DECENA, GERARD FRANCHESKA L.

Master of Arts in Literature and Language Instruction

LLI 246: Advanced World Literary Criticism

A Critic on Squid Game

Squid Game tells the story of hundreds of people in South Korea who are in deep financial
problem. These people found themselves participating in a series of life-threating games, in exchange for
a cash prize they all badly needed. Squid Game is a survival game where the last man standing will be
declared the winner.

The main character of the show is Seong Gi-hun. Gi-hun is a grown man who lives with his mother.
Because of his misfortunes in life, Gi-hun became crazy about betting in horse racing, leaving him in deep
debt. Gi-hun was invited to the game by a mysterious man who knows everything about his financial
status. After contemplating and seeing an opportunity to win easy money, he decided to join the game,
making him the last player to join. After six life-threatening games and a lot of moral dilemmas, Gi-hun
came out victorious.

The Marxism approach obviously present in the series. The Marxist criticism emphasizes class,
socioeconomic status, and power relations among various segments of society. Episode one gave us a
glimpse of how marginalized people are by accepting slaps on their faces and accepting the invitation for
a game they don’t know. This shows that the rich have power over poor people because of the needs of
the latter. In Squid Game, there are rules that should be followed, one of which is that they cannot leave
the game when it starts, unless the majority of the players agrees on stopping it. The idea of the writer
here is to show that the lower class can overthrow upper class with a powerful movement.

Marxist criticism says that a literature can be analyzed in terms of base/ superstructure model. In
Squid Game, the base is the game itself. It is what the superstructure (which is the mastermind) use to
control the vulnerable and marginalized people.