This passage can be found right at the beginning of Ross C Murfin’s essay, Marxist Criticism and Frankenstein. Murfin begins his writing by justifying to his reader why Marxist criticism is still relevant after the fall of the USSR. It is Murfin’s view that it was in fact the fall of the USSR that in fact strengthened the use of Marxist criticism in the literary world. He argues that since the taboo associated with Marxism lifts somewhat after the fall of the Kremlin. Without the need to fight and discourage communism and Marxism on such a strong and prominent front literary critics could step out of the shadows and look at texts in new and different ways without fear of social prosecution. One key point Murfin makes is “the assumption that Marxist criticism will die on the cine of a moribund political system rests in part on another mistaken assumption, namely, that Marxist literary analysis is practiced only by people who would like to see society transformed into a Marxist-communist state, one created through land reform, the redistribution of wealth, a tightly and centrally managed economy, the abolition of institutionalized religion and so on. In fact, it has never been necessary to be a communist political revolutionary to be classified as a Marxist literary critic” (Murfin 447.) He is clarifying what it means to be a Marxist critic to show potentially sceptic readers that his essay is very much valid.

I think is very important that Murfin began his essay in this way, because he is showing his readers that it is okay to be a Marxist critic and they still have very good things to say when it comes to literature. Murfin is telling his reader this is why this matters and he is doing his best to disband any lingering societal stereotypes before delving into the body of his work. However, this made me as the reader question why did he begin things by explaining to us why Marxist criticism is relevant and “okay”? Why didn’t he begin things with defining the term? To me it felt as though he assumed his readers knew the term and was immediately assuming that his readers would take a negative view on things, so he started on the defensive. To be honest this made me as a reader almost feel attacked when beginning his worked, which in turn game me a more negative view on the essay as I read. However, I do see where Murfin was coming from and would say that this passage was essential to his work.