Critical Encounters Ch. 4

I have never had the experience to work with Marxist theory, so this chapter seemed a little foreign to me. It was also confusing to read since i don't have a very strong political belief system. So, i have a hard time thinking that i will use this in my classroom. I also don't think i would enjoy teaching this theory in my classroom because i don't feel the pressure to introduce background knowledge of the time, and author, as i talked about in my previous blob from Webb. However, some things that i think are beneficial about this theory are the fact that it helps students understand themselves and others in relation to the text. This theory also encourages students to think about how the book is socially constructed for the reading audiences and the way the text is written. One quote that i agree with is from George Orwell when he says "No book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude" (pg. 60). However, i don't think that this idea should be used all the time becuase i feel like if you always thought like this it would be very hard to look outside this idea and see other theories and ways of thinking about a literary text.