Lens In Kurt Vonnegut's 'Slaughterhouse-Five'

Brady Heins Mr. Jaroksi English 102 7 Apr. 2024 Looking at Slaughterhouse-Five Through a Marxist Critical Lens In Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, a Marxist critical lens reveals multiple new ideas about the characters and the plot of the novel that one may not usually notice while reading the novel. A Marxist critical lens focuses on the socioeconomic status of the people in the novel and how that can be a driving force throughout the novel. When looking at Slaguherhouse-Five in this way, the reader will discover more about the protagonist, Bill Pilgrim, than just his mental state during the novel. The reader will notice that Billy doesn’t live his life in pursuit of happiness; instead, he lives it in pursuit of power and wealth. Using a Marxist lens, one can see how the

According to The Economic Times, “Marxism is a social, economic and political philosophy that analyses the impact of the ruling class on the laborers, leading to uneven distribution of wealth and privileges in the society” (What is.). This quote explains how Marxism is a philosophy attempting to explain how society works. Marxism focuses specifically on the different social classes in society and how the people in each class have an order in society. Someone looking at the world from a Marxist perspective would see the upper class as overpowering and controlling the lower classes. This definition of Marxism explains the basics of the Marxist literary theory. Marxist literary theory simply uses ideas from Marxism to explain and understand literature. According to Paul Ricouer, a French philosopher, literary theories are “‘...hermeneutics of suspicion.’ They are approaches that concern themselves not with what the text says but what it hides” (Marxist Lit...). This quote from Ricouer is a fantastic way of describing the purpose of literary theories, which is to uncover hidden meanings in the