Born on 19th May 1938, Girish Karnad is a playwright screen writer, actor and movie director He is by all critical voices considered to one of the doyens of modern theatre: Badal Sirca, Vijay Tendulkar, and Mohan Rakesh. He is the recipient of Jnanpith award. He uses history and mythology as a tool for his social radicalism. His plays have been with pride produced and directed by Ebrahim Alksazi,, B.V. Karanth, Alyque Padmsee, Prasanna, Arvind Gaur, Shyamanand Jalan and Amal Allana.
The present paper tries to explore the crypto Marxist philosophy in the play HayaVadana Although there is a thin filmline difference between Marxism, socialism, and Arya Samaaj, and especially the folk style of presentation in Indian theatre , Karnad’s thematic
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The classification of the different class structure of a society based upon human anatomy might have provoked Karnad to react against the castiest hegemony. Karnad took the idea of Hayavadana from ‘Kathasaritasagar’, but he followed the treatment of Thomas Mann’s version of it in his “The transposed head”. The final solution in the ancient tale is that, since the head is the determining limb, then the body should fit according to the head. At the end of Mann’s version, the body has adjusted to the heads and the person’s are again the same. Karnad has followed the Mann’s logic on the dichotomy between head and mind; he seems to have been seriously concerned with the western cultural questioning of the sharp schism between mind and body: He (Karnad) rejects the mechanical conception of life, which differentiated body and soul. In rewriting the story he seems to be pitting himself directly against the abstractness and emptiness of the Cartesian cogito- “I think therefore I am”. (Vanashree Tripathy
John Updike's A&P gives various points of view to literary analysis. His clear similitudes and low-key sexual tones are just some of the few things that gets the reader thinking. A gender analysis can be drawn from the underlying layout of the story and Sammy's pettiness towards the female. Additional reading opens up a formalist and true to life point of view to the critic. After a few readings I started seeing the Marxist point of view on the strange condition of A&P.
“I wonder where the light goes when it’s not here. I mean, I know that darkness is the absence of light, but where does the light go when it’s not here? And how do you know if it’ll ever come back?” (Runyon 42). This quote describes 14-year-old Brent Runyon’s look at life.
However, the fact is that most Americans have the impression that Hispanic immigrants are perceived as a threat for not assimilating into the American mainstream, more so into the Anglo-Protestant values. Why is that? Is it for fear that the Spanish Language may overrun the country? Similarly, Neil Foley, author of, Mexicans In The Making of America, asks the same questions, why fear? In his prologue chapter, Foley makes a point by proving the fact that in the past, Mexican immigrants were not a concern but were, “ let in to provide the labor force for the rapidly expanding economy”(2).
How can improvements be made without the people who want the improvements don’t make an effort? Giving American citizens the responsibility to improve their own lives may cause setbacks, but it is the outcome of these setbacks that enable change and allow further quality of life. Without American citizens taking initiative to improve their own lives, they will be never be satisfied with the quality of their own lives. Many improvements in this world such as freedom and rights were not established through citizens counting on authority to make this change. It was the people who were affected by this dilemma that took action that ended up giving a new meaning to life.
“Harrison Bergeron,” written by Kurt Vonnegut at the time of the Cold War, is a short story that takes place in a future world of the year 2081 where the Handicapper General and the law force the beautiful to wear masks, the intelligent to wear earpieces that disrupt their thoughts, and the athletic to wear heavy physical restraints, so that everyone may be equal in the categories of beauty, intelligence, and athleticism; a world where the people “[are] equal in every which way.” (Vonnegut 1) What the many readers of “Harrison Bergeron” seem to misinterpret is that the entire story is an allegory to the political systems of Socialism/Communism and that Vonnegut utilizes symbols in the story that either expose the glaring flaws of left-wing politics or advance the supposedly far-superior ideology of American capitalism. In actuality, Vonnegut’s use of symbols in “Harrison Bergeron,” and the entire story itself is a satire of the common American’s ignorant misunderstandings of left-wing politics at the time of the Cold War. Vonnegut once said at a college commencement speech, “I suggest that you work for a socialist form of government … It isn 't moonbeams to talk of modest plenty for all.
America, the land of equity, has the largest ratio of rich citizens to poor citizens at 12:1. Compared to Japan and Germany’s measly 4:1, this information is outrageous. America is shown to have the most skewed economic pyramid when denoting the amount of people on each side of the economic slide. The selection, Class in America - 2006, an academic paper by Gregory Mantsios, argues the existence and magnitude of class and economic standing in the United States; through the use of fact and opinion, he creates the visual of a society severely divided by economic standing. Gregory Mantsios effectively convinces the audience of the differences in class sanding that cause a significant impact in the lives of americans and economic spectrum with his use of logos, anticipation, and credible evidence.
The overarching theme explored within this essay is the tendency of working-class conservatism within society. This has been analyzed above in regards to class-consciousness and hegemony. The popular Marxist explanation of working class Toryism sees a manifestation of false-consciousness on part of a large majority of the working class- a condition which is felt to be redeemable under the right conditions of proletariat education. In addition to this, some scholars have suggested that hegemonic pressures play a role in influencing the class consciousness of certain sects of persons within society. Political allegiances are to a large extent, a reflection of the vales persons within a society subscribe to in areas of their life outside the realm of politics.
Conclusion: The mind is substantively different from the body and indeed matter in general. Because in this conception the mind is substantively distinct from the body it becomes plausible for us to doubt the intuitive connection between mind and body. Indeed there are many aspects of the external world that do not appear to have minds and yet appear none the less real in spite of this for example mountains, sticks or lamps, given this we can begin to rationalize that perhaps minds can exist without bodies, and we only lack the capacity to perceive them.
Capitalism is a highly dynamic system which brought immense material wealth to the human society. This essay traces the historical dynamism of capitalism from its minority status to its majority status in term of demand and supply of investment capital. The emergence of capitalism as a mode of production out of pre-capitalist mode of production was fully formed by the mid-nineteenth century (Hobsbawn, Age of Capital: 1848-1875) this in no way implies that it was quantitatively dominant mode of production.
Have you ever thought about the phrase “American History” and wondered the real stories that occurred in an individual from the past? Several other citizens of America have, too. The simple answer to the meaning of the title “American History” written by Judith Ortiz Cofer purports that said story illustrates the history of an American citizen and revolves around a significant event from the past. However, the overall message become larger than the straightforward idea. While educating readers on the time placed during President Kennedy's death in 1963, the author illustrates the struggling truth behind the story of an average young individual American immigrant girl in a plethora of ways.
How and why is a social group represented in a particular way? In his play The Importance of Being Earnest (1895, London St. James’ theater), Oscar Wilde portrays the attitudes and society of Victorian upper class through character interactions within the ‘Bunburyist’ adventures of Algernon Moncrieff and Jack Worthing. The play’s comedic elements, in addition to the portrayal of power structures, are used as an effective medium to challenge the viewer to reflect upon Wilde’s criticism on institutions and values of the aristocracy. In conjunction to this, deeper analysis can be conducteds about marriage in Victorian aristocracy and their attitudes to members of other social groups.
A Marxist Analysis of The Kite Runner In Afghanistan, the Hazara people were formerly a majority ethnicity at about 67 percent of the population, however once the Pashtuns began taking political actions, the Hazaras were massacred until they only formed about 9 percent of Afghanistan’s total population today (“Afghanistan-Hazaras”). Because of their minority status, the Hazara people face much prejudice in Afghan society as shown by the book. Similarly, Afghani people compose 3 percent of America’s population, wherein they also face prejudice. In Khaled Hosseini’s
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is based on a utopian society with unique social, psychological, political, and cultural features. The novel hinges on the idea of an all-powerful state that controls almost all aspects of life and makes citizens ignorant problems occurring in their society. Bernard Marx is an Alpha male who fails to fit in the structure created by the World Controllers of his society due to his inferior capabilities. His discontent in society leads him to hold unorthodox ideas about many aspects of life and shapes him as an individual. Through Bernard’s exposure to John the Savage and his heightened need for social acceptance, Bernard Marx is shaped from an admirable character who yearns for more out of life than given in his
Writings of Karl Marx had formed the theoretical basis for communism and the continual debate against capitalism. Marx understood capitalism to be a system in which the means of production are privately owned and profit is generated by the sale of the proletariat’s labour. He considered it to be an unfair exploitation of hard work with alienated social interactions and purpose. I agree with Marx that capitalism is indeed unfair and alienating, because it concentrates wealth within a small group of people by exploiting the surplus value of workers’ labour, and creates an alienated workforce. Hence, this essay will first discuss the relevance of Marx’s perception of capitalism as an alienating and unfair system for the contemporary world, before examining the potential of governments to influence the extent of alienation and unfairness that occurs.
“The Grapes of Wrath” is still of the classics of American literature. This work remains banned in many school libraries across the nation because some critics said it contains full of lies of American life in that period and highly pro-communist. It is because Steinbeck created the work because of showing difficulties of many Americans who had The Great Depression and The Dust Owl. Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” can be discussed by many critical theories but Marxist criticism which I will be discussing here is the one of the most common lenses through which to read the novel. This is because Steinbeck’s narrative shows the exact problems that a capitalist society describes working class people.