Social Protest In Michael Gold's 'Man With The Hoe'

Mariama Conteh

Professor Foley

Literature of Social Protest

October 9, 2017

Proletarian realism is explained as being “literary writing by or about working-class people with anticapitalist or prosocialist themes (Mullen, 1). This form of writing developed as an action toward abolishing the capitalist political system. These pieces of literature were one of the multiple ways that the workers and the revolutionist got there message out to their intended audience. Michael Gold was a well-known journalist for “The New Masses”, a magazine that he was an editor for. This magazine often sent out pro-communist messages (Simkin, 1). Gold also held pro-socialist views and this was portrayed throughout his articles. For instance, in one of his articles in “The New Masses”, “Notes Of the Month” Gold expresses his views on what proletarian literature should consist of. He

In “Man with the Hoe” Markham does a good job with explaining the struggles that the workers have to go through, however, he is not as direct when we look at the overall poem. Markham’s point in writing this poem is to communicate with the audience how workers feel however but, he is not directly telling the audience a message. Throughout the poem, he asks the reader different questions about the worker that will make the audience develop what the message is on their own. For instance, in the first stanza, Markham asks, “who made him dead to rapture and despair a thing that grieves not and that never hopes stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?” (Markham, 5). This question allows the reader to think of an answer. Markham is asking who made the worker an emotionless, hopeless worker. When the reader thinks they will conclude that it is the capitalist. Markham sends his message out by asking questions thus approach is effective however it is not