The Professor's House centers on Godfrey St. Peter, a prolific historian and professor reaching what seems like the end of his career. St. Peter feels deeply alienated from his recent success, as well as discontented with the trappings of wealth, success has left him. Cather explores the tensions between class structures and values belonging to each class. St. Peter has ascended to an upper-middle-class lifestyle through his academic achievements, contrasting his childhood. However, he feels more attached to the simple possessions from his past than the materialistic values of the wealthier class he now inhabits. St. Peter treasures his old home, which represents the non-commercial/non-commodified, sentimental value and memories of his former …show more content…
Tom Outland, a former student of St. Peter’s and Rosamond’s ex-fiancé, faces the reduction of his historical and culturally rich findings to economic capital by bureaucratic interests. By doing so, Cather exemplifies how regardless of how groundbreaking knowledge and cultural artifacts may be, they ultimately become appropriated as lucrative commodities. Through St. Peter's descent into disconnection from his intellectual work, family, and sense of self, as well as his fetishization of Tom Outland’s lower-class standing, Cather critiques how human relationships and creative pursuits become reduced to commodities and material possessions take on inflated significance to fill the void of authenticity. To understand the commodification culture Cather critiques, one must use Marx’s theory on commodity fetishism. In Das Marx or Capital, Karl Marx developed a critique of capitalist society through his theory of commodity …show more content…
Peter, Augusta exists as the embodiment of “authenticity” lacking in his home life, as he finds comfort in her matter-of-fact perspective on death and suffering. Similarly, St. Peter puts his former student Tom Outland on a pedestal, fetishizing his “Western” origins and discovery of the ancient cliff dwellings while working as a rancher. Cather states how “to people off alone, as we were, there is something stirring about finding evidence of human labor and care in the soil of an empty country” (Cather 172). For the “disillusioned” professor, Tom's life acquiring cultural artifacts in the wilderness takes on an almost spiritual significance. By fetishizing Augusta's working-class existence and Tom's ties to the land, St. Peter confuses his yearning for authenticity onto an idealized, commodified vision of their lifestyles and social standings—once again exemplifying Marx's notion of how “the social relations between the individual producers...take the form of a social relation between the products” (Marx). Symptomatic of this disinterest in authentic human connections, St. Peter attempts to seek solace and meaning by fetishizing material possessions such as his old
Coming from an “unconventional” background, George Saunders is readily able to relate to the circumstances the everyday working laborer goes through (Wylie). However, Saunders has an advantage to spread out his ideas and concerns about life in the U.S. via his short stories and novellas. Because of neoliberalism and capitalism and its correlation to the huge wealth gap in the U.S. Saunders focuses his protagonists’ view from a proletariat standpoint, allowing the reader to see the life of consumerism has impacted our society. Saunders does not use conventional methods to portray this reality. Instead, Saunders emphasizes on the “absence” of certain moral human characteristics in order to take the reader away from viewing into a hero’s looking glass— to set a foundation of a world where our morals become lost to our materialistic and inherent need of money (Wylie).
The second stanza of “Art vs. Trade” introduces the powerful people in the society of the text. In Marxist Theory, the powerful people, also known as the bourgeoisie, are the people who “own property [and] control the means of production” or base (Dobie 89). In “Art vs. Trade,” Trade is the powerful person or entity. Trade is described as living
Karl Marx argues in The German Ideology that material allows for more culture. Material is the road to true humanity. These materials are not only those things that we possess, such as cars, clothes, and houses, but also material that we gain through life experience itself. Winter defines her life by material. For her, money is God. She begins referencing her material items at once, from the diamond ring set in 24-karat gold she received the day she was born, to the diamond tennis bracelet she received on her sixteenth birthday, to the designer clothes she wore that no one else had or could afford. Even after she has no money because of he...
The Professor's House was written in 1925, in post-war America. Cather narrates a story of a detached and collapsed family consumed by the powers of materialism and wealth. Louie Marsellus proudly wears the source of his wealth – the fact that his livelihood is derived from his wife’s deceased fiancé does not create tension between husband and wife, nor between the couple and society. He even names his new home after the man, “We have named our place for Tom Outland, a brilliant young American scientist and inventor, who was killed in Flanders, fighting with the Foreign Legion, the second year of the war, when he was barely thirty years of age,” (Cather 30) displays his pride in and respect for his benefactor. Kathleen also describes her desire to earn wealth and material goods similar to her sister to her father: "‘I can't help it, Father.
Marx states that the bourgeoisie not only took advantage of the proletariat through a horrible ratio of wages to labor, but also through other atrocities; he claims that it was common pract...
While reading the book The House On Mango Street, the author Sandra Cisneros shows a
In ‘The Great Gatsby’ Fitzgerald criticises the increase of consumerism in the 1920s and the abandonment of the original American Dream , highlighting that the increased focus on wealth and the social class associated with it has negative effects on relationships and the poorest sections of society. The concept of wealth being used as a measure of success and worth is also explored by Plath in ‘The Bell Jar’. Similarly, she draws attention to the superficial nature of this material American Dream which has extended into the 1960s, but highlights that gender determines people’s worth in society as well as class. Fitzgerald uses setting to criticise society’s loss of morality and the growth of consumerism after the Great War. The rise of the stock market in the 1920s enabled business to prosper in America.
The House of the Seven Gables written by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a novel that engages the reader in an intricate love story that blends history and a fanciful ancestry. Hawthorne stays true to the Romantic era’s convections through his detailed development of the plot. Through his writing, the reader can capture the emotions, morality and motives of each character. Although Hawthorne writes in the romantic style, he does not fail to go against the social norms with the plot. He defines the normal roles of women and he emphasizes the role of wealth in society. Furthermore he asserts his opinions on issues that were prevent in that time, such as, racism, slave emancipation and Jim Crow. The story was not created to just provide a creative love
According to Raymond Williams, “In a class society, all beliefs are founded on class position, and the systems of belief of all classes …” (Rice and Waugh 122). His work titled, Marxism and Literature expounded on the conflict between social classes to bridge the political ideals of Marxism with the implicit comments rendered through the text of a novel. “For the practical links,” he states “between ‘ideas’ and ‘theories’ and the ‘production of real life’ are all in this material social process of signification itself” (133). Williams asserts that a Marxist approach to literature introduces a cross-cultural universality, ensuingly adding a timeless value to text by connecting creative and artistic processes with the material products that result. Like Williams, Don DeLillo calls attention to the economic and material relations behind universal abstractions such as aesthetics, love, and death. DeLillo’s White Noise brings modern-day capitalist societies’ incessant lifestyle disparity between active consumerists and those without the means to the forefront of the story’s plot. DeLillo’s setting uses a life altering man-made disaster in the suburban small-town of Blacksmith to shed light on the class conflict between the middle class (bourgeoisie) and the working poor (proletariat). After a tank car is punctured, an ominous cloud begins to loom over Jack Gladney and his family. No longer a feathery plume or a black billowing cloud, but the airborne toxic event—an event that even after its conclusion Jack cannot escape the prophecy of his encroaching death. Through a Marxist reading of the characterization of Jack Gladney, a middle-aged suburban college professor, it is clear that the overarching obsession with death operates as an...
While Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the scrivener” and Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” have unrelated plots, they both contain Marxist undertones that address alienation in the workplace as a result of capitalism. The protagonists, Gregor and Bartleby, are examples of how the working class is treated when they do not conform to the conventions of capitalism. Gregor and Bartleby alike are working class men who, through some turn of events, stop working and are deemed useless to those around them. Both of these stories end in the death of the protagonists, as these men are seen as unproductive and discarded by their capitalistic societies.
Tuberculosis is an air-borne disease, hence, it can be passed from an infected person to a healthy individual through coughing, sneezing and other salivary secretions. Tuberculosis is caused by the transfer of Mycobacteriun Tuberculosis (M. Tuberculosis) also known as Tubercle Bacillus, a small particle of 1-5 microns in diameter, due to the small size, when an infected person sneezes or coughs, about 3,000 particles are expelled. M. Tuberculosis responsible for tuberculosis is able to stay in the air for a long period of time (about 6hoursAnother way of acquiring Tuberculosis is by drinking unpasteurized milk, milk straight from cow, although this is not a common mode of transmission, it can be found in rural areas. Ingestion of contaminated cow milk transmits Mycobacterium Bovis, the animal form which is still potent enough to cause tuberculosis in humans. ). Tuberculosis transmission is affected by exposure, socioeconomic status of person, proximity, immune status of uninfected individual (%&&%&? CDC).
Commodity fetishism has blinded people into believing that value is a relationship between objects, when in reality, it is a relationship between people. This in turn, prevents people from thinking about the social labor condition workers have to endure; they only care and value about how much objects costs. They think that the source of the value comes from the cost, but it truly comes from labor (FC). Through this objectification stems alienation and estrangement. Marx starts with the assumption that humans have an intrinsic quality. As human beings, individuals like to be create and manipulate his or her environment. Creating is a part of people; therefore, people their being into their creations. However, Marx postulates that capitalism and specialized division of labor separates that working class from their creations in four ways- through alienation from the product, the labor process, one’s species-being, and humanity itself. The working class suffers through this hostility to make create more wealth for owners of factories. They get trapped in a cycle to make products for profit, but as automation advances, machines begins to take over people’s jobs; therefore, there less employment opportunities available, which in turn allows factory owners to decrease wages and exploit and devalue the working class (EL). In the The Poverty
Marx, from the civilized culture, seriously questions the lack of history that his society has. He also wonders as to the lack of books, banned because they were old and did not encourage the new culture. By visiting a reservation, home of an "uncivilized" culture of savages, he is able to see first hand something of what life and society use to be like. Afterwards he returns and attempts to incorporate some of what he saw into his work as an advertising agent.
The thought-provoking song “Wings” is an excellent introduction to Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism. Commodity fetishism is the process of attributing phantom “magic-like” qualities to an object, whereby the human labour required to make that object is lost once the object is associated with a monetary value for exchange.
In the 1830s, as the capitalist system had established and consolidated in Europe, the drawbacks of the capitalist society appeared, and the class contradictions also sharpened day by day. The capitalist mode of production "has left no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than calloused `cash payment'. It has drowned out the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom --- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation."(Marx, Engels 1972: 253). Additionally, the development of natural science and the victory in objecting to the religion and idealism struggle of materialism impelled the writers to break the traditional concept and illusion, and to watch the world and research the social realistic problems with the relatively objective even scientific eyes, so that Realism replaced Romanism to become the principal school of European literary circles. Since at that time the realistic literature was good at ferreting out to capitalist society and criticism, Maxim Gorky called it as "the criticized realism"(Gorky 1978: 110-111).