Blog Post #1 Topic #1

                  While discussing “Before the Law”, my group and I agreed upon using Marxist Criticism to analyze the text. We agreed that the text hinted at social classes because of how the man was “from the country” and could be assumed to be poor while the gatekeeper had a “fur coat” which symbolized his wealth. However, since he is the “lowly gatekeeper” there are presumably more after him that are far more powerful and wealthy. Because the man was from the country, the law wasn’t made for him and therefore wasn’t accessible to him contrary to his belief that it “should always be accessible [by] everyone”.

                  While I feel that this is a strong reading of the text, I can also see reader response working better because of certain gaps that exist in the text. An example of this is the lack of a setting which gives a lot of room for the reader to interpret what this gate is or where it is located at. My interpretation of this text through the reader response lens is that the man is “from the country” trying to immigrate into another country which is presumably a better country, however he is being kept out. The gatekeeper asks the man questions about his “homeland and many other things” which is similar to the process an immigrant goes through when obtaining citizenship. The man even “equipped himself with many things for his journey” which he eventually ends up giving to the gatekeeper in order to bribe his way into the country. This can also reveal a layer that bribing yourself into a new country only works if you are wealthy to begin with and not just some man from the country.

                  The gate would then represent the barrier preventing people from entering another country or from keeping classes from moving up. This is shown through the interrogation which lends itself to learning about people’s nationality and their whereabouts to pick and choose what they want to allow into their country. This prevents people from moving up in society and achieving what they want to achieve in this new country whether it be wealth or a better life. Even if the man was allowed access in to the country, there is a notion that it wouldn’t be easy to obtain what he wants because of other gatekeepers who would pose obstacles.

                  I think that reader response is a more convincing reading for “Before the Law” because it allows the reader to fill in missing pieces to the story while Marxist Criticism looked at the piece as solely a minimalistic political one that focuses on just classes. With Marxist you can only see people being barred from moving up in social classes, however with reader response it expands on this thinking and involves feelings of xenophobia which is present when we talk about barring people from gaining citizenship into a country, and the powerful exercising the power they have. I feel like reader response gives a more convincing reading of the text because it encompasses Marxist thinking about social classes, however I think that in order to get a complete reading of any text we should use a mixture of these theories.