The Unconscious Struggle For Human Existence Essay — страница 4

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face and beauty lies the coyness of a “little perverse madonna” (73). Mrs. Mooney understands her daughter is capable of tempting men into delirium, because she witnesses her in the act. Also, Polly brags about her lack of couth, when she sings, “I’m a naughty girl. You needn’t sham: You know I am” (73). Next, Mrs. Mooney’s determination to repair her daughter’s loss of honor reflects her false consciousness. Polly barely holds onto anything considered honorable in the first place. She is lewd, not intelligent, and speaks with horrible grammar. Lastly, reflecting society’s argument, Mrs. Mooney considers the whole situation the man’s fault with Polly, the innocent victim, being lured into the affair. Realistically, Polly is not the tragic victim, “bearing

the brunt” of the situation (75). She knew exactly what she was doing and was not at all surprise to find herself pregnant. This is apparent at eh end of the story when Mrs. Mooney is about to confront Mr. Doran. After Polly melodramatically moans, “O my God”, and pleads for Mr. Doran’s to relieve her of her anguish, she takes notice of her white pillows and falls into a revery, “no longer any perturbation visible on her face” (79). Joyce describes her waiting on “cheerfully, without alarm”, deluded by visions of her future. Only when Mrs. Mooney calls for Polly to come and speak with Mr. Doran, the supposed cause of all of her supposed anguish, does “she remember what she had been waiting for” (79). Someone worried about the outcome of a confrontation between

an outraged mother and a wrongful man would not daydream and completely forget about the situation. Mrs. Mooney and Polly do no want to believe they are trapping the poor Mr. Doran as they really are. It is imperative that Mr. Doran be the wretched aggressor and they be the helpless victims and if Mrs. Mooney plays her cards right, she will triumphantly acquire Polly a husband. With her false consciousness vastly overpowering her reality, Mrs. Mooney accurately represents the wronged, vengeful, and determined mother. In Marx’s view, the only way to consciously control these blind forces of materialism is to eliminate the struggles and conflicts of social classes. With everyone equal, no one will associate their wills and friction amongst the public will be destroyed. Political

power, “the organized power of one political class for oppressing another”, will cease to exist as well (Beer 32). Mrs. Mooney would not be as determined in her ways, had she not been born on the bottom rung of the economic ladder. As such, Mr. Doran would have been able to spot the trap were he not controlled by his economic position and duty to reflect the creeds of the Catholic Church. Eliminating class structure would inevitably eliminate one’s abiding by a false consciousness in that we would view people as they really are and not what we make them out to be. Ideology would no longer represent the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence. The ultimate gain in this process will be a free association “in which the free development of

each is the condition for the free development of all” (32).