Assigment paper 205 A

Name: Hirva Pandya

Roll No.: 10

Enrollment No.: 4069206420210022

Paper no: 205 A

Paper code: 22410

Paper name: Criticism

Topic: Popular Culture

Sem.: 3 (Batch 2021- 2023) 

Introducation:

Popular culture, or pop culture, (literally: "the culture of the people") consists of the cultural elements that prevail (at least numerically) in any given society, mainly using the more popular media, in that society's vernacular language and/or an established lingua franca. It results from the daily interactions, needs and desires and cultural 'moments' that make up the everyday lives of the mainstream. It can include any number of practices, including those pertaining to cooking, clothing, mass media and the many facets of entertainment such as sports and literature. (Compare meme.) Popular culture often contrasts with a more exclusive, even elitist " high culture".

 The term ‘popular culture’ holds different meanings depending on who’s defining it and the context of use. It is generally recognized as the vernacular or people’s culture that predominates in a society at a point in time. As Brummett explains in Rhetorical Dimensions of Popular Culture, pop culture involves the aspects of social life most actively involved in by the public. As the ‘culture of the people’, popular culture is determined by the interactions between people in their everyday activities: styles of dress, the use of slang, greeting rituals and the foods that people eat are all examples of popular culture. Popular culture is also informed by the mass media. There are a number of generally agreed elements comprising popular culture. For example, popular culture encompasses the most immediate and contemporary aspects of our lives. These aspects are often subject to rapid change, especially in a highly technological world in which people are brought closer and closer by omnipresent media. Certain standards and commonly held beliefs are reflected in pop culture. Because of its commonality, pop culture both reflects and influences people’s everyday life (see eg Petracca and Sorapure, Common Culture). Furthermore, brands can attain pop iconic status (eg the Nike swoosh or McDonald’s golden arches). However, iconic brands, as other aspects of popular culture, may rise and fall

If one regards culture as a way of defining oneself (an extremely individualist approach), a culture needs to attract the interest of people (potential members) and to persuade them to invest a part of themselves in it. People like to feel a part of a group and to understand their cultural identity within that group, which tends to happen naturally in a small, somewhat isolated community. Mass culture, however, lets people define themselves in relation to everybody else in mass society at the level of a city, a country, an international community (such as a wide-spread language, a former colonial empire, a religion...) or even of a whole planet.

Pop culture finds its expression in the mass circulation of items from areas such as fashion, music, sport and film. The world of pop culture had a particular influence on art from the early 1960s, through Pop Art.

Popular culture in the 20th and early-21st centuries

Popular culture can describe even contemporary popular culture as just the aggregate product of industrial developments; instead, contemporary Western popular culture results from a continuing interaction between those industries and those who consume their products(Bennett 1980, p.153-218). distinguishes between 'primary' and 'secondary' popular culture, defining primary popular culture as mass product and secondary popular culture as local re-production.jkjkjh

Popular culture changes constantly and occurs uniquely in place and time. It forms currents and eddies, in the sense that a small group of people will have a strong interest in an area of which the mainstream popular culture has only partial awareness; thus, for example, the electro-pop group Kraftwerk has "impinged on mainstream popular culture to the extent that they have been referenced in The Simpsons and Father Ted."

Items of popular culture most typically appeal to a broad spectrum of the public. Some argue that broad-appeal items dominate popular culture because profit-making companies that produce and sell items of popular culture attempt to maximize their profits by emphasizing broadly appealing items (see culture industry). But that may over-simplify the issue. To take the example of popular music: the music industry can impose any product they wish. In fact, highly popular types of music have often first evolved in small, counter-cultural circles ( punk rock and rap provide two examples).

Since World War II a significant shift in pop culture has taken place: from the production of culture to the consumption of culture. Commentators have noted that those in power exploit consumers to do more of the work themselves (for example, do-it-yourself checkout lines), and advertising on television, movies, radio, and in other places helps those in power to guide consumers towards what those in power consider needed or important.

Popular culture has multiple origins. In conditions of modernity the set of industries that make profit by inventing and promulgating cultural material have become a principal source. These industries include those of:

• popular music
• film
• television
• radio
• video games
• book publishing
• internet
• comics

Folklore provides a second and very different source of popular culture. In pre-industrial times, mass culture equaled folk culture. This earlier layer of culture still persists today, sometimes in the form of jokes or slang, which spread through the population by word of mouth and via the Internet. By providing a new channel for transmission, cyberspace has renewed the strength of this element of popular culture.

Although the folkloric element of popular culture engages heavily with the commercial element, the public has its own tastes and it may not embrace every cultural item sold. Moreover, beliefs and opinions about the products of commercial culture (for example: "My favorite character is SpongeBob SquarePants") spread by word-of-mouth, and become modified in the process in the same manner that folklore evolves.

A different source of popular culture lies in the set of professional communities that provide the public with facts about the world, frequently accompanied by interpretation, usually as vulgarisation, i.e. adapted for consumption by the public at large (which may lack the training to appreciate academic language). Such communities include the news media, and scientific and scholarly communities. The news media mines the work of scientists and scholars and conveys it to the general public, often emphasizing " factoids" that have inherent appeal or the power to amaze. For instance, giant pandas (a species in remote Chinese woodlands) have become well-known items of popular culture; parasitic worms, though of greater practical importance, have not.

Both scholarly facts and news stories get modified through popular transmission, often to the point of outright falsehoods. At this point, they become known as urban legends. Other urban myths may have no factual basis at all, having simply originated as jokes.

Examples of Popular Culture:

 come from a wide array of genres, including popular music, print, cyber culture, sports, entertainment, leisure, fads, advertising and television. Sports and television are arguably two of the most widely consumed examples of popular culture, and they also represent two examples of popular culture with great staying power. Sports are played and watched by members of all social classes, but (tautologously) the masses are responsible for the huge popularity of sports. Some sporting events, such as the World Cup and the Olympics, are consumed by a world community. Sports are pervasive in most societies and represent a major part of many people’s lives. Showing allegiance to a team as a means of self-identification is a common behavior. Further, cheering for a sports team or a favorite athlete is a way any individual can become part of popular culture, as I and Tim Madigan explain in our new book The Sociology of Sport. Many people watch numerous hours of television everyday. It is such a prevalent aspect of contemporary culture it is difficult to imagine life without it. There are those who believe TV is responsible for the dumbing down of society; that children watch too much television; and that the couch potato syndrome has contributed to the epidemic of childhood obesity. The globally popular TV show The Simpsons provides us with an interesting perspective on television. In the episode ‘Sideshow Bob’s Last Gleaming’ (#137), while doing time in prison, Sideshow Bob becomes a critic of television. Although he was once a regular on The Krusty the Clown Show, Bob has become obsessed by television’s harmful effect on society. Bob argues that everyone’s lives would be much richer if TV were done away with. As a result, he devises a scheme to detonate a nuclear bomb unless all television is abolished in Springfield. Unable to locate Bob, Springfield’s city officials meet to discuss Bob’s demands of abolishing TV. A panicky Krusty proclaims, “Would it really be worth living in a world without television? I think the survivors would envy the dead.” Although there are people who agree with Sideshow Bob, the masses would more likely agree with Krusty: that living in a world without television is not really living. It is even more difficult to imagine a world without popular culture.

There are four main types of popular culture analyses: 

1. production analysis, 

2. textual analysis, 

3. audience analysis, and 

4. historical analysis. 

These analyses seek to get beneath the surface (denotative) meanings and examine more implicit (connotative) social meanings. These approaches view culture as a narrative or story-telling process in which particular texts or cultural artifacts (i.e., a hit song or a television program) consciously or unconsciously link themselves to larger stories at play in the society. A key here is how texts create subject positions or identities for those who use them. 

Popular culture is what we have made out of products and practices of mass produced culture. popular culture is an expensive content that is produced and consumed. It is light entertainment that is delivered through the channels of mass media and finally absorbed voluntarily, to be observed by the individual who receives it. Popular culture consists of the many facets of music, fashion, slang, and entertainment and the newer forms of media like the internet.

The Formation of Popular Culture

Through most of human history, the masses were influenced by dogmatic forms of rule and traditions dictated by local folk culture. Most people were spread throughout small cities and rural areas – conditions that were not conducive to a ‘popular’ culture. With the beginning of the Industrial era (late eighteenth century), the rural masses began to migrate to cities, leading to the urbanization of most Western societies.

Urbanization is a key ingredient in the formation of popular culture. People who once lived in homogeneous small villages or farms found themselves in crowded cities marked by great cultural diversity. These diverse people would come to see themselves as a ‘collectivity’ as a result of common, or popular, forms of expression. Thus, many scholars trace the beginning of the popular culture phenomenon to the rise of the middle class brought on by the Industrial Revolution.

Industrialization also brought with it mass production; developments in transportation, such as the steam locomotive and the steamship; advancements in building technology; increased literacy; improvements in education and public health; and the emergence of efficient forms of commercial printing, representing the first step in the formation of a mass media (eg the penny press, magazines, and pamphlets). All of these factors contributed to the blossoming of popular culture. By the start of the twentieth century, the print industry mass-produced illustrated newspapers and periodicals, as well as serialized novels and detective stories. Newspapers served as the best source of information for a public with a growing interest in social and economic affairs. The ideas expressed in print provided a starting point for popular discourse on all sorts of topics. Fueled by further technological growth, popular culture was greatly impacted by the emerging forms of mass media throughout the twentieth century. Films, broadcast radio and television all had a profound influence on culture.

So urbanization, industrialization, the mass media and the continuous growth in technology since the late 1700s, have all been significant factors in the formation of popular culture. These continue to be factors shaping pop culture today.

Work  Cited:

 https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/p/Popular_culture.htm

“Pop Culture: An Overview.” Philosophy Now: a Magazine of Ideas, https://philosophynow.org/issues/64/Pop_Culture_An_Overview.

        https://canvas.ou.edu

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Assigment paper 204

 Name Hirva Pandya

Roll No.: 10

Enrollment No.: 4069206420210022

Paper no: 204

Paper code: 22409

Paper name: Criticism

Topic: Brief overview on Marxism

Sem.: 3 (Batch 2021- 2023)

What Is Marxism?

Introducation:

Marxism is a social, political, and economic philosophy named after Karl Marx. It examines the effect of capitalism on labor, productivity, and economic development and argues for a worker revolution to overturn capitalism in favor of communism.

Marxism posits that the struggle between social classes—specifically between the bourgeoisie, or capitalists, and the proletariat, or workers—defines economic relations in a capitalist economy and will inevitably lead to revolutionary communism.

Both criticized capitalism, claiming that with its downfall would come an inevitable and harmonious socialist future mediated by a global revolution led by the global majority (Prychitko, 2002).

Marxism itself can be considered to be both a political philosophy and a sociological method.

What differentiates Marxist philosophy from method is the extent to which it attempts to use scientific, systematic, and objective methods over attempts to formatively and prescriptively evaluate the world.

• Marxism is a social, political, and economic theory originated by Karl Marx that focuses on the struggle between capitalists and the working class.
• Marx wrote that the power relationships between capitalists and workers were inherently exploitative and would inevitably create class conflict.
• He believed that this conflict would ultimately lead to a revolution in which the working class would overthrow the capitalist class and seize control of the economy.

Generally, Marxism argues that capitalism as a form of economic and social reproduction is inherently unfair and flawed, and because of this will ultimately fail. Capitalism is defined as a mode of production whereby business owners (capitalists) own all of the means of production - the factory, the tools and machinery, the raw materials, the final product, and the profits earned from their sale - while workers (labor) are hired for wages and have no claim on those things. Moreover, the wages paid to workers are lower than the economic value that their work creates for the capitalist. This surplus labor is the source of capitalists' profits, and is the root of the inherent class struggle between labor and capital.

Marxian Economics

Like the other classical economists, Karl Marx believed in a labor theory of value (LTV) to explain relative differences in market prices. This theory stated that the value of a produced economic good can be measured objectively by the average number of labor hours required to produce it. In other words, if a table takes twice as long to make as a chair, then the table should be considered twice as valuable. What Marx added was that this labor value actually represented the exploitation of workers.

Marx claimed that there are two major flaws in capitalism that lead to the exploitation of workers by employers: the chaotic nature of free market competition and the extraction of surplus labor. Ultimately, Marx predicted that capitalism would eventually destroy itself as more people become relegated to working-class status, inequality rose, and competition would lead the rate of corporate profits to zero. This would lead, he surmised, to a revolution where production would be turned over to the working class as a whole.

Class Conflict and the Supposed Demise of Capitalism

Marx’s class theory portrays capitalism as one step in the historical progression of economic systems that follow one another in a natural sequence. They are driven, he posited, by vast impersonal forces of history that play out through the behavior and conflict among social classes. According to Marx, every society is divided into social classes, whose members have more in common with one another than with members of other social classes.

The following are some key elements of Marx’s theories of how class conflict would play out in a capitalist system.

1. Capitalist society is made up of two classes: the bourgeoisie, or business owners, who control the means of production, and the proletariat, or workers, whose labor transforms raw commodities into valuable economic goods.
2. Ordinary laborers, who do not own the means of production, such as factories, buildings, and materials, have little power in the capitalist economic system. Workers are also readily replaceable in periods of high unemployment, further devaluing their perceived worth.
3. To maximize profits, business owners have an incentive to get the most work out of their laborers while paying them the lowest possible wages. This creates an unfair imbalance between owners and laborers, whose work the owners exploit for their own gain.
4. Because workers have little personal stake in the process of production, Marx believed they would become alienated from it, as well as from their own humanity, and turn resentful toward business owners.
5. The bourgeoisie also leverage social institutions, including government, media, academia, organized religion, and banking and financial systems, as tools and weapons against the proletariat with the goal of maintaining their position of power and privilege.
   
6. Ultimately, the inherent inequalities and exploitative economic relations between these two classes will lead to a revolution in which the working class rebels against the bourgeoisie, takes control of the means of production, and abolishes capitalism.

Thus Marx thought that the capitalist system inherently contained the seeds of its own destruction. The alienation and exploitation of the proletariat that are fundamental to capitalist relations would inevitably drive the working class to rebel against the bourgeoisie and seize control of the means of production. This revolution would be led by enlightened leaders, known as “the vanguard of the proletariat,” who understood the class structure of society and who would unite the working class by raising awareness and class consciousness.

As a result of the revolution, Marx predicted that private ownership of the means of production would be replaced by collective ownership, first under socialism and then under communism. In the final stage of human development, social classes and class struggle would no longer exist.

What Kind of Philosophy Is Marxism?

Marxism is a philosophy developed by Karl Marx in the second half of the 19th century that unifies social, political, and economic theory. It is mainly concerned with the battle between the working class and the ownership class and favors communism and socialism over capitalism.

Marxism in Bollywood Movies

Gully Boy

Until Gully Boy, some critiqued Zoya Akhtar for constantly making films about the privileged and upper-class.  However, she proved otherwise in this film.

It is a gritty but positive depiction of Mumbai’s rampant rap-culture, through the main protagonist, Murad (Ranveer Singh).

Whilst the movie highlights the plight of the colonised poor, it is not all about the doom and gloom of living in the ghettos.

Super 30

The movie exhibits the class disparity within the education system and it is quite sad to think that so many financially disadvantaged kids have to suffer such circumstances.

In fact, a particular thought-provoking sequence is when the Super 30 alumni dream about studying at the high-class institute, IIT and in that reverie, they are shown to be misfits.

They are constantly engulfed in a web of negative thoughts, which is contributed by society.

As a result, ‘education’ is represented to be a ‘beacon of change’… That subject becomes like an additional character in the movie as it becomes the strength/escapism for the underprivileged.

It is high time that dynastic privileges are omitted and opportunities are given to those who truly deserve it.

The ‘Basanti No Dance’ sequence signifies the power of overcoming ‘weakness’ especially language barriers.

Consequently, use Sholay, a film which has quite prominently formed the fabric of Indian pop-culture, as a way to stand up to class disparity.

Ishq 

Ishq is the story of two rich kids, Ajay (Ajay Devgn) and Madhu (Juhi Cahwla), and their love for Kajal (Kajol) and Raja (Aamir Khan) respectively -- who come from a poor section of the society. It begins with an unctuous voice-over that tells us how the rich perceives the poor - as vermin - and are ever ready to quash them under their richly clad feet. It goes on to introduce the ultra-rich businessman Ranjit Rai (Sadashiv Amrapurkar), (Ajay's dad in the film) and his friend Harbans Lal (Dilip Tahil) who detest nothing more than the poor. The houses they live in is as big as the ego of the filmmaker, Indra Kumar, who had clearly mistaken himself as the satirist of the century. Needless to say, that Ranjit Rai and Harbans Lal are the Machiavellian villains of Ishq, a film which leaves no opportunity to belittle the poor.

In almost every scene, poor people are denigrated by Ranjit Rai, degraded and humiliated, and generally made to feel like scum. Not just his character, the younger generation also -- especially Ajay (Devgn) and Raja (Khan) -- display a disregard for those in supposedly 'menial' jobs such as bank managers, clerks, servants and others in the service of the rich. In the end, the film tries to malign and ridicule the classist, rich villains, but fails miserably. If Ishq is meant to be a comment on our social structure and class differences, it clearly doesn't come across.

As a Conflict Theory

One modern sociological perspective derived from the grand Marxist narrative of history is Conflict Theory.

Conflict theory posits that society is in a state of perpetual conflict because of competition for limited resources. This social order is maintained by domination and power, rather than by the consensus and conformity of those within it.

The primary conflict in Marxism occurs between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie

Critical Theory

Marxism would come to facilitate the development of critical theories and cultural studies.

Critical theory is a philosophical approach to culture — especially literature — that seeks to confront the social, historical, and ideological forces and structures of power that produce and constrain culture.

The first and most notable critical theorists are the members of the Frankfurt School (Bohman, 2005).

The critical method of analysis has far-reaching academic influence. Often, critical theorists are preoccupied with critiquing modernity and capitalist society, the definition of what it means to be free in a society, and the detection of wrongs in society.

Critical theorists often use a specific interpretation of Marxist philosophy focusing on economic and political ideas such as commodification, reification, fetishization, and the critique of mass culture.

Work cited:

Charlotte Nickerson. “What Is Marxism?” Marxism | Definition, Theory, Ideology, Examples, & Facts, https://www.simplypsychology.org/marxism.html.

Team, The Investopedia. “Marxism: What It Is and Comparison to Communism,

 Radia, Anuj. “Mainstream Bollywood: The Recent Representations of Class Disparity.” Filme Shilmy, 17 July 2019, https://filmeshilmy.com/2019/07/17/mainstream-bollywood-the-recent-representations-of-class-disparity/.

“#90SMOVIESIN2018: 1997 Mega-Hit 'Ishq' Is Nothing but a Classist Cringe-Fest.” News18, 21 Sept. 2018, https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/rewatchingmovies-1997s-mega-hit-ishq-is-nothing-but-a-classist-cringe-worthy-film-1884567.html.

Word count:1770

Assigment paper 203

Name Hirva Pandya

Roll No.: 10

Enrollment No.: 4069206420210022

Paper no: 203

Paper code: 22408

Paper name: Post colonial Study

Topic: Comparative Study of foe and robinson crusoe

Sem.: 3 (Batch 2021- 2023)

Introducation

J.M. Coetzee, in full John Maxwell Coetzee, (born February 9, 1940, Cape Town South Africa), South African novelist, critic, and translator noted for his novels about the effects of colonization. In 2003 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Coetzee was educated at the University of Cape Town (B.A., 1960; M.A., 1963) and the University of Texus (Ph.D., 1969). An opponent of apartheid, he nevertheless returned to live in South Africa where he taught English at the University of Cape Town, translated works from the Dutch, and wrote literary Criticism. He also held visiting professorships at a number of universities.

Coetzee continued to explore themes of the colonizer and the colonized in Foe (1986), his reworking of Daniel defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Coetzee’s female narrator comes to new conclusions about power and otherness and ultimately concludes that language can enslave as effectively as can chains. In Age of Iron (1990) Coetzee dealt directly with circumstances in contemporary South Africa, but in The Master of Petersburg (1994) he made reference to 19th-century Russia (particularly to Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s work The Devils); both books treat the subject of Literature in society. In 1999, with his Novel Disgrace, Coetzee became the first writer to win the Booker Prize twice. After the novel’s publication and an outcry in South Africa, he moved to Australia, where he was granted citizenship in 2006.

The structure of Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello (2003), a series of “lessons” (two of which had been published in an earlier volume) in which the eponymous narrator reflects on a variety of topics, puzzled many readers. One reviewer proposed that it be considered “non-nonfiction.” Costello makes a surreal reappearance in Coetzee’s Slow Man (2005), about a recent amputee’s reluctance to accept his condition. Diary of a Bad Year (2007) employs a literally split narrative technique, with the text on the page divided into Concurrent  storylines, the main story being the musings of an aging South African writer modeled on Coetzee himself.

About The Novel Foe by Coetzee

Foe is a 1986 novel by South African-born Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee. Woven around the existing plot of Robinson Crusoe, Foe is written from the perspective of Susan Barton, a castaway who landed on the same island inhabited by "Cruso" and Friday as their adventures were already underway

Foe follows the aspects of a more modern vew. Even though Coetzee portrays a more feminine viewpoint through incorporating Susan Barton, her decisions and mindset raise a debate in how they relate to the life of a woman in the twentieth or even twenty-first centuries.

Comparison of Robinson Crusoe and Foe

As it is observed by the SAVANNAH MERCURE   In Daniel Defoe’s novel, Robinson Crusoe, the novel portrayed as a foundational text to early fictional writings and introduced writers as well as readers to having a narrative in an island setting. Within Defoe’s novel, one is able to get a glimpse of the stereotypical gender roles from the 17thcentury because patriarchy reigned supreme. Women were property while men were authoritarians. The novel is shown through the eyes of a middle-aged white male during colonization. Crusoe “owns” the island and instructs those living there just as if he were the “governor” or political leader-just as any British colony would be governed. By this, the reader is able to see through the eyes of Robinson Crusoe about the issues of not only gender but with race and independence. AlthoughRobinson Crusoewas written in the early 1700’s, a more recent novel by J.M. Coetzee called Foewas an artistic piece that imitated Defoe’s well-known work. Even though the two novels share many similar aspects, Coetzee framed his work to provide an updated perspective of the story Defoe had composed by adding in the presence of a woman figure, incorporating a new setting, and more modernistic viewpoint.

Although Robinson Crusoe was written hundreds of years ago, a newer look into his island life and social views was created in 1986 when J.M. Coetzee wrote the novel Foe, a pastiche to Defoe’s famous work. While Robinson Crusoe is the main character and narrates the story from a first-person perspective in Defoe’s novel, Susan Barton is the woman who narrates Foe. The way Susan Barton conveys her own story helps articulate her strengths. Her character is aiding to the lack of women from the earlier novel. Crusoe makes brief mention of his mother, during which he reviews his family history. Then only sparing but on sentence to the mention of his wife: “In the meantime, I in part settled myself here; for first of all I marry’d and that not wither to my disadvantage and dissatisfaction, and had three children, two sons and one daughter” (Defoe 219). When Barton is introduced, she is shipwrecked on the island with Crusoe and Friday. The way in which she carried herself on the island was to become the dominant figure of the group and correct or manage the Crusoe’s actions and decisions. Then she says, “I presented myself to Crusoe, in the days when he still ruled over the island, and became his second subject, the first being his manservant Friday” (Coetzee 11). Her dependence on Crusoe and Friday to do more of the manly duties allowed the reader to see her weaker side. Coetzee’s decision of adding into a woman allowed for there to be a new interpretation of the story. Crusoe’s character was altered to depict the descriptions that Susan Barton presented. In Robinson Crusoe, the reader gets authentic details of Crusoe’s identity since the male figure is the direct focus of the novel, but in Foe, Barton offers the reader individual, physical characteristics that was not depicted in the first novel.

Foe follows the aspects of a more modern view. Even though Coetzee portrays a more feminine viewpoint through incorporating Susan Barton, her decisions and mindset raise a debate in how they relate to the life of a woman in the twentieth or even twenty-first centuries. As Barton falls asleep one night, Crusoe begins to pursue her. She described that night by saying, “I pushed his hand away and made to rise, but he held me. No doubt I might have freed myself, for I was stronger than he” (Coetzee 30). Although she realizes she is stronger than him, she decides not to leave but to “let him do as he wished” (Coetzee 30). Barton’s reputation is altered from the beginning to the end of the book by reshaping her morals. For instance, all her encounters with men all include having sexual relations only excluding Friday. Barton told herself “I did him (Friday) wrong to think of him as a cannibal or worse, a devourer of the dead. But Crusoe had planted the deed in my mind, and now I could not look on Friday’s lips without calling to mind what mean must once have passed them” (Coetzee 106). At the beginning of Coetzee’s novel, the reader would argue that Barton’s character is going to remain as a strong, female character, one who is bravely sacrificing for others. As the novel goes on the reader’s opinion on Barton shift because her character is not as clear as in what she stands for. On “Crusoe’s island” she is merely the “woman washed ashore,” and in England she is haunted with the question, “What life do I live but that of Crusoe’s widow?” (Coetzee 99). In England, she searches to define her role, but end up defining it through her gender. Although the novel does allot several chapters to Barton’s writing and thoughts, she is still hesitant to proclaiming her own truth by waiting for the go ahead from the male characters to feel accepted.

Defoe’s Robinson Crusoeis used across the generations and influences writers who are separated by centuries. The novel offered the writing world the style of having island narration and displayed the seventeenth century views whether it be social, political or creative aspects. It stimulated J.M. Coetzee to write in response to that novel, Foe, which sought to offer a modernized interpretation of Defoe’s novel, and provide room for others to be able to compare these two pieces. In Coetzee’s work, it has a female protagonist Susan Barton telling how the story really was before Mr. Foe sat down to turn it into a novel of his own intention, altering and disproving it. She tells her own story in the first-person perspective, in terms of the plot even before the writer Mr. Foe would have finished his Robinson Crusoe. Through this, Coetzee generates the illusion that Ms. Barton’s account might have indeed been the forerunner of the literary classic Robinson Crusoe. Although both books carry a different plot, they have similarities in techniques and in some social aspects. Whether discussing the presence of a woman figure, incorporation of a new setting, or more modernistic viewpoint, either novel depicts different perspectives on the matter, and portrays the evolution of the island narrative. Defoe makes certain that good writing is what it says it is and provides today’s generation a definite glimpse into the past.

Coetzee's version of foe

Coetzee‟s Foe, dealing with the question and rights of authorship, serves as a critique of censorship that the authors and artists are subjected to, particularly the strong censorship rules prevalent in the then South Africa under the apartheid government. The cold war that ensues between Susan and Foe regarding the story of Cruso‟s island is a reflection of the war between the artists and the authorities bent upon muffling their free voices, Foe representing the power and authority. Defoe‟s Crusoe could tell his story as he wished after returning from his long adventure at the island – nobody intervened to question his authority to author his story, neither did anybody try to impose a more palpable version of the narrative, unlike in the case of Susan who never succeeds in getting her story published, because she doesn‟t yield to Foe‟s demands for alterations. Coetzee asserts the rights of an author upon his or her story along with highlighting the difficulties in getting one‟s true voice heard and acknowledged.

In Coetzee’s version, it is Susan—herself struggling for liberation—who would save Friday from his would-be captors and teach him to communicate. She hangs the success of her story on it: “The true story will not be heard till by art we have found a means of giving voice to Friday” (118). But here Friday—whose English in the original may sound naive but who is nevertheless savvy enough to register skepticism with some of the basic tenets of Christianity—cannot speak at all, even in his own language. He can fill neither the role of the vocal savage nor the role of interpreter, both of which were legitimate parts for him in Defoe’s work. Susan speculates further that Friday’s “lost tongue might stand not only for itself but for a more atrocious mutilation,” i.e. castration (119). With these missing organs in mind, her priority is to fill the void they leave behind, making a whole man of Friday, whether by giving him a voice with which to speak his story or by giving him independence, in the emancipation papers she hangs around his neck like a replacement appendage. These strategies are so symbolically overdetermined that they seem destined for failure, and indeed Susan judges them as such.

Coetzee’s revisions both to the character of Crusoe and to the novel’s plot draw out these differences. Coetzee’s castaway is about sixty years old—which makes him older than his literary forebear Crusoe and “roughly Defoe’s age at the time when his novel was published” —nor is he at all concerned with getting off the island (Thieme 64). He is a more primitive presence, “an illustration of the futility of Empire” rather than an exultation of its strengths (Newman 96). By the time Foe begins, Cruso’s strength is sapped; shortly thereafter he makes his exit, while Friday remains physically present throughout. As Thieme argues, Foe “refuses to see the Friday–Crusoe connection as central” . But Susan’s constant reference to the hole in the narrative created by Friday’s muteness is in a certain sense of a piece with the original work, in which, at least in terms of page count, Friday’s role is not central either.

Conclusion:

The ending of Foe, which long precedes these two essays on Robinson Crusoe, remains the most ambiguous textual commentary of them all. This is in large part because in the final section the unities of the novel give way entirely. Time hurtles forward, and the narrator changes shape from Susan Barton to an unidentified and ungendered “I.” That the setting bears relation to what has transpired in the preceding narrative is established by the opening sentence, “The staircase is dark and mean”; it is the present-tense version of the sentence that opens section three of the novel, when Susan tracks down Foe in Bristol, where he has taken refuge from his creditors. This new narrator, walking through a silent house, stumbles over the body of a woman or girl that “weighs no more than a sack of straw,” then discovers two more dead bodies, a woman and a man. The house, we take it, is that of the author Foe; the first body may be that of the alleged daughter; the pair are apparently Susan Barton and Foe himself. Friday’s body, not dead but not quite living, barely registering a pulse, is also there, and “from his mouth, without a breath, issue the sounds of the island.

Work cited:

“J.M. Coetzee.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/biography/J-M-Coetzee.

Mercure, Savannah. “Comparison of Robinson Crusoe and Foe.” ENGLISH 123 Introduction to Fiction, 10 Dec. 2018, https://introtofictionf18.web.unc.edu/2018/10/comparison-of-robinson-crusoe-and-foe/.

“Https://English.illinoisstate.edu/Digitaldefoe/Archive/spring09/Features/Jones.shtml.” ENGLISH 123 Introduction to Fiction, 10 Dec. 2018, https://introtofictionf18.web.unc.edu/2018/10/comparison-of-robinson-crusoe-and-foe/.

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