In Rufus at the Door there are many instances where Marxism is present. A higher social class between the students touring the asylum and the people in it is one example. When the bus approaches the Asylum the teachers and students automatically think they are apart of a higher class than the patients that are locked up.  Asylums are looked at to be a place where crazy people who have no social or street skills go to lay rest.  The young kids in this story were even taught to believe this “...Miss Sylvestri stood at his shoulder and delivered an unnecessary lecture about how lucky we were to have been spared from craziness and retardation.” (Hassler, Pg. 22) Miss Sylvestri delivers this lecture in order to instill her belief on the students that the people in the mental hospital are part of a class of people that they should be happy to not be a part of.  This class of people is to be seen as having no skills to fend for themselves and don’t contribute to society in anyway.  They are people that have no value and are almost a waste of space.  Miss Sylvestri believes her highly educated class of people are ranked much farther above these mentally disabled people found in the asylum.  Her sense of freedom, education, and power give her the mentality to talk down upon them and share her beliefs with the students.  Miss Sylvestri is portrayed as an authority figure in this story, she promotes her social class and lets the children know they should be grateful to be apart of such a high social class.  Their education is the main foundation for this belief and even though many of the kids don’t appreciate it Miss Sylvestri certainly tried to make that clear after the visit to the asylum.

This was my best 300 word paper I believe because people didn't have that many comments about changing things.  The only things I tweaked were the intro and conclusion.  In the intro I polished my thesis being more clear about the social class difference that immediately happened when the bus approached the asylum.  In my conclusion all I changed was the last sentence summing up a little better the idea of Miss Sylvestri making sure the children knew they were apart of a higher social class.  Those were the only things I changed and I believe this paper was one of my better ones.