1. The Politics of Class: Marxism
Since last week, my attention has been drawn to George Orwell's novel '1984'.
I understand Orwell wrote this book in 1949 in the context of the Soviet Union rising from World War Two as one of the world's new superpowers. As a communist nation the USSR undoubtedly held Marxist values within it's ideology. I believe Orwell tries to foreshadow and mirror the negative consequences of such a constitution upon the individual. 1984 reflects the extreme imbalance of power by the state comparing it to the realities of fears from the western world for what would become of the new Marxist USSR.
I don't quite know how I'm going to argue this and I have only just begun the book so I'm not entirely sure this will be my final choice.
A good novel but it might be too obvious to apply a Marxist analysis. However, you could argue that the novel is better seen in terms of gender or something else connected to the anthology and so Marxism is not that useful. This can work. Pick out a couple of key chapters.
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