Closing Remarks on Critical Theory

Now that it is the end of the semester, I feel much more capable about critical theory than I did before this class. All of the guest lecturers and discussions truly aided my overall understanding of specific theories and the way in which they are applied to a literary text. The blogs that I posted and maintained throughout the semester allowed me to personally engage and apply certain theories on my own outside of class. If I were to look back on all the theories we covered this semester, I would have to say that my favorite was Marxist criticism. I enjoyed Marxist criticism the most, because I felt as though it was genuinely useful in analyzing not only a literary text, but many components of life itself. Now that I have a better understanding of the ruling class' position over the working class, I feel as though I look at simple things differently than I had before. After reading Dr. Craig's post on Marxism, I came to realize that in many ways sports are used by the ruling class, in order to perpetrate the working class' condition, while at the same time increasing their own. Because sports are an outlet for the working class, they indulge in it heavily--buying tickets, T-shirts, etc--in which all the money goes directly to the ruling class. I was in the mall during Thanksgiving break and would take notice of advertisements that the ruling class constructed, in order to capture the working class' interest and money. Because we live in a capitalist society, where an emphasis is placed on the separation between the ruling class and the working class, it is easy to say that Marxism is faced on a daily basis for each and every one of us. As long as society exists, a separation between the ruling class and the working class will continue to exist, and in this sense, Marxism remains a timeless theory. Other theories such as Psychoanalysis are not as timeless, because their key ideas were pertinent at one point in time, but not so much anymore. When it comes to applying Marxist literary criticism to a particular text, I think that it serves a genuinely useful purpose. A writer's social class has a major bearing on the literary text he writes, whether he realizes it or not. A text contains certain aspects such as diction and sentence structure, which aid in further uncovering the social class of the writer. The social class of the writer proves important, because it serves as an influential force perpetrating particular ideas and beliefs that are singular to a given social class/culture. Therefore, if the writer's social class was identifiable through the text that he/she wrote, a reader may be able to better analyze and determine the origin from which the ideas came. The wealth of different theories that we learned in class truly aided my understanding and overall approach when analyzing a literary text. Although this is the last and final post for the critical theory blog, I plan on further developing my understanding of theory, and broadening my scope to learn other theories and interpretations beyond those we've learned in class. I really enjoyed this class, and feel much more theory-competent now than ever before. Thank-you!