An Analysis of Marxist Culture in Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom (2010)
The Spectacle of Reification
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31973/nzjajj49Keywords:
Marxist reification, materialistic consciousness, FreedomAbstract
This paper deals with Jonathan Franzen’s novel The Freedom (2010) through a Marxist perspective. Marxism is a literary theory that deals with many aspects of life, cultures, or ideologies, such as reification, which was coined by György Lukács (1885-1971). Reification is a Marxist perspective, which means human values like friendship, morality, and ethics are changed to valueless things by imposing materialistic consciousness on the middle class. György Lukács’s theory of reification applies to the novel Freedom (2010) in many parts, such as social and moral dilemmas of reification, environmental reification, and consumerism as the negative perspective of reification. The final part elaborates on technological reification, which is when the capitalists employ technology as a means of increasing their materialistic profits.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Mohammed Taqi Jabbar AbdulAmeer , Asst. Prof. Asmaa Mukaram Saeed
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