Prompt:
Select a passage from your text that you think is particularly relevant to your chosen Lens and integrate it into your own writing. (Cognitive Skill: Integration of Evidence)

Text: Beloved by Toni Morrison

Critical Lens: Marxist

“He stood up then, and, shuffling a little, brought the chain tip to the next prisoner, who did likewise. As the chain was passed on and each man stood in the other's place, the line of men turned around, facing the boxes they had come out of. Not one spoke to the other. At least not with words. The eyes had to tell what there was to tell: "Help me this mornin; 's bad"; "I'm a make it"; "New man"; "Steady now steady." Chain-up completed, they knelt down. The dew, more likely than not, was mist by then. Heavy sometimes and if the dogs were quiet and just breathing you could hear doves. Kneeling in the mist they waited for the whim of a guard, or two, or three. Or maybe all of them wanted it. Wanted it from one prisoner in particular or none-- or all. "Breakfast? Want some breakfast, nigger?" "Yes, sir." "Hungry, nigger?" "Yes, sir.’” (63)

Paul D was sentenced to go to prison in Georgia earlier in his life, and spent his time chained up to 46 other black men like himself who were worked to the bone. Paul D remembers clearly his life as a prisoner, such as how they would all get their moment of freedom only when they absolutely had to separate for work and then literally have to chain themselves back together at the ankles. Here, he describes the silence, the solidarity, and the suppressed pains and internal struggles. This is an intense example of the dynamic between those who have the money and power to be abusive, and those who have no status and can do nothing about it. In the era of slavery, slaves were not even considered human, and could thus be disregarded from any social conduct required between normal societal classes.

The significance of this in terms of the Marxist lens is to not only illustrate a direct interaction between the guard and the slave, but also to show the tension rising in the group of slaves. Marxism acknowledges the necessary presence of tension between class groups and their attempt and turnovers. In this particular passage, Paul D suggests that this group of prisoners has been together for awhile, at least long enough to expect sexual manipulation and have seen various applications of it, and to have an unspoken bond aside from their chains as shown when he describes the conversations they had with their eyes, how no one spoke but he could still tell.  His tone suggests that this routine has created a bond between the men, that they all have their days when they feel new or when they feel like they just can’t make it another day. In terms of Marxism this would be the group dynamic best suited for the lower class to rise up together and take down the guards as one unit.

While it’s evident, from historical analysis of slave runaways and from Paul D’s description of a fleeting moment of quiet beauty when he can hear the doves, that his goal is escape, not once does he mention it. This is because it is ingrained in him, all humans want to be free of constricting authority and constant abuse, and slaves have been pushed down so far in the social ladder that they do not even need to fit in with the social norms, they just want to escape from under the crushing oppression.

The unavoidable presence of the group benefitting from slavery, the guards and suggested their commanding officers, represents the Marxist idea of whom the economic construct of the time benefitted and how that shaped their actions against other people in the same society. This idea is not seen as the novel mostly focuses on Sethe and her family, rather than the slave and slave-owner relationship seen in most other slave narratives.