The Friendship Center

While Marxism is facing toward capitalism by confronting the rotten effect, Neo-Marxism emerged in the technology era, it is emphasizing on the technocracy social life. This situation is shown in the beginning of ‘The Friendship Centre’ story. Instead of doing the washing activity by herself, Mrs. Coleman chose to use the dry cleaning facility (P. 332, L. 20) and this event is repeated regularly day by day. So it can be said that the main character dependence on the technology, which is the washing machine.
In the Neo-Marxism, the consumptive commodities offer the false consciousness and people dependence on commodities. This condition leads to the consumptive behavior that makes people believe that by buying much stuff, they will feel happier. It is stated clearly in the story;
“I did the shop: night-nappies, toilet roll, kitchen paper, veg, cat food, the usual. The total bill was 31, but that was reduced to 27.50 with yesterday’s Friendship vouchers”
As we see in that passage, the character bought some stuff but the primary needs are no longer realistic. Even when she felt sick because of the flu she had, she kept coming to The Friendship Center because she felt that it was strange if she did not come to the store. So she finally staggered up the road to the local shop, and bought a beer, some throat pastilles and as usual, dropped off his husband’s dry cleaning at the laundry
The other day, she come again to The Friendship Centre and is easily attracted only because of the message in the huge poster in the lobby
“45 PERCENT OF MEN DIE INTESTATE. Inevitably, that got me thinking – yes, why not get the family paperwork in order – so I sign up for the will writing offer. They were only asking for ten percent of your estate, which was reasonable enough..”
The climax of the story comes when Kimberley,the customer welfare officer, visited Mrs Coleman and told her about her consumer errors. Kimberley said that there was an   occasion when Mrs Coleman was sat...