1. Marxist Literary Theory
Kenny Maneely, Bruce Lawless, Rachel Galante, Julianna Rodriguez

2. Who was Karl Marx Early Life Born May 5, 1818 in Trier, Prussia.
Marx was one of nine brothers and sisters, all sharing the same parents,Heinrich and Henrietta Marx
Was educated at home until he was 12, and then he attended a Jewish school for five years
Marx began to study at The University of Bonn
Two semesters there, he was imprisoned for drunkenness and disturbing the peace, incurred debts and participated in a duel.

3. Karl Marx Continued
Next year, Marx began to attend The University of Berlin
He studied law and philosophy
He also proposed to Jenny von Westphalen(who was higher up)
Marx continued to travel
He traveled to
Paris--- founded a political journal
Brussels--- introduced to socialism by Moses Hess
London---help found the German Workers’ Educational Society, as well as a new headquarters for the Communist League.
Marx died in london March 14, 1883

4. What is Communism? Communism is a theoretical “Social System”
Derived from the same root word for "communal", or, "community"
anti-thesis to capitalism:
define capitalism: an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
marxism is a theory when communism is the actual practice
communism symbol meaning: The hammer and sickle (Unicode: ☭) is a symbol of the communist movement. The hammer stands for the industrial working class while the sickle represents the agricultural workers; together the hammer and sickle represent the unity of these two groups.

5. Communism (cont.)
Implies common ownership and cooperative effort; the anti-thesis to Capitalism
Land and capital are owned collectively and class divisions do not exist
red symbolizes the sacrifice and blood of the revolution

6. Communism (cont.) Communism Capitalism
The resources lie with a private owner
Communism
The community or society owns the resources or the means of production
Communism stands for equal sharing of work, according to the benefits and ability. But in capitalism, an individual is responsible for his works and if he wants to raise the ladder, he has to work hard.
For Capitalists, individual freedom is above the state or society.For Communists, the society is above individuals.

7. Marxist Literary Theory
Focuses on the ideas of:
- Societal class
- Oppression
- Utopia
Marxist literary theory is the literary theory focuses of three major ideas.

8. Societal Class
Societal class is major element in the Marxist literary theory
Focused on questioning and examining the treatment of classes of and their character
Explained how various social classes interact with one another

9. Oppression
The focus on oppression is how the lower class characters overcome the oppression of the upper class OR how they fail to
Some upper class oppress some lower class

10. Utopia
The idea of achieving a utopian society is the ultimate goal of communism
Marxist Literary theory examines how characters work to achieve the grand dream of utopia
Also tried to delay it

11. Marxist Literary Theory & The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby” is most remembered for its character who live the decadent lives of the lavish citizens of the roaring twenties, a period of great social injustice in american history. Main themes of Marxist Literary Theory are shown throughout the novel.

12. Social Class
“About half way between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes — a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens;...
The Valley of Ash is where a community of farmers have been virtually destroyed by the train’s ashes, as well as the ashes of the incinerated trash. The denizens of this place are most obviously the lower class of this area. Most different of the rich residents of East and West Egg harbour, these people are in a wasteland of discarded trash.

13. ...where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.”
(Chapter 2, page 23)

14. Social Class
“I lived at West Egg, the well, less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them”
(Chapter 1, page 5)
Even though Nick is of a considerable amount of wealth, his money is “new money”. The wealthy who are of “new money” have had their wealth acquired through hard work by one of relatively recent family members. Even though the new money group is rich, they are considered to be less than aristocratic old money rich people. The difference between the old money and new money rich is clear between the differences of east and west egg.

15. Oppression
“I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.”
(Chapter 1, page 2)
Early on in the novel, the narrator of the story, Nick, says that money isn't the only thing that some people are born to. Some people are naturally just nicer and more honest, they have more "sense of the fundamental decencies." But does Nick believe that poor people can be born with these fundamental decencies, too, or do you have to be rich to have natural class? Nick snobbishly suggests that poor aren’t, self validating that the rich are better than the poor and more deserving of their wealth, power, influence, and disregard for the poor.

16. She looked at me and laughed pointlessly…”
Oppression
“"I told that boy about the ice." Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. "These people! You have to keep after them all the time."
She looked at me and laughed pointlessly…”
( Chapter 2, Page 32)
Myrtle thinks that acting like a snob makes her sound fancy—but it just makes her sound even more like herself: a vulgar, common, cheating woman. Myrtle is trying impress her friends and Tom by acting like how she imagines the rich to act, which is abusive to the poor. Even though it does not make myrtle look richer or fancier, it is exactly what the rich do to the poor throughout the novel and this real time period that Fitzgerald is trying to describe with his novel.

17. Utopia
“I stared at (Wilson) and then at Tom, who had made a parallel discovery less than an hour before—and it occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.”
(Chapter 7, Page 124)
Realizations of Utopia are strange, and in a world so corrupt as the America portrayed in “The Great Gatsby”, it is hard to find one. However, the utopia that the two terminally sick men discover is that Utopia is after death. The difference between men that Wilson and Tom realise is that the sick are going to Utopia sooner than those who are well.

18. Utopia
When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I want- ed no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.
(Chapter 1, Page 4)

19. Works Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York, NY: Scribner, Print.
"Karl Marx Biography." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 15 Mar < marx >.
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