Reading Red "Out" From a Proletarian Perspective
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
Natsuo Kirino’s Out is often praised for its unflinching Marxist critique of seedy factory life. Though Japanese novelist Kirino drew inspiration from classic proletarian literature, which criticizes the brutality of capitalism, critics claim that Out is not strictly proletarian because the characters do not advocate for systemic socioeconomic change. However, in this paper, a uniquely proletarian approach has been applied to Kirino’s psychological thriller. This lens examines Kirino’s emphasis on personal liberation and everyday resistance that exemplifies proletarian literature and makes it stand out against contemporary Marxist fiction. Drawing on existing literary criticism and Marxist theory, the paper concludes that Out is at the heart of modern proletarian fiction despite the claims of other critics. Using proletarian themes to elaborate on feminist and other socioeconomic issues that are dark byproducts of capitalism, Kirino’s novel offers a new outlook on the reality of working-class women looking for freedom from their oppressed lives.
Downloads
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
- Student authors waive FERPA rights for only the publication of the author submitted works.
Specifically: Students of Indiana University East voluntarily agree to submit their own works to The Journal of Student Research at Indiana University East, with full understanding of FERPA rights and in recognition that for this one, specific instance they understand that The Journal of Student Research at Indiana University East is Public and Open Access. Additionally, the Journal is viewable via the Internet and searchable via Indiana University, Google, and Google-Scholar search engines.
References
Breu, Christopher. “Work and Death in the Global City: Natsuo Kirino’s Out as Neoliberal Noir.” Globalization and the State in Contemporary Crime Fiction: A World of Crime, edited by Andrew Pepper and David Schmid, Palgrave Macmillan (Basingstoke), 2016, pp. 39–50. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=201916575693&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Accessed 2 Nov. 2023.
Greenberg, Ivan. “Proletarian Literature from the Bottom Up: Workers and Poetry during the Rise of the CIO.” American Quarterly, vol. 67, no. 2, 2015, pp. 413–41. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43823082. Accessed 2 Nov. 2023.
Kirino, Natsuo. Out. Translated by Stephen Snyder, Vintage International, 2005.
Kirkpatrick, Ken, and Sidney F. Huttner. “Women Writers in the Proletarian Literature Collection, McFarlin Library.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, vol. 8, no. 1, 1989, pp. 143–48. JSTOR, doi.org/10.2307/463893. Accessed 3 Nov. 2023.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto: By Karl Marx and Frederick Engels; Edited and Annotated by Frederick Engels. New York Labor News Co., 1948. Political Extremism and Radicalism, link.gale.com/apps/doc/RQVARH391216296/GDCS?u=iulib_east&sid=bookmark-GDCS&xid=7153d363&pg=9. Accessed 2 Nov. 2023.
Seaman, Amanda C. “Inside OUT: Space, Gender, and Power in Kirino Natsuo.” Japanese Language and Literature, vol. 40, no. 2, 2006, pp. 197–217. JSTOR, doi.org/10.2307/30198010. Accessed 2 Nov. 2023.