Dear Teachers,
We will use the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston to present to you what Marxist Literary criticism is and provide you with a lesson plan to help your class learn and understand this literary criticism and its application to other literary works. The novel was written during the time period of the Harlem Renaissance (1937), when Negro literature was at its zenith and other African American culture were prospering. It was this time period that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics came into power and the ideology of Marxism-Leninism came to existence.
Throughout history, the Marxist lens can be used to view events in history and the society in terms of the difference in class based on economic wealth and the power that comes with the wealth. During the early 1900s, class hierarchy was a major part of the society in America, where material and social conditions such as race, gender and economic prosperity divided people into different classes. You can use the Marxist lens to analyze the novel by examining quotes that show the difference in class and the relationship between major characters, such as the men Janie marries, based on their values and class status. You will be able to see a hierarchy of classes and the dominance of the rich characters over the other lower class people. The class struggles that can be analyzed within the book will provide understanding for other novels and works of literature. This lesson will allow students to notice subtle cues that many authors insert in their stories to describe an underlying class struggle. We hope that they will see it in many familiar forms of media and literature in their daily lives and can carry this insight to better understand the world around them. |