A theme presented in Fifteen Dogs is that often, without an escape from social hierarchy, one is often doomed to misery, either as oppressed or a cruel dominant leader. In the novel, all the dogs deal with a major conflict between obtaining power of status in a hierarchy. Atticus, tries to maintain power by using violence in killing Bobbie, Athena, and Bella who dare to disobey his rule and by symbolically proving dominance by mounting the weaker dogs like Benjy, Dougie, and Max. However, in Atticus’ struggle to assert dominance in the pack, he motivates a revenge plot by Benjy to poison the whole pack. Atticus live unhappily because he is constantly fighting for his power. He dies unhappy because he is consumed with a regret that he could …show more content…
Historically speaking, one can compare the bourgeois and the proletariat of the late industrial revolution in 1840. These social hierarchy terms were coined by Karl Marx. The bourgeois can be likened to the dogs like Atticus. However, their power is a result of their wealth and ownership, not their physical size. The bourgeoisie were factory owners and rich businessmen, constantly competing for better business and higher profits. The constant competition indicates that the bourgeoisie had to be always changing and could not be content with what they have. They cannot find peace and appreciate the world because they have to be concerned with ruthless competition of the business world. The flip side of the industrial revolution was the proletariat. The proletariat were labourers. They were not valued as human beings but only for the profits of their labour. Their personalities and being have no worth. This lack of worth means they lived in horrible, oppressed condition as a result of their lower class. Thus, they cannot be happy because the proletariat lived worthless …show more content…
Marshall, heir to the Astor family fortune. Marshall was a direct descendent of John Jacob Astor, the richest man in America in the 1840s. Marshall was a member of one of the richest families in America. However, the conflict between his family members to control the family fortune led to a series of cruelties. Marshall abused his elderly mother Brooke Astor, dooming his mother to misery during her final moments. The motivation for this cruelty was money, which can be likened to power in today’s society. As a result of his cruelty, Marshall was prosecuted for his crimes of abuse and stealing Mrs. Astor’s fortune. He would suffer in jail miserably. Then, he died at age 90. He was not able to appreciate the money and power he had at the top of the hierarchy before he lost it all because he was competing for a higher
In the story To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, we are introduced to the character Atticus. He is a hard working single parent of two who is kindhearted and does what he believes is right and treats everyone equally. Being such a hard worker, his mind is often on work, even at home, which means less time spent with his children. While Atticus may make some mistakes as a parent, overall he is an admirable father.
The bourgeoisie are particularly important because not only did they modernized society but industrialized it as well. They took revered occupations and turned them into paid wage-labor, for example being a physician or poet. Marx’s view on the bourgeoisie is that they emerged after numerous revolutions involving modes of production as well as exchange. They create the world according to their image, which strips society
In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, readers can view Atticus as a positive parental figure for a variety of reasons. One piece of evidence that points to this is that Atticus cares about his children. Although Atticus does not show his affection towards his children traditionally or frequently, he shows it in his own ways. Some parents hug and kiss their children, but not Atticus. Atticus’ way of showing affection to Jem is by ruffling his hair. An example of this occurs when Atticus and his children are walking home from the jail house following the mob scene. Scout states that she thought Atticus was going to be irritated at Jem for his lack of compliance. However, Scout states that “as they passed under a streetlight, Atticus reached out and massaged
Before the fifteen dogs received human intelligence they would assume their position as the dominant or submissive dog by physical superiority without giving it much thought. With the introduction of language, the dogs with lower status became conscious to the cruel treatment they were receiving from the higher status dogs in the pack, which lead to them separating from the pack. Once the dogs with lower status were gone, there were only dogs left that were used to dominating others. In brief, the uncertainty of position lead to constant fighting for dominance between the dogs that all believed they were of higher status than the others. This emulates the need for more power in our society, to strive for social and personal advances. It is practically a human instinct to want to prove yourself to others and achieve higher status than those around
From the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century major historical events such as the Industrial revolution had occurred. During this period of time Europe was switching into an economy that is focused mostly on the industrial field. From this emerged two social-economic classes, the rich bourgeoisie and the poor proletariats. Furthermore, tension brewed between the two groups since the bourgeoisie source of wealth was from the exploitation of the proletariats. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ book
With this in mind, some perspective on the society of that time is vital. During this time the industrial revolution is taking place, a massive movement away from small farms, businesses operated out of homes, small shops on the corner, and so on. Instead, machines are mass-producing products in giant factories, with underpaid workers. No longer do people need to have individual skills. Now, it is only necessary that they can keep the machines going, and do small, repetitive work. The lower working class can no longer live a normal life following their own pursuits, but are lowered to working inhumane hours in these factories. This widens the gap between the upper and lower class-called bourgeois and proletariat-until they are essentially two different worlds. The bourgeois, a tiny portion of the population, has the majority of the wealth while the proletariat, t...
The Bourgeois emerged from “the ruins of feudal society” that once ruled Europe and went on to establish their rule the Industrial Revolution (textbook 708). The Industrial Revolution saw the innovation of the steam engine and machines that could do the same work skilled craftsmen did at half the price in factories. In his “Draft of Communist Confession of Faith” The Communist Manifesto co-author Friedrich Engels traces the development of the Proletariat
Karl Marx, a German philosopher, saw this inequality growing between what he called "the bourgeoisie" and "the proletariat" classes. The bourgeoisie was the middle/upper class which was growing in due to the industrial revolution, and the proletariats were the working class, the poor. These two classes set themselves apart by many different factors. Marx saw five big problems that set the proletariat and the bourgeoisie aside from each other. These five problems were: The dominance of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat, the ownership of private property, the set-up of the family, the level of education, and their influence in government. Marx, in The Communist Manifesto, exposes these five factors which the bourgeoisie had against the communist, and deals with each one fairly. As for the proletariat class, Marx proposes a different economic system where inequality between social classes would not exist.
Maycomb County was a typical southern area during the Great Depression, which had a critical effect on the events that took place. The impact of these actions can be seen throughout the whole society. Most of the society was extremely prejudice towards African-Americans, which was seen as normal. The extremely prejudice town was the reason why, Tom Robinson was wrongly accused, and sentenced to death for a crime that he never committed. The society that made up Maycomb County definitely had its own social classes.
"It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars was the bravest man who ever lived” (Lee 134.) Atticus raised his children in a time period where society treated you by the color of your skin and not for who you are. Atticus and his children are full of confidence and bravery during a time of inequality, depression, and racism. Atticus stood up to what he believed in and he was most importantly brave. His daughter Scout had to stand up to all the hatred she was getting for her father's trial. Atticus took many risks knowing that the outcome may not be favorable towards him. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird , Harper Lee displays that Bravery and Courage are important life traits, and can help
In Marx’s opinion, the cause of poverty has always been due to the struggle between social classes, with one class keeping its power by suppressing the other classes. He claims the opposing forces of the Industrial Age are the bourgeois and the proletarians. Marx describes the bourgeois as a middle class drunk on power. The bourgeois are the controllers of industrialization, the owners of the factories that abuse their workers and strip all human dignity away from them for pennies. Industry, Marx says, has made the proletariat working class only a tool for increasing the wealth of the bourgeoisie. Because the aim of the bourgeoisie is to increase their trade and wealth, it is necessary to exploit the worker to maximize profit. This, according to Marx, is why the labor of the proletariat continued to steadily increase while the wages of the proletariat continued to steadily decrease.
In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee suggests that Atticus is a model parent. Atticus gives guidance to Jem and Scout, and he treats them with fairness and honesty. He tries to bring them up as best he can as a single parent.
According to Marx class is determined by property associations not by revenue or status. It is determined by allocation and utilization, which represent the production and power relations of class. Marx’s differentiate one class from another rooted on two criteria: possession of the means of production and control of the labor power of others. The major class groups are the capitalist also known as bourgeoisie and the workers or proletariat. The capitalist own the means of production and purchase the labor power of others. Proletariat is the laboring lower class. They are the ones who sell their own labor power. Class conflict to possess power over the means of production is the powerful force behind social growth.
According to our text, Conflict Theory explains that in a capitalist system society is fundamentally divided between two classes: the working class, whose only resource is labor, and the powerful bourgeoisie, who own of the means of production and have seemingly unlimited access to resources such as housing, food, money, services, and political representation. (Schaefer 14). Viewing Western society in this way, Marx explained that struggle between these two social classes was inevitable due to the oppression and exploitation of the working class, otherwise known as the proletariat, by the bourgeoisie. Furthermore, Marx maintained that the capitalist system of economic relationships (demonstrated by unequal distribution of resources), social relationships (demonstrated by class stratification among other things), and political relationships (demonstrated by political representation as well as widespread propaganda) maintained the power and dominance of the few elite owners over the many workers and that the solution to this...
In the Communist Manifesto it is very clear that Marx is concerned with the organization of society. He sees that the majority individuals in society, the proletariat, live in sub-standard living conditions while the minority of society, the bourgeoisie, have all that life has to offer. However, his most acute observation was that the bourgeoisie control the means of production that separate the two classes (Marx #11 p. 250). Marx notes that this is not just a recent development rather a historical process between the two classes and the individuals that compose it. “It [the bourgeois] has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, and new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie ...