Consumer Ignorance

If The Communist Manifesto was sold during the McCarthyism era Urban Outfitters would be shut down and whoever owned Urban Outfitters would have been put in jail. And no one from the 1950s would ever have guessed that The Communist Manifesto would be sold in a store which targets young rebellious minds. Urban Outfitters is not trying to threaten “the American way of life”, they are just selling the rebellious image.
It’s ironic that rebellion has become something that can be bought and sold. One would think that a true rebel would not shop in a mainstream store. People are so caught up on what is trendy that most of them probably don’t understand the ideology of communism. Most of them think communism is a great idea and they will wear their Chairman Mao t-shirts, not even thinking about the ideology of Mao. Yes, communism would work if we lived in a prefect world in which everyone was honest, leading to an equal and fair society. But we don’t live in a world where a utopia is a reality.
For example, if someone was put in a situation where their family was starving and they knew that their neighbors were also starving. But there was only had one roll of bread. Do you think they would give the divide the roll with the other family or would they feed it to their own children and not tell the other family that they had the roll?
I’m not trying to be pessimistic, I’m just saying that if Kim Jong-Il is right up there with Hitler and he sees himself as a great communist leader. Everyone can clearly see that people aren’t being treated equal in North Korea nor are they being treated equal in China. With great power comes greed. Both Chairman Mao and Kim Jong-Il became too greedy and no matter how hard they might try to keep things equal among their people there will always be class struggle.
In my political science class in high school my teacher told us that he had $20 to split among 20 students. But it could only be divided up equally if everyone wrote the number 1 on a piece of paper. If someone wrote any number higher than 1 then only the person who wrote another number would get the money. No one could look at what other people were writing. And we all agreed that we would all write the number 1 on your paper so everyone could get a dollar. My teacher had told our class that one person always writes a higher number so they could only receive the money. And just as he predicated one person wrote a number higher than 1. My teacher’s point was that people are just intuitively corrupt.
Marxism is a great ideology and I agree that people need to work as one to gain a powerful society. But I don’t think it will ever happen because there is always that one person who will write a number higher than 1.

Liberal Humanism and Marxist

Liberal Humanism and Marxist criticism have a numbers of different theoretical ideals, mainly the political and philosophic view points. But both criticisms do share one certain goal which is to do what is good for man kind.
Marxist criticism has a class basis and is a philosophy for the working class. As humans we must work together in order to form a society which is classless. In order for a society to work as a social whole, people must change their individual ways of thinking. Marx believes that people are indecisive, too caught up in everyday life to see the society around them. He suggests that if people stop worrying then they would be able to control the bigger problems in society.
A Marxist might say that, 'good literature isn't timeless and doesn’t transcend the culture no matter what time you're in.' Marxist would say that, ‘an individual’s economic standing leads to their interests’. It has nothing to do with the author who wrote the novel but the principles of the time when the literature was written. Whereas a Liberal Humanist, has a completely opposite view point, because Humanist believe that good literature is timeless and unchanging.
Liberal Humanism doesn't focus on class struggle nor does it focus on any economic or political points. Liberal Humanism deals more with the ethical teachings which binds us together as a whole. A liberal Humanist relies solely on human’s innate moral principles which are derived from human nature. And with one’s moral principles there lies no class because human nature exceeds class indifference.

Reflection on Helen Echlin “Letter from Yale”

I’m sure that Helen Echlin had a good purpose in mind when she was writing the article “Letter from Yale”. The idea of Helen Echlin’s article, “Letter from Yale”, was to make people understand that when analyzing literature you should not say just anything that makes you sound good. One should actually appreciate the work of the author, rather than butchering the work so much that yon forget the point that you were trying to make.

“The ode must traverse the problem of solipsism before it can approach participating in the unity which is no longer accessible”, this is the sentence that Echlin seems to be still analyzing ever since her days in Yale. Echlin makes this sentence seem like it was spouted to a professor to only impress. She goes on to say, in English we are “educated to value clarity”. I understand why that sentence might have been confusing and unclear but maybe if she asked her professor or the student to clarify the statement, she might not have given up on literary criticism.

As an English communication major, I enjoy taking English classes and I love that Critical Theory and the Academy is blowing my mind away, because it’s forcing me to think outside the box. I might only understand a small part of Peter Barry’s, Beginning Theory or recognize what Dr. McGuire saying only for a second but those parts of understanding makes me appreciate literary theory even more.

I'm Quincy and my vision for my blog to just to be a learning experience. I have never had a blog before so I'm not sure what to except. I tend to think outside the box and I hope people might gain a different perspectives. Critical theory is an essential component to literary criticism. Everyone has there own opinions and through these opinions we develop a certain criticism or theories. I think it's important to understand different theories so that we have a better understanding of how to view literature in a critical sense.