:00PM)
I. MULTIPLE CHOICE
Directions: Read the items carefully. Write only the letter of the correct answer on the space provided
before each number (1 point each).
1. Which two philosophers developed the principal concept of Marxism?
A. Marx and Engels C. Engels and Voltaire
B. Marx and Aristotle D. Plato and Aristotle

2. What is the name for the class of people which is oppressed in Marxist view of society?
A. Bourgeoisie C. Communist
B. Proletariat D. Capitalists

3. Which of the following theories aims to explain literature in relation to society?

A. Formalism C. Marxism
B. Reader-response D. Psychoanalytic

4. In the story Fire Extinguisher, how are you going to classify Benjie according to social
class?
A. Bourgeoisie C. Communist
B. Proletariat D. Capitalists

5. What does Opok represent in the story Fire Extinguisher?

A. Bourgeoisie C. Communist
B. Proletariat D. Capitalists

II. TRUE OR FALSE

Directions: Read and analyze each item carefully. Write TRUE if the statement is correct.
Otherwise, write FALSE. (1 point each).

1. According to the Marxist theory, History is a cycle of struggles between bourgeoisie and
proletariat.
2. In Marxist theory, those who own property and the means of production are the proletariats.
3. Marxism is a type of economic system proposed by Karl Marx in which there are classes.
4. Marxist literary theory took off in the 20th century, after the Russian Revolution.
5. Writers and writings are not shaped by economic context.

C. M. D. Hamo-ay
 40
3| Literary Criticism
SUBJECTIVE TYPE
A. Explain the basic tenets of the Marxist literary theory. (10 points)
B. How do you find Marxism as a literary approach? Write a one-paragraph reaction to it.
(10 points)
C. APPLICATION: Evaluate the text, “Fire Extinguisher” by Dr. Dominador Pagliawan using
Marxist literary theory. (see copy of the text in Appendix C) (50 points)

CRITERIA:
• Application of the theory - 20
• Organization and Coherence - 10
• Grammar & Convention - 10
• Originality - 10
TOTAL 50

HOW TO PREPARE & SEND OUTPUTS

1. Encode your answers in a legal-size paper (specification: font: Arial 12, double-space)
2. After proofreading your paper, save it in PDF file. File name of the document must follow this format:
ENG 20 UNIT 5 OUTPUTS (your surname e.g. DELA CRUZ)
*If there is a classmate with the same family name as yours, please write your Given name.
3. Send output via SSU-LMS.
4. Deadline: Friday, April 30, 2021 @ 5:00PM

5.3 References

Abrams, M.H. (1999). "Marxist Criticism." A Glossary of Literary Terms. 7th ed. Fort Worth: Harcourt
Brace College Publishers
Delahoyde, M. (n.d.) Introduction to Literature. Retrieved from
https://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/marxist.crit.html
Dobie, A.B. (2012). Theory into Practice: An Introduction to Literary Criticism (Third Edition). Cengage
Learning
Pagliawan, D.L. (2017). Literary Criticism: A Resource, A Guide, A Reader. Texts and Visuals

The Nature of Writing. (n.d.). Marxist Literary Theory. https://natureofwriting.com/courses/writing-

about-literature/lessons/marxist-literary-theory/

5.4 Acknowledgment
The images, tables, figures and information contained in this module were taken from the
references cited above.

C. M. D. Hamo-ay