Braidy Gruzd
Jane Mushinsky
English 201
Marxism Within The Novel Yarn
In the novel Yarn by Jon Armstrong, Armstrong shows his readers a world where capitalistic society has been taken to extreme proportions and the negative consequences that it brings. With his writing, Armstrong is critiquing capitalistic societies everywhere. While he does not apply Marxist values and ideas within his novel, that Armstrong himself is very anti-capitalistic.
Brands are seen everywhere these days and people are often judged by the clothes that they wear. Most of our clothes and goods are made by workers who are often underpaid and exploited for the labor that they do. Despite the fact that materialistic goods would be unable to be produced without them, it is the big business owners who profit while having to do little or no work at all. In Seattlehama, the big business owners consist of high end fashion designers and celebrities.
Karl Marx coined the term 'bourgeoisie' to refer to a class of people who own certain means of production and therefore profit more than those who are actually doing the labor needed in order to create the goods. This concept can also be seen within the novel 'Yarn'. Several high end fashion designers own the "slubs", areas where the lower classes produce the resources needed to create material goods for society. While celebrities and fashion designers profit from owning the slubs, they are still not paid enough for the time and effort they put into this labor. In the novel, the celebrities and fashion designers are representations of the bourgeoisie class. The way that society is run within the novel shows the reader that Armstrong himself is very anti-capitalist. By setting it up this way, Armstrong is critiquing the way that capitalist societies are run.