Proletariat

An Inspector Calls is a play written by Dramatist J.B Priestley in 1945. Priestley was a left-wing socialist and this was one of the factors which influenced him to write this play. Even though the play was written in 1945, it was actually set in 1912, right before the start of the First World War. It is set in the spring of 1912 at the Brumley home of the Birlings, a prosperous industrial family in the North Midlands, getting involved in the death of a woman named Eva Smith. The Inspector uses…

Thesis: In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain uses Jim to explain that slavery was a wrong institution because whites treated blacks like they were a different species, which was wrong because blacks are humans too. TS1 Violence: In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, violence is seen as one of the most vulgar aspects of slavery because humans beat and other humans and deprive them of their basic amenities. TS2 Family Separation: Miss Watson shows how separation of families was another…

The Novels a House of Mr. Biswas and Things Fall Apart, both examine the concept of Individualization in direct conflict to their each respective societies. A House for Mr. Biswas, by V.S. Naipaul focuses more on the adaptation to society, whereas Things Fall apart, by Chinua Achebe, focuses on the destruction of oneself door to Society Clash. Both the Novels, have similar themes, though the techniques used to portray it to the readers differ. The Novel, Things Fall Apart published in 1958, by…

The literary manifesto of many a novelist in the past as well as in the present is to write for social, political and economic purpose. The purpose is not only to throw light upon the social evils and malpractices prevailing in the society in those days, but also to employ fiction to the cause of social amelioration. The establishment of novel in the world of literature manifests itself multifariously encompassing almost every facet of social life, which is regarded as Social Realism. Realism is…

Different “Ways of Seeing” In the essay, “Ways of Seeing,” John Berger applies Marxism to art history. Marxism is the social, economic and political theory formed by Karl Marx. It deals with class struggle and the oppression of the lower classes by the upper classes. In the essay, Berger focuses on using Marxist methodology, when he analyzes and explains an artist named Frans Hal. Berger uses Hals paintings to demonstrate the structure of social classes, and their struggles to give an idea of…

The fight between the individual and the collective has been a pivotal point in the development of human history. In the political (through the development of minority rights), the cultural (through the rise of counterculture and rebelliousness) and practically every other facet of human society, the main conflict that has occurred has been between the individual’s attempts at self-preservation and the collective’s plight for development. The book Catch-22 is a perfect example of this conflict…

equally. For example, I went to Kelly High School, which is a public high school that was on probation and had a great deal of violence and gang problems. Everyday instead of worrying about homework and exams, I was worried about my safety. Mainly all the teachers in that high school made a hasty generalization regarding the students because they believed that all of them were immature and didn’t care about school; however, the few students that did care, like me, were deprived of having a…

The Gilded Age was a period in American History in which big business emerged, causing tension between the working class and owners of companies. This was all possible only by the occurrence of the Industrial Revolution in America. The institution of factories in the U.S. allowed for mass production, which hurt many small businesses and independent artisans and encouraged a system of wealthy business owners and impoverished unskilled workers. This stratification eventually reached its peak in…

In the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, there is a social structure similar to how a concrete social structure in our world works today. This social structure consists of the upper, middle, and lower classes which possesses people from the book in each class. Gatsby, Tom, and Daisy are in the upper class; Nick is in the middle class, and Gatsby was originally from the lower class when he was younger (in flashbacks) but also George and Myrtle Wilson fall under the lower class. These…

Industrialization in the 19th century replaced rural life for an urban society filled with machinery and mass production. This new industrialized society brought riches and an increase in the standard of living for the bourgeoisie while creating dreadful working and living conditions for the poor. These conditions forced the working class into a desensitized state in which they no longer felt the exploitative conditions of industrialization and fell into senseless obedience. Although, the…