IRA SHOR

Questions Marxists Ask About Literature

RATHER THAN SIMPLY SAYING do this
or do that with a book or with a
class,
we
thought
it useful to
present
a series
of
questions
which
suggest things
to look
for. The
papers
in this issue, as well as
the
questions, demonstrate, we
hope,
that marxist criticism is a tense dialectic
between
society
and
literature, between
an attitude toward
history
and an
appre-
ciation of art.
The first set of
questions
are
my
own
gleanings
from
Georg Lukacs, primarily
his Realism in Our Time and Writer and
Critic. The
longer
second series are se-
lections from a former classmate's
paper
in a French
history
seminar. He
got
them from
many
sources. At certain
points
in the second section,
I have indi-
cated
my
own
amplifications
of his
ques-
tions.
I
1. Is there an outright rejection of so-
cialism in the work?
2. Does the novel raise fundamental
criticisms about the emptiness of life
in bourgeois society?
3. Does the author try to overcome
Angst and chaos?
4. In portraying society, what approxi-
mation of totality does the author
achieve? What is emphasized, what
ignored?
5. How is meaning restored to life?
6. How well is the fate of the individual
linked
organically
societal forces?
to the nature of
II
1. What are the work's
conflicting
forces?
a. What
secondary
conflicts exist?
Can
they
be
expressed socially?
b. Does the
plot
tension
imply
a
widespread
social
anxiety?
Does
its resolution
imply
the
hopes
of a
period?
c. What threatens order?
d. Who wins in the end? In terms
of the
unexpected,
as well as
the
predictable
victors, can
any
ideological
statement be made?
2. At what
points
are actions or solu-
tions to
problems
forced or unreal?
3. In terms of characterization:
a. Are there
any
common analo-
gies
used in
describing catego-
ries of
people
or actions, like
women or
working
or lovemak-
ing? (Shor)
b. Are characters from all social
levels equally well-sketched?
c. Are any constituencies carica-
tured vis a vis sex, race, or class,
or defined only from an out-
sider's point of view? (Shor)
d. How often, for what reasons,
and in which instances does
authorial distance change, does
the author alter her or his de-
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Questions
Marxists Ask About Literature 179
tachment,
irony,
or seriousness?
(Shor)
4. What are the values of each class in
the work?
a. What are the values of one class
to another and how are
they
expressed?
b. Is there a class of virtuous
peo-
ple (children, women, servants,
beggars, priests, police, etc.)?
c. What do characters
(or
classes
of
characters) worry
about?
5. Are the main
problems
or solutions in
the novel individual or collective?
Same for
secondary problems?
a. Is there
any
indication that so-
cial
change might improve any-
thing?
b. What are the dialectics of mo-
rality?
Is
anyone caught
in a
moral dilemma in which social
or economic
necessity
clashes
with moral precept?
c. What considerations override
basic impulses toward love, jus-
tice, solidarity, generosity, etc.
6. Which values allow effective action?
a. What values are proposed for
the reader's adoption? Which
characters are models?
b. What is valued most? Sacrifice?
Assent? Resistance? How clear-
ly do narratives of disillusion-
ment and defeat indicate that
bourgeois values (competition,
acquisitiveness, chauvinism) are
incompatible
with human
hap-
piness? (Shor)
c. What
specific complex
of forces
motivates behavior?
Family?
Village?
Passion? Civil author-
ity? (Shor)
d. Does the
protagonist
defend or
defect from the dominant values
of
society?
Are those values in
ascendancy
or
decay? (Shor)
e. How do characters
get
informa-
tion?
f. How are forms of life validated
to the characters?
(Shor)
g.
Which kinds of characters medi-
ate a
change
in values?
(Shor)
h. What controls
(sanctions
or
procedures
or
protocol)
exist
within each
group
of characters
to control behavior?
These
questions
are
primarily
theme-
and-content-oriented,
though they
can
illuminate subtleties of consciousness and
literature's paradigmatic relation to soci-
ety. A marxist formalism becomes possi-
ble when a materialist intelligence reads
texture and structure as closely as do
New Critics. The deepest level of literary
experience occurs through diction, imag-
ery, patterns of language and character,
structures of incidents, motifs, figures,
and gestures. A method which absorbs
that level of aesthetic form demonstrates
most profoundly the unity of knowledge,
action, and feeling which is art's mimesis
of life.