Marxist

Approach
Presented by Group 5
Table of contents
01 02 03
Marxist Approach Karl Marx History of Marxist
Criticism

04 05
Step to analyze a The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn: Marxist
text using the Criticism
Marxist Approach
 01

Marxist
Approach
 What is Marxist Criticism?
Marxist Criticism is a theory of literary criticism that
is based on the social and economic theories of Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engel
• Value is based on Labor
• Working class will end Capitalism
• Middle class exploits working class
• Institutions are corrupted by middle class capitalists
 What is Marxist Approach?
• Marxist criticism also focuses • Marxism is a political
on class struggle, especially on the philosophy and method of
oppression of the proletariat (the socioeconomic analysis that
have-nots) by the bourgeoisie (the uses a materialist
haves). As part of its analysis of interpretation of historical
class struggle, it emphasizes the development, better known as
alienation inherent in the modes historical materialism, to
of production and exchange understand class relations and
inherent in capitalist society. social conflict and a dialectical
perspective to view social
transformation.
 Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same
time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery,
ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the
opposite pole.

_
The Discovery of Marxist Approach

Karl Marx

Key Terms used by Karl

Marx
Karl Marx(May 5, 1818 –March 14, 1883)
● A German-born philosopher, economist,
political theorist, historian, sociologist,
journalist, and revolutionary socialist.
● His best-known works are the 1848
pamphlet The Communist Manifesto (with
Friedrich Engels) and the three-volume
Das Kapital (1867–1894); the latter
employs his critical approach of historical
materialism in an analysis of capitalism
and is the culmination of his intellectual
efforts.
Key Terms used by Karl Marx

• Proletariat- Lower Class

• Bourgeoisie- Upper Class
• Capital- Means of gaining profit
• Hegemony- Upper class
What are the key ideas of Marxist approach?

Key concepts covered include:

the dialectic, materialism, commodities, capital,
capitalism, labor, surplus-value, the working class,
alienation, means of communication, the general intellect,
ideology, socialism, communism, and class struggles.
History of Marxist Criticism
• Karl Marx's studies have provided a • Marx believed that Economic
basis for much in socialist theory and Determinism, Dialectical Materialism and
research. Marxism aims to revolutionize Class Struggle were the three principles
the concept of work through creating a that explained his theories.
classless society built on control and
ownership of the means of production.

• Declared that the capitalists, or the

bourgeoisie, had successfully enslaved
the working class, or the proletariat,
through economic policies and control
of the production of goods. History of
Marxist Criticism
In other words...

Marxist Criticism deals with focusing on the

ideological content of a work of literature
and its explicit and implicit assumptions
and values about matters like culture, race,
class, and power. It is based on Marxism,
and the theories of Karl Marx.
How to analyze a text
using the Marxist
Approach
STEP 1: A good place to start analyzing a text
begins with the protagonist.
Ask yourself questions like:

1. What is the protagonist’s social class based on

wealth? (upper, middle, lower)
2. What is the social class of the author?
3. What social class does the author seem to
represent or empathize with?
4. Now that you’re done accessing the protagonist,
move on forward to examining the other characters.
STEP 2: It’s important to study the
characters using an interactionist approach.

• How do the different social classes interact or

conflict?
• Assess each character’s occupations because
it provides the best clue in determining their
place in the “class system”.
STEP 3:Determine if there is an issue such as
a class conflict.

1. Who owns the means for production (the

bourgeoisie)?
2. Who are the workers (proletariats)?
3. Who benefits from the production and who
suffers?
STEP 4: Examine how each character uses his
or her free time in the text.
The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn:
Marxist Criticism
 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
By: Mark Twain
The plot of Huckleberry Finn tells the story of two characters’ attempts to
emancipate themselves. Huck desires to break free from the constraints of
society, both physical and mental, while Jim is fleeing a life of literal
enslavement. Much of the conflict in the novel stems from Huck’s attempt to
reconcile Jim’s desire for emancipation with his own. Initially, Huck is only
concerned with his own freedom, and doesn’t question the morality of slavery.
But after spending time with Jim, Huck’s conscience tells him that he needs to
help Jim because Jim is a human being. While Huck faces few legal barriers in
his own quest for personal freedom, the stakes are much higher for Jim, since it
is against the law for slaves to run away. Over time, Huck develops an inner
conviction that he can’t return Jim to slavery. Despite feeling guilty for acting in
a way his society considers immoral, Huck decides he must treat Jim not as a
slave, but as a human being
Initially, Huck’s conflict with society is embodied by the Widow Douglas’
attempts to “sivilize” Huck and thereby make him into an upstanding citizen.
Being an upstanding citizen also means accepting slavery and institutionalized
racism. Tom Sawyer convinces Huck to stay with the Widow, telling Huck that
he must stay “respectable” in order to remain in Tom’s robber’s gang.
Paradoxically, Huck must play by society’s rules in order to be an outlaw.
Huck’s drunken, abusive father poses a more direct threat to Huck’s freedom
when he kidnaps Huck. Huck escapes his captivity by faking his own death and
running away to Jackson’s Island. There he meets Jim, whose status as a
runaway slave marks him as an even more serious victim of social strictures. The
two characters band together in an act of mutual escape, setting out on a raft
down the Mississippi River. The episodes that follow bind Huck and Jim closer
together, especially when Huck decides to lie about Jim having smallpox to
prevent him from being captured. As Huck comes to see Jim’s humanity, he
grows increasingly conflicted about the morality of being an accessory to Jim’s
escape.
The rising action begins when Huck and Jim meet the king and duke, two
newcomers claiming to be royalty who are in fact con men who carry out
deceptive tricks on unsuspecting townsfolk. Through witnessing the king and
duke’s various scams, Huck becomes aware of Jim’s essential goodness, in
contrast to the self-interested hypocrisy of most of the people they meet. In
calling themselves royalty, the king and duke highlight the fallacy of assuming
some people are superior to others by nature of their birth, and makes Huck
question what civilized society actually represents: “all kings is mostly
rapscallions, as fur as I can make out,” he tells Jim. Huck wrestles with his own
conscience, and feels guilt for his role in the king and duke’s deceptions,
especially when they conspire to rob Peter Wilks’ daughters. He tells Mary Jane
Wilks the truth about the duke and king, marking the beginning of his moral
evolution, as he acts out of compassion for Mary Jane rather than self-interest.
After narrowly escaping the Wilks, the duke and king sell Jim, who is captured
and held by Tom Sawyer’s aunt and uncle.
The climax of the novel comes when Huck must decide whether to reveal Jim’s
whereabouts, guaranteeing Jim will be returned to slavery and implicating
himself in breaking the law by freeing a slave. After initially deciding to turn Jim
in, Huck feels “all washed clean of sin for the first time,” but then remembers
how kind Jim was to him, and reverses his decision, vowing to help Jim escape.
Tom arrives and joins Huck in devising an elaborate plan to free Jim, seeing the
escape as a chance for adventure like the novels he reads, rather than
understanding the moral gravity of the situation. After much delay as Tom
creates unnecessary complications to heighten the drama of the escape, Tom and
Huck succeed in freeing Jim, and Tom is shot in the leg in the ensuing chase. Jim
insists on getting a doctor, and Tom stays on the raft while Huck goes for help
and Jim hides in the woods. The doctor returns Tom and Jim to Tom’s aunt and
uncle, revealing that Jim gave up his own chance at freedom to help Tom. Jim’s
steadfast morality and selflessness demonstrates the absurdity of a society that
considers him less than human.
Following the attempt to free Jim from captivity, Tom reveals that Jim had
already been legally emancipated following the death of his owner, Miss Watson,
and that Tom only wanted to help him escape for the fun of it, further contrasting
Tom’s boyish self-interest with Huck’s new-found, adult morality. Tom pays Jim
forty dollars to compensate him for his troubles, enabling Jim to take a
steamboat back up north where he can reunite with his family and live in relative
freedom, although the fact that all the other slaves the characters met during their
adventures remain enslaved compromises Jim’s victory. Jim reveals that Pap is
dead, a fact he tried to protect Huck from, and the final evidence of his generous
and empathetic nature. The fact that Tom kept Jim’s freedom a secret has
important implications for Huck’s final decision to shirk “sivilized” life for good
and “light out for the Territory ahead of the rest,” by which he means he wishes
to head West. Huck’s continued ambivalence toward civilization suggests that
even though the particular matter of Jim’s freedom has been resolved, the greater
immorality of society persists in the form of slavery and institutionalized racism.
What Do We Think?

Twain used his knowledge of the outcome of the Civil

War to influence his characters based off of Marxism
(adapted to the issue of race conflict in America). He
understood the correlation between the working/middle
class and the slaves/whites, and used this Marxist
perspective to give his protagonist, Huck, an
underlying sense of what was truly right.
 The Work Itself
 Class conflict between whites and blacks
 Slaves = working class and whites = middle class regardless of income
Ex, Lowest of white society (Pap) was still "above" a slave (Jim) in regard
to rights and freedoms
 Better slaves result in higher price - their overall value was based on their labor
skills and ability to work
• Whites exploit slaves
Ex. Huck tries to trick Jim into believing that he fell asleep on the raft
 Whites dominated all the institutions with no representation from the slaves
 Slaves do not overthrow their white owners, however, they do run away and
destroy their labor force
"There was a free nigger there from Ohio a "I liked the nigger for that; I tell you, gentlemen,
mulatter, most as white as a white a nigger like that is worth a thousand
man... And what do you think? They dollars-and kind treatment, too. I had
said he was a p'fesson in a college, and everything I needed, and the boy was doing
could talk all kinds of languages, and as well there as he would a done at home-
knowed everything. And ain't that the better, maybe, because it was so quiet; but
wust. They said he could VOTE when there I WAS, with both of 'm on my hands,
he was at home. Well, that let me out. and there I had to stick till about dawn this
Thinks I, what is the country a-coming morning; then some men in a skiff come by,
to? It was lection day, and I was just and as good luck would have it the nigger
bout to go and vote myself if I warn't was setting by the pallet with his head
too drunk to get there; but when the propped on his knees sound asleep; so I
they told me there was a state in this motioned them in quiet, and they slipped up
country where they'd let that higger on him and grabbed him and tied him before
vote, I drawed out." -Pap (pg 27) he knowed what he was about, and we never
had no trouble" -Doctor (pg 285)
"It was fifteen minutes before I could work
myself up to go and humble myself to a
nigger -but I done it, and I wasn't ever sorry
for it afterwards, neither." ~Huck (pg 86)
 The Author: Mark Twain
• From the South - familiar enough with slavery to have an
unfavorable opinion of it
• Proponent of equal rights, representation in institutions, and
the cessation of the exploitation of blacks
Ex. Huck, a white boy, still felt the conviction to free
Jim, a slave, even though it was considered "wrong" by all
societal standards
"All right, then I'll go to hell." ~Huck pg
214 "What's the use you learning to do
right, when it's troublesome to do right
and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the
wages is just the same?" ~Huck pg 91
The Environment
• South was full of prejudice in the pre-Civil War
setting
• Book was published in 1884, after the Civil War
• When writing the book, Twain was aware of the
war that would ensue resulting in ultimate
manumission
 The Audience

• Directed at Americans
• Addressed the issue of slavery in the South and the class
conflict over race - a topic that was still very prevalent in post-
Civil War America
• Raised awareness of racism * Modern audiences can still
connect to Huck Finn through other non-race related topics
such as realism vs. romanticism
• Huck Finn vs. Tom Sawyer
To Summarize
Mark Twain applied Marxist ideas to Quotes by Huck throughout the book
the racial conflict at the time suggest that Twain wanted the readers
• Slaves = Working Class to see how they should have seen race
• Whites = Middle Class differences.

There is evidence of applicability to Marxism in each of

the 4 main characteristics of the book
• The Work Itself
• The Author
• The Environment
• The Audience
THANK YOU!