The funnest English final ever
Modern Thought and Literature
Final Project
Introduction
In your final project, I am asking you to respond to the authors and issues of the course in some sustained, substantial fashion, either creatively, in an original piece of artwork (artwork in its broadest sense, i.e., performing, visual, or literary), or analytically, in a critical essay.
Guidelines/Requirements
• The Final Project with its accompanying essay is due during the Final period, Wednesday, 11/14.
2. Your project should respond to and explore ( not explain)
• one or more of the major themes/ideas of the course and
• explicitly or implicitly, one or more of the authors or works we have read.
4. Your project must be accompanied by a typed, well-written essay of no less than 500 words and no more than 1000 words in which you explain the full significance of your project-what you were hoping to achieve and, specifically , how your project addresses #2 above .
5. You will give also give a five-ten minute presentation on your project. This presentation should be based on the essay you have written analyzing and explaining your project (see #4 above).
6. The criteria according to which your project will be evaluated include creativity, skill, polish, seriousness of purpose, effort, punctuality, and, of course, insight into and understanding of the authors and themes you explore.
N.B. You may not do a collage. You may not do illustrations. Your project should not have as its essential goal a summary or survey of authors or works.
Examples of successful previous projects include the following: short stories, plays, poems; paintings and sculpture; original music, both instrumental and vocal; dance, figure skating.
• If you choose to write an essay , the guidelines are altered as follows:
1. Same deadlines as above.
2. Your essay should respond to and/or explore the relationship among works by three authors from at least two different periods -that is, how these three works address some common motif or theme.
[If you wish, you may choose one of your works to be non-literary; that is, you may discuss a painting or musical work, etc. in relation to two literary works.]
3. The essay should be between 6-8 pages (1500-2000 words).
4. You will be expected to present a précis of your essay to the class.
5. The usual criteria for critical essays will apply.
I definitely was not going to a write a critical essay. Luckily, a light bulb lit right in the nick of time. I was the last to present. People laughed (yay!) and I felt the applause was genuine. Here it is:
Academic Capitalism
Cast
Percy - Lawrenceville IV Former, future valedictorian candidate
Tiponi - Lawrenceville IV Former, Native American Hopi
Robert - Trenton public high school student, junior
Lawrenceville College Counselor
Kim Chi - Lawrenceville IV Former, Korean, future valedictorian
McGraw Infirmary Doctor
AP Chemistry Exam Proctor
Harvard Undergraduate Admissions Officers 1 & 2
Act 1
Public vs. Private
Scene 1
Tiponi and Percy, Lawrenceville students, wait around in a classroom in a Trenton public high school.
Tiponi: I still can’t believe there’s a metal detector by the entrance.
Percy: Yeah. I wonder how anyone could study at ease here.
Triponi: I know. A student would probably be too worried about being robbed or stabbed.
Percy: Or both.
Tiponi: So, what brings you here?
Percy: Well, I’m aiming for OVAL Society. I think that would look good on my college application. Plus I figured, with Trenton just around the corner, what better place to get community service done?
Tiponi: Good point. I’m glad I don’t need community service to get into college though.
Percy: You think it’s easier to get into college because you’re Native American?
Tiponi: To be frank, yes. Generations of my Hopi tribe have gone on to the top schools.
Percy: I don’t know how long that’ll carry on what with the whole University of Michigan fiasco coming to light.
Tiponi: I’m still going to be accepted to Princeton. It’s only right. Especially after all the wrongs white society has inflicted on my people. The Trail of Tears for one…
Percy: Wait, weren’t those the Cherokees? I’m pretty sure since I’m conducting an independent study on domestic race relations. I think that would like nice on my college application.
Tiponi [turns her back]: Hmmm, when is that kid going to get here?
Percy: You mean, who we’re tutoring? Hey, we’re receiving credit for this anyway.
Tiponi: I suppose, but I wanted to meet someone from public school.
Percy: Oh, that’s right. You grew up in a reservation, didn’t you?
Robert [walks into classroom]: Hi. Are you guys those tutors from the prep school?
Tiponi: Hi. We’re here to help you out with the SAT.
[They all sit by a row of desks]
Percy: So just to get an idea, what math are you in?
Robert: I think it’s called Algebra II.
Tiponi: As a junior?! [mutters to Percy] My tribe has been home-schooled for ages but we’ve been much more civilized than this. So it’s true what my tribe told me. Things were better before public schools.
Percy [shrugs shoulders]: Can you tell me what an average is, Robert?
Robert: Oh, I know. That’s when they do that thing with numbers.
[Tiponi hits her head against the desk]
Percy [mutters]: Just think. No matter what, this will help me get into college…
Scene 2
The Fall
College Counseling Office
Percy: …And then she tells me she’s going to get into Princeton because she’s Native American!
College Counselor [facing computer screen]: Percy, to be honest, you’re definitely not scoring points by being Caucasian. In Tiponi’s case…let’s see…[entering database] Her GPA isn’t going to cut it for Princeton nowadays, no matter how Native American she is. Stop smirking, Percy. It’s still a dog-eat-dog world. Unless you’ve won the Nobel Prize lately, you have to show me a sign that you’re ahead of the game.
Percy: I can tell you that this term I’m doing a community service project tutoring Trenton kids for the SAT.
College Counselor: What else?
Percy: Last summer, I won the Welles Award which enabled me to carry out an internship in Germany with the French embassy examining power politics of the European Union.
College Counselor: What else?
Percy: I’m president of the Wall Street Club, lead in the fall musical, won first place in Science Olympiad for physics nationwide, and I’m the top fencer in the East Coast.
College Counselor: That’s all? Listen, Percy, Kim Chi already found the cure for the common cold last week. No doubt, Harvard has an eye on her. You on the other hand…Come up with something groundbreaking! Otherwise, Brown is going to start looking like a reach.
Percy: What?! I can’t end up like Robert!
Act 2
University & Collegeboard vs. the nation’s students: $$$-0
Scene 1
Infirmary
Kim Chi: Do you know how much I have slept in the last three days? Six hours!
Doctor: Oh my. Why?
Kim Chi: Just last night, I had to prepare for a French oral, study for a BC test, and write a paper for AP European History! I want my life back!
Doctor: Just pull through, okay? AP exams are right around the corner. Putting yourself in this state is not going to take care of your cold either.
Kim Chi: Fine. My cold isn’t much of an issue. After all, I did find- [falls asleep]
[Some days later walking to class]
Scott III: Kim, ready for the AP Calculus exam next week?
Kim Chi: Sure. I pulled another all-nighter just in case.
Scott III: I’m glad I’m only in AB then. Less pressure this way and even if I don’t earn a 5, Yale won’t mind.
Kim Chi: What do you mean?
Scott III: Come on, Kim. My grandfather is on the Board of Trustees and my uncle is Bill Gates.
Kim Chi [bows head]: Oh, right.
Scott III: I’ll see you around. I’m running late to Conceptual Physics.
Kim Chi: Bye. Who am I kidding? Even if I was admitted to Yale or Harvard, I could never afford it. This really begs the question, what is the point of it all?
Scene 2
Revolution
[Field House, day of AP Chemistry exam]
Proctor [munches on acorn]: Now you will begin the AP Chemistry exam.
[spits out bits of acorn that land on one of the exam booklets]
Percy: Ugh. My exam booklet is covered in spit and acorn.
Proctor: Sorry about that, lad.
[A couple of hundred dollar bills fall out of proctor’s pocket as he bends to wipe the booklet]
Kim Chi: Just 3 more exams after this. Hold on. What am I saying? I can walk away from my misery. It’s my choice to renounce this system. Psst! Percy! Call Robert.
Percy: I’m on it.
Proctor: You two! Stop talking or your exams will be cancelled.
Kim Chi: Precisely. Give us zeros if you like it. Let’s go, Percy.
Percy: Just one second. I’ll be taking that. [Picks up hundred dollar bills]
[Whispers of “Are those Kim Chi and Percy not taking the AP?” fill the room]
Kim Chi: That’s right, everyone! The revolution has begun. I imagine all of you here have whiled away your time glued to a desk never sleeping, never seeing your friends. Sometimes not eating or bathing. Yes, we’ve all experienced the same hardships and now it’s up to us to banish the injustice and inequality. Why should some breeze through the process while others sacrifice so much for nothing? Do we even know how these universities choose applicants?
Scene 3
Academic Communism
Harvard Undergraduate Admissions Office - Fall Term
Officer 1: Did you hear about the Kim Chi Revolution?
Officer 2: I have. The revolution has complicated the situation, hasn’t it? No applicant took an AP exam this year according to Collegeboard.
Officer 1: Collegeboard is a nut job. It serves us right for joining up with them to establish the Advanced Placement system. Lawrenceville smartened up, I’m afraid. They will fare much better on the new honours system.
Officer 2: Does this mean we continue with the same selection process? [throws dart at a pile of applications] Who did that land on? Ah, yes. Scott III, welcome to Harvard.
Officer 1: You know very well we have very strict criteria. If an applicant has not taken any AP exams, they can not be considered for admission.
Officer 2: The Ivy League is out of business, then?
Officer 1: So it seems.
[Back at Lawrenceville]
Percy, Tiponi, Robert, and Scott III: Kim Chi, what now?
Kim Chi: Do I strike you lot as a sort of academic communist? Go find out what Marx would have done.
````````
In addressing the meaning of modern thought, Descartes advocated the use of reason and rationality to guide one through life. This philosophy in turn built the framework of Enlightenment thinking exhibited in The Communist Manifesto. Marx observes the flaws of the current capitalist society and argues through reason that such a society will be inevitably dismantled on its own. In my experience as a student, Marxism greatly appealed to me in an academic context as well as a socioeconomic one. As a result, my project manifested itself into a play called Academic Capitalism. The play draws somewhat from real life experience to depict and conjecture the uncanny parallels between the academic world and the socioeconomic one in terms of Marxism.
In creating Academic Capitalism, the most difficult aspect was establishing academic counterparts consistent with the socioeconomic version of Marxism. In my preliminary observations, I viewed Collegeboard and U.S. universities as the exploiters of high school students but because I had already assigned academic counterpart of capital as admission into university, I reasoned that Collegeboard and universities as the bourgeois would need a different type of capital. At this point, I split off capital into two definitions: first as admission into university and second as pecuniary value in order to preserve my plotlines. In doing so, I developed more flexibility in assigning consistent counterparts depending on the definition of capital. These two definitions of capital led to different versions of the concept of academic capitalism as seen by the inclusion of two acts although both versions unite under the same outcome: academic capitalism as Marx would have reasoned.
Since Academic Capitalism explores Marxism in an academic context, the play echoes the progress of capitalism academically while simultaneously delineating the traits of the academic capitalist characters. With the exception of the Proctor, every character bearing a name mirrors as a Marxist role. The play first introduces Tiponi as an aristocrat. Although in real life, it is slightly ironic to place such an absent ethnic minority in such a dominant position, the play warps Tiponi’s traits as a Native American for the purpose of assigning adequate counterparts. Like Native Americans, the aristocrats are a class of people on the verge of extinction according to Marx. The plays feeds off of this parallel in regards to capital defined as admission into university in Act 1. Capital to aristocrats is a natural part of their being; there is no need to exert much effort in acquiring it. Aristocrats simply inherit capital by the virtue of being aristocrats. Likewise, Tiponi, as an extremely underrepresented minority on college campuses, is granted the capital without worrying about means of production. The play as such alludes to the University of Michigan’s controversial ethnic/cultural diversity admissions system to emphasise how the aristocrats like Tiponi have always been dealt with an advantage. In capitalist society, however, the aristocracy is dwindling and so the play makes a point of that change in Percy and the College Counselor’s remarks about Tiponi being accepted to Princeton University. Furthermore, Tiponi’s remark about the previous academic society being better is reminiscent of Lyubov’s attachment to the old society when the aristocracy ruled. Robert, as portrayed by the lack of education due his public school upbringing is the symbol for the proletariat. Percy, who obsesses over capital, is the bourgeois who takes advantage of his academic relationship with Robert in order to gain capital. However, the College Counselor soon reminds Percy that the bourgeois must constantly renovate their means of production since gaining capital is dependent on it. The counselor demands progressively extravagant means of production because, as Marx reasons, the bourgeois who does not enhance his means of production falls prey to the competition and becomes a proletariat himself. Following the fall of Percy’s academic capitalist status, Kim Chi is presented as the ruling bourgeois who questions academic capitalism and eventually succumbs to the proletariat revolution (Marx theorises that as the bourgeois population declines, some bourgeois will join the proletariat out of their own accord). She is by the far the most enlightened in the cast for her transition from the conventional bourgeois marionette to a proletariat insisting on the eradication of academic capitalism. Scott III qualifies as one of principal catalysts for the revolution. He is another carefree aristocrat as shown through his course selections.
Academic Capitalism is a play that yearns to explore society beyond Marxism as well. After reading The Communist Manifesto, I feel Marx has adequately instigated the need for communism but I do not feel that he prescribes the ideal political structure after communism triumphs. Communism is the notion of overthrowing capitalist society to replace it with classless society but a classless society nonetheless requires the implementation of a government structure. As a result, various interpretations of Communism have emerged over time. My play aims to convey the same sense of uncertainty in recreating academic society by ending in a very open-ended way. The play merely hints that Lawrenceville’s honours course reform and demise of the Ivy League sets up the path towards an ideal form of academic society after academic communism overrides academic capitalism. The new proletariats all wonder what is to follow and Kim Chi herself is not prepared to answer. The play redirects the question to Marx so that the reader can notice how scarcely The Communist Manifesto deals with the issue.
``````
I've been meaning to write about a student revolution since junior year (evil year) when we were studying Marxism in AP European History. It's so cool I got to use this idea as my final. Since I was limited to 1000 words, there were other things I left out in the essay. Tiponi means child of importance which goes hand in hand with being an aristocrat. You better know what kimchi is. Yes, I make the valedictorian Asian because I'm playing a lot on stereotypes. Asians have a harder time trying to get into college. Why acorns? Look at the Collegeboard logo. Some elements are from personal experience like the community service project, my visits to the infirm during nervous breakdowns, being told I have it easier because I'm Hispanic, knowing kids with connections who got into a good uni, conversations over the randomness of admissions. Somebody in my English class does take Conceptual Physics which made for a really funny moment. The play is all in good fun. I mean, Collegeboard should die but um, I don't necessarily imply that you're stupid for taking certain courses.
Final Project
Introduction
In your final project, I am asking you to respond to the authors and issues of the course in some sustained, substantial fashion, either creatively, in an original piece of artwork (artwork in its broadest sense, i.e., performing, visual, or literary), or analytically, in a critical essay.
Guidelines/Requirements
• The Final Project with its accompanying essay is due during the Final period, Wednesday, 11/14.
2. Your project should respond to and explore ( not explain)
• one or more of the major themes/ideas of the course and
• explicitly or implicitly, one or more of the authors or works we have read.
4. Your project must be accompanied by a typed, well-written essay of no less than 500 words and no more than 1000 words in which you explain the full significance of your project-what you were hoping to achieve and, specifically , how your project addresses #2 above .
5. You will give also give a five-ten minute presentation on your project. This presentation should be based on the essay you have written analyzing and explaining your project (see #4 above).
6. The criteria according to which your project will be evaluated include creativity, skill, polish, seriousness of purpose, effort, punctuality, and, of course, insight into and understanding of the authors and themes you explore.
N.B. You may not do a collage. You may not do illustrations. Your project should not have as its essential goal a summary or survey of authors or works.
Examples of successful previous projects include the following: short stories, plays, poems; paintings and sculpture; original music, both instrumental and vocal; dance, figure skating.
• If you choose to write an essay , the guidelines are altered as follows:
1. Same deadlines as above.
2. Your essay should respond to and/or explore the relationship among works by three authors from at least two different periods -that is, how these three works address some common motif or theme.
[If you wish, you may choose one of your works to be non-literary; that is, you may discuss a painting or musical work, etc. in relation to two literary works.]
3. The essay should be between 6-8 pages (1500-2000 words).
4. You will be expected to present a précis of your essay to the class.
5. The usual criteria for critical essays will apply.
I definitely was not going to a write a critical essay. Luckily, a light bulb lit right in the nick of time. I was the last to present. People laughed (yay!) and I felt the applause was genuine. Here it is:
Academic Capitalism
Cast
Percy - Lawrenceville IV Former, future valedictorian candidate
Tiponi - Lawrenceville IV Former, Native American Hopi
Robert - Trenton public high school student, junior
Lawrenceville College Counselor
Kim Chi - Lawrenceville IV Former, Korean, future valedictorian
McGraw Infirmary Doctor
AP Chemistry Exam Proctor
Harvard Undergraduate Admissions Officers 1 & 2
Act 1
Public vs. Private
Scene 1
Tiponi and Percy, Lawrenceville students, wait around in a classroom in a Trenton public high school.
Tiponi: I still can’t believe there’s a metal detector by the entrance.
Percy: Yeah. I wonder how anyone could study at ease here.
Triponi: I know. A student would probably be too worried about being robbed or stabbed.
Percy: Or both.
Tiponi: So, what brings you here?
Percy: Well, I’m aiming for OVAL Society. I think that would look good on my college application. Plus I figured, with Trenton just around the corner, what better place to get community service done?
Tiponi: Good point. I’m glad I don’t need community service to get into college though.
Percy: You think it’s easier to get into college because you’re Native American?
Tiponi: To be frank, yes. Generations of my Hopi tribe have gone on to the top schools.
Percy: I don’t know how long that’ll carry on what with the whole University of Michigan fiasco coming to light.
Tiponi: I’m still going to be accepted to Princeton. It’s only right. Especially after all the wrongs white society has inflicted on my people. The Trail of Tears for one…
Percy: Wait, weren’t those the Cherokees? I’m pretty sure since I’m conducting an independent study on domestic race relations. I think that would like nice on my college application.
Tiponi [turns her back]: Hmmm, when is that kid going to get here?
Percy: You mean, who we’re tutoring? Hey, we’re receiving credit for this anyway.
Tiponi: I suppose, but I wanted to meet someone from public school.
Percy: Oh, that’s right. You grew up in a reservation, didn’t you?
Robert [walks into classroom]: Hi. Are you guys those tutors from the prep school?
Tiponi: Hi. We’re here to help you out with the SAT.
[They all sit by a row of desks]
Percy: So just to get an idea, what math are you in?
Robert: I think it’s called Algebra II.
Tiponi: As a junior?! [mutters to Percy] My tribe has been home-schooled for ages but we’ve been much more civilized than this. So it’s true what my tribe told me. Things were better before public schools.
Percy [shrugs shoulders]: Can you tell me what an average is, Robert?
Robert: Oh, I know. That’s when they do that thing with numbers.
[Tiponi hits her head against the desk]
Percy [mutters]: Just think. No matter what, this will help me get into college…
Scene 2
The Fall
College Counseling Office
Percy: …And then she tells me she’s going to get into Princeton because she’s Native American!
College Counselor [facing computer screen]: Percy, to be honest, you’re definitely not scoring points by being Caucasian. In Tiponi’s case…let’s see…[entering database] Her GPA isn’t going to cut it for Princeton nowadays, no matter how Native American she is. Stop smirking, Percy. It’s still a dog-eat-dog world. Unless you’ve won the Nobel Prize lately, you have to show me a sign that you’re ahead of the game.
Percy: I can tell you that this term I’m doing a community service project tutoring Trenton kids for the SAT.
College Counselor: What else?
Percy: Last summer, I won the Welles Award which enabled me to carry out an internship in Germany with the French embassy examining power politics of the European Union.
College Counselor: What else?
Percy: I’m president of the Wall Street Club, lead in the fall musical, won first place in Science Olympiad for physics nationwide, and I’m the top fencer in the East Coast.
College Counselor: That’s all? Listen, Percy, Kim Chi already found the cure for the common cold last week. No doubt, Harvard has an eye on her. You on the other hand…Come up with something groundbreaking! Otherwise, Brown is going to start looking like a reach.
Percy: What?! I can’t end up like Robert!
Act 2
University & Collegeboard vs. the nation’s students: $$$-0
Scene 1
Infirmary
Kim Chi: Do you know how much I have slept in the last three days? Six hours!
Doctor: Oh my. Why?
Kim Chi: Just last night, I had to prepare for a French oral, study for a BC test, and write a paper for AP European History! I want my life back!
Doctor: Just pull through, okay? AP exams are right around the corner. Putting yourself in this state is not going to take care of your cold either.
Kim Chi: Fine. My cold isn’t much of an issue. After all, I did find- [falls asleep]
[Some days later walking to class]
Scott III: Kim, ready for the AP Calculus exam next week?
Kim Chi: Sure. I pulled another all-nighter just in case.
Scott III: I’m glad I’m only in AB then. Less pressure this way and even if I don’t earn a 5, Yale won’t mind.
Kim Chi: What do you mean?
Scott III: Come on, Kim. My grandfather is on the Board of Trustees and my uncle is Bill Gates.
Kim Chi [bows head]: Oh, right.
Scott III: I’ll see you around. I’m running late to Conceptual Physics.
Kim Chi: Bye. Who am I kidding? Even if I was admitted to Yale or Harvard, I could never afford it. This really begs the question, what is the point of it all?
Scene 2
Revolution
[Field House, day of AP Chemistry exam]
Proctor [munches on acorn]: Now you will begin the AP Chemistry exam.
[spits out bits of acorn that land on one of the exam booklets]
Percy: Ugh. My exam booklet is covered in spit and acorn.
Proctor: Sorry about that, lad.
[A couple of hundred dollar bills fall out of proctor’s pocket as he bends to wipe the booklet]
Kim Chi: Just 3 more exams after this. Hold on. What am I saying? I can walk away from my misery. It’s my choice to renounce this system. Psst! Percy! Call Robert.
Percy: I’m on it.
Proctor: You two! Stop talking or your exams will be cancelled.
Kim Chi: Precisely. Give us zeros if you like it. Let’s go, Percy.
Percy: Just one second. I’ll be taking that. [Picks up hundred dollar bills]
[Whispers of “Are those Kim Chi and Percy not taking the AP?” fill the room]
Kim Chi: That’s right, everyone! The revolution has begun. I imagine all of you here have whiled away your time glued to a desk never sleeping, never seeing your friends. Sometimes not eating or bathing. Yes, we’ve all experienced the same hardships and now it’s up to us to banish the injustice and inequality. Why should some breeze through the process while others sacrifice so much for nothing? Do we even know how these universities choose applicants?
Scene 3
Academic Communism
Harvard Undergraduate Admissions Office - Fall Term
Officer 1: Did you hear about the Kim Chi Revolution?
Officer 2: I have. The revolution has complicated the situation, hasn’t it? No applicant took an AP exam this year according to Collegeboard.
Officer 1: Collegeboard is a nut job. It serves us right for joining up with them to establish the Advanced Placement system. Lawrenceville smartened up, I’m afraid. They will fare much better on the new honours system.
Officer 2: Does this mean we continue with the same selection process? [throws dart at a pile of applications] Who did that land on? Ah, yes. Scott III, welcome to Harvard.
Officer 1: You know very well we have very strict criteria. If an applicant has not taken any AP exams, they can not be considered for admission.
Officer 2: The Ivy League is out of business, then?
Officer 1: So it seems.
[Back at Lawrenceville]
Percy, Tiponi, Robert, and Scott III: Kim Chi, what now?
Kim Chi: Do I strike you lot as a sort of academic communist? Go find out what Marx would have done.
````````
In addressing the meaning of modern thought, Descartes advocated the use of reason and rationality to guide one through life. This philosophy in turn built the framework of Enlightenment thinking exhibited in The Communist Manifesto. Marx observes the flaws of the current capitalist society and argues through reason that such a society will be inevitably dismantled on its own. In my experience as a student, Marxism greatly appealed to me in an academic context as well as a socioeconomic one. As a result, my project manifested itself into a play called Academic Capitalism. The play draws somewhat from real life experience to depict and conjecture the uncanny parallels between the academic world and the socioeconomic one in terms of Marxism.
In creating Academic Capitalism, the most difficult aspect was establishing academic counterparts consistent with the socioeconomic version of Marxism. In my preliminary observations, I viewed Collegeboard and U.S. universities as the exploiters of high school students but because I had already assigned academic counterpart of capital as admission into university, I reasoned that Collegeboard and universities as the bourgeois would need a different type of capital. At this point, I split off capital into two definitions: first as admission into university and second as pecuniary value in order to preserve my plotlines. In doing so, I developed more flexibility in assigning consistent counterparts depending on the definition of capital. These two definitions of capital led to different versions of the concept of academic capitalism as seen by the inclusion of two acts although both versions unite under the same outcome: academic capitalism as Marx would have reasoned.
Since Academic Capitalism explores Marxism in an academic context, the play echoes the progress of capitalism academically while simultaneously delineating the traits of the academic capitalist characters. With the exception of the Proctor, every character bearing a name mirrors as a Marxist role. The play first introduces Tiponi as an aristocrat. Although in real life, it is slightly ironic to place such an absent ethnic minority in such a dominant position, the play warps Tiponi’s traits as a Native American for the purpose of assigning adequate counterparts. Like Native Americans, the aristocrats are a class of people on the verge of extinction according to Marx. The plays feeds off of this parallel in regards to capital defined as admission into university in Act 1. Capital to aristocrats is a natural part of their being; there is no need to exert much effort in acquiring it. Aristocrats simply inherit capital by the virtue of being aristocrats. Likewise, Tiponi, as an extremely underrepresented minority on college campuses, is granted the capital without worrying about means of production. The play as such alludes to the University of Michigan’s controversial ethnic/cultural diversity admissions system to emphasise how the aristocrats like Tiponi have always been dealt with an advantage. In capitalist society, however, the aristocracy is dwindling and so the play makes a point of that change in Percy and the College Counselor’s remarks about Tiponi being accepted to Princeton University. Furthermore, Tiponi’s remark about the previous academic society being better is reminiscent of Lyubov’s attachment to the old society when the aristocracy ruled. Robert, as portrayed by the lack of education due his public school upbringing is the symbol for the proletariat. Percy, who obsesses over capital, is the bourgeois who takes advantage of his academic relationship with Robert in order to gain capital. However, the College Counselor soon reminds Percy that the bourgeois must constantly renovate their means of production since gaining capital is dependent on it. The counselor demands progressively extravagant means of production because, as Marx reasons, the bourgeois who does not enhance his means of production falls prey to the competition and becomes a proletariat himself. Following the fall of Percy’s academic capitalist status, Kim Chi is presented as the ruling bourgeois who questions academic capitalism and eventually succumbs to the proletariat revolution (Marx theorises that as the bourgeois population declines, some bourgeois will join the proletariat out of their own accord). She is by the far the most enlightened in the cast for her transition from the conventional bourgeois marionette to a proletariat insisting on the eradication of academic capitalism. Scott III qualifies as one of principal catalysts for the revolution. He is another carefree aristocrat as shown through his course selections.
Academic Capitalism is a play that yearns to explore society beyond Marxism as well. After reading The Communist Manifesto, I feel Marx has adequately instigated the need for communism but I do not feel that he prescribes the ideal political structure after communism triumphs. Communism is the notion of overthrowing capitalist society to replace it with classless society but a classless society nonetheless requires the implementation of a government structure. As a result, various interpretations of Communism have emerged over time. My play aims to convey the same sense of uncertainty in recreating academic society by ending in a very open-ended way. The play merely hints that Lawrenceville’s honours course reform and demise of the Ivy League sets up the path towards an ideal form of academic society after academic communism overrides academic capitalism. The new proletariats all wonder what is to follow and Kim Chi herself is not prepared to answer. The play redirects the question to Marx so that the reader can notice how scarcely The Communist Manifesto deals with the issue.
``````
I've been meaning to write about a student revolution since junior year (evil year) when we were studying Marxism in AP European History. It's so cool I got to use this idea as my final. Since I was limited to 1000 words, there were other things I left out in the essay. Tiponi means child of importance which goes hand in hand with being an aristocrat. You better know what kimchi is. Yes, I make the valedictorian Asian because I'm playing a lot on stereotypes. Asians have a harder time trying to get into college. Why acorns? Look at the Collegeboard logo. Some elements are from personal experience like the community service project, my visits to the infirm during nervous breakdowns, being told I have it easier because I'm Hispanic, knowing kids with connections who got into a good uni, conversations over the randomness of admissions. Somebody in my English class does take Conceptual Physics which made for a really funny moment. The play is all in good fun. I mean, Collegeboard should die but um, I don't necessarily imply that you're stupid for taking certain courses.