...Studying Literature in Grade 12 The works of different non-Canadian authors, writers, and playwrights such as Steinbeck, Orwell and Shakespeare have been widely used in English classrooms. While bright writers exist in all cultures, Ontario students should solely focus on Canadian writers. As Canadians, it is essential to become more familiar with writings one can call their own. Senior students in Ontario should solely study Canadian literature because writings from other cultures are being studied far too frequently, it is important to encourage young Canadian authors, and the need to promote diverse, home-grown writers is escalating. To begin, focusing on Canadian literature for English students is significant because they are constantly overwhelmed by the American culture. This is often prevalent in Canada because the culture has always been a “branch plant” of another country. Canadian culture has never had the chance to fully blossom since it has always been under the thumb of a more powerful foreign culture since its conception, notably England and France. For this reason, high school students living in Ontario are forced to succumb to Shakespeare and other British writers. These days, even American authors such as Fitzgerald can be found in classrooms all across Canada. Unfortunately, many schools continue to limit a student’s exposure within the classroom to Canadian authors’ works to ISP (Independent Study Project) reading lists. In this sense, Canada is an attic in...
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...mind, as the space you inhabit not just with your body but with your head. It’s that kind of space in which we find ourselves lost. What a lost person needs is a map of the territory, with his own position marked on it so he can see where he is in relation to everything else. Literature is not only a mirror; it is also a map, a geography of the mid. Our literature is one such map, if we can learn to read it as our literature, as the product of who and where we have been. We need such a map desperately; we need to know about here, because here is where we live. For the members of a country or culture, shared knowledge of their place, their here, is not a luxury but a necessity. Without that knowledge we will not survive.” Margaret Atwood, Survival As Atwood’s statement demonstrates, Canadian literature is concerned with place and displacement, and with the development of an effective identifying relationship between self and environs. Canada’s literature whether written in English or French reflects three main parts of Canadian experience. First, Canadian writers often emphasize the effects of climate and geography on the life and work of their people. Second, frontier’s life is part of Canada’s experience that appears frequently in its literature; Third, Canada’s position in the world profoundly affects many Canadian writers. French Canadians often feel surrounded by their English speaking neighbors. They have made a determined effort to preserve their own...
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...Study Guides and Literature Essays Editing Services College Application Essays Writing Help Q & A Lesson Plans Home : The Handmaid's Tale : Study Guide : Summary and Analysis of V: Nap - VI: Household The Handmaid's Tale Summary and Analysis by Margaret Atwood Buy PDFBuy Paperback V: Nap - VI: Household Summary This section begins with Offred simply sitting alone, waiting. She had not been prepared for all this stillness, all of this boredom. She thinks about experiments they used to do on animals, how they would give them something to distract them. She wishes she had something to distract her. She lies down on the floor and begins to do her exercises, tilting her pelvis back. She remembers how at the training center they had rest time every day from three to four. Now she thinks it was practice for all of the waiting. She remembers how Moira showed up, after she'd been there for about three weeks. They couldn't talk for a few days, but finally during a walk they were able to plan a meeting in the washroom. The first time was during Testifying, which Aunt Helena came for specially. That day, Janine was talking about how she was gang raped when she was fourteen and had to get an abortion, and the other women respond as they have learned to, chanting that it was her fault. Despite the surroundings, Offred was extremely happy to see Moira. Now Offred thinks about her body. She used to see it as an instrument of her will, but now she sees it only as a container...
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...Introduction Margaret Atwood is a prolific and prize-winning author of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. Her work is worthy of analysis, for she has been considered a Noble Prize contender for years. Indeed, Kazuo Ishiguro issued an apology to Atwood when he captured the 2018 prize. In her collection of short stories Moral Disorder and Other Stories, Atwood conveys the transformation of Nell from child to adult, and the question arises: what literary techniques does Atwood employ to convey the subtleties of this transformation. After a careful analysis of the stories, it is evident that Atwood uses motifs, allusions, image patterns, and shifts in point of view to portray the maturation of Nell. Cat Imagery In several of her stories,...
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...Everyday, there are humans living in poverty and in hospitals who strive to survive so that they can live another day. In the novel Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, Snowman, the protagonist, tries to survive on an isolated land with the children of Oryx and Crake, and in the novel La Prisonniere by Malika Oufkir, translated by Michelle Fitoussi, Malika tries to survive twenty years in a desert gaol. In both novels, the characters realize that survival is challenging, however, with the companionship of others, they figure out it is possible to survive and to gain freedom.In both novels, the main characters find it difficult to survive in isolation. To begin with, Snowman faces a difficult situation, as the compounds have been destroyed and as a result, limited resources are available.Snowman is starving as he tries to save his food: "He's stashed some mangoes… a precious half bottle of Scotch- no, more like a third- and a chocolate flavoured energy bar scrounged from a trailer park, limp and sticky inside its foil"(Atwood, 4).Healthy food is the key to survival and without this resource, Snowman's health is slowing weakening day by day. Limited clothes and shelter also make Snowman's life very difficult to live in the paradise project land as these are also the basic necessities of life. Furthermore, Snowman desperately misses his luxurious life in the compound.Before, when Snowman lived in OrganInc compound, he had the luxuries of an indoor swimming pool, a small gym, furniture...
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...Atwood has taken the experience of women to the extreme in her novel, however there are still clear parallels between her novel and the society we live in now. For example, women in Atwood’s world are forced to wear ‘wings’ which are to ‘keep [them] from seeing’. This may be seen as shocking to our society which is predominantly a Christian where we can wear whatever we want- but in some religions such as Islam, the women wear a veil or a full body dress to disguise their body shape from other men because they believe that only their husband should see what they look like without their clothes on. The women in Atwood’s novel wear certain clothes depending on their job in the ‘society’. The handmaids wear red ‘the colour of blood’. Atwood could have used red because it symbolizes fear, evil and lust however the handmaidens are employed ‘to breed’ and their red clothing could symbolize, love and passion rather than the darker connotations associated with red. The handmaids are not allowed to be looked upon by men, they wear ‘wings’ which cover their faces and prevent them from ‘seeing’. In the society that we live in now we have the freedom to see what we want without censorship, compared with Atwood’s ‘society’ where the women are given a distorted vision of reality which restricts their perspective. The women in Atwood’s novel have no freedom and their lives are sheltered from what is actually going on around them, this could have been done to protect them from the harsh truth...
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...In Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye, an unconventional theory is given about time. The protagonist, Elaine, describes time as being “not a line but a dimension” (Atwood 3) and something “You don’t look back along but down through like water” (3), where events are “like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another” (3) and nothing ever disappears in it. In the novel, Elaine is forever haunted by memories of Cordelia, a childhood friend who she was both adored and tormented by. Despite not having any contact with her for several decades, Elaine continues to see Cordelia in every female she encounters in her life, causing her to have trust issues with her daughters, strangers from work as well as herself. In Cat’s Eye, Cordelia is proof that “Nothing [ever] goes away” (3) in time. To begin with, Cordelia affects the way in which Elaine views her own daughters. When they reach the age of nine, Elaine begins to fear that she may hate them, as not only was it at this age that she herself met and was terrorized by Cordelia, but because she also sees Cordelia in their every action. For instance, when her daughters begin to respond with “So?”(268) to her, Elaine suddenly sees, not her children, but Cordelia in accurate detail, as if she is standing right in front of her, and is reminded about how “Cordelia did the same thing, at the same age” (268), with “The same folded arms, the same immobile face, the blank-eyed stare” (268). This mirrors the way in which, whenever Elaine...
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...bring down the Republic of Gilead. Eyes are pocketed everywhere to locate any traitors. No one is to be trusted and one must be on their guard. The differences between the two novels are nearly black and white. One is the loss of humanity as well as our ability to care about anyone else and their entertainment is sadistic. The other is the control of others for the sake of continuing our species. The Running Man’s atmosphere is more energetic. The Handmaid’s Tale is somber and moody. Overall, these novels have brought great inspiration to future writers. The Hunger Games takes inspiration from The Running Man. And The Handmaid’s Tale has garnered popularity in its exploration of an oppressed woman through her eyes. Stephen King and Margaret Atwood have innovated literature through their work. And both set the bar as to what a dystopian should be like. ...
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...“I do not wish [women] to have power over men; but over themselves” (Wollstonecraft, Poston). This quote, which Mary Wollstonecraft eloquently stated in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, portrays the exact feelings of Offred, the main character in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Taking place in a dystopian future, The Handmaid’s Tale depicts a totalitarian government under which women are harshly subjugated. Instead of accepting her current position as a handmaid. Offred longs to return to her previous life; however, in the Republic of Gilead, gender-based oppression is commonplace and often prevents Offred from achieving both her short and long-term aspirations. Similar to the painting Fair Rosamund by Arthur Hughes, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale examines how sexual oppression leads to the loss of identity, shaming of...
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...The handmaid’s tale rough draft paragraph • Margret Atwood in the novel the Handmaid’s tale uses language to make the reader follow and understand the multiple themes that are portrayed in the story such as oppression, representation of power and identity. • To start off with, The Prayer Reading machine in the novel that is present in the society of Gield, symbolizes education and knowledge in which speeches and form of communication are restricted. These things are restricted because of The Republic of Gield’s rules, where woman do not have the rights that they’re supposed to have such as having a basic knowledge, so therefore instead of all handmaid’s send letters which is impossible as literacy and reading are forbidden, characters in the...
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...Margaret Atwood: Life, Legacy and Works Margaret Atwood was born on November 18, 1939 in Ottawa, Ontario. She lived with her family in both Sault Ste. Marie, Canada and Ontario Canada. Her father was Carl Edmund Atwood and her mother was Margaret Dorothy Atwood. Her father was a zoologist. He did extensive entomological research for most of Margaret’s younger years. Her mother, Margaret Dorothy Killiam, was very health conscious and chose to become a dietician as a result of her belief in eating and living a healthy lifestyle. Margaret did not like having a mother that watched everything she ate but as she grew older she realized it was for her good and embraced it wholeheartedly. Margaret was the second child born to Carl and Margaret Atwood....
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...SE2421 Contemporary Women’s Writing Week 5: 1 November 2011 Dr Becky Munford (munfordr@cardiff.ac.uk) Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) Language, bodies, desire [pic] Word games (1) ‘I didn’t know what it meant, or even what language it was in….Still, it was a message, and it was in writing, forbidden by that very fact, and it hadn’t yet been discovered. Except by me, for whom it was intended.’ (chapter 9, p. 62) (2) ‘So that’s what’s in the forbidden room! Scrabble!...Now it’s forbidden, for us. Now it’s dangerous. Now it’s indecent. Not it’s something he can’t do with his Wife. Now it’s desirable…We play two games. Larynx, I spell. Valance. Quince. Zygote. I hold the glossy counters with their smooth edges, finger the letters. The feeling is voluptuous. This is freedom, an eyeblink of it. Limp, I spell. Gorge. What a luxury. The counters are like candies, made of peppermint, cool like that. Humbugs, those were called. I would like to put them into my mouth. They would also taste of lime. The letter C. Crisp, slightly acid on the tongue, delicious.’ (chapter 23, p. 149) (3) Offred uses [scrabble] as a mirror for herself, as a way of hearing her own voice in an otherwise engulfing, enforced silence. Atwood uses it, I would suggest, as an image of the text, as a mise en abîme, in which one can see this autobiographical ‘tale’ as a Scrabble board on which we must also play. If we have trouble with the plotting of the narrative or the structure...
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...Andrew Papis 1 May, 2012 Perspectives on the Individual Final Course Paper The Struggle for Freedom Human beings are emotional individuals. Their feelings direct them in one direction or the next, and brutally establish who they are, and what they do. It is the human environment that activates these emotions, and these emotions that in turn impact the human environment. They can be either positive or negative in nature, and are centered with government and society. When life is attained from a human being, their outlook on life becomes devious. Having a positive on life conceives comfort in many people’s lives. When an outside fury comes along and changes someone’s life, his or her attitude is going to change drastically. In three books I’ve read, “Night”, “The Handmaid’s Tale”, and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, each struggle with the society they are dealt with. To be more specific, each main character has to struggle for freedom in the society that is surrounding them. ...
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...past summer it was the number one best-selling science fiction/fantasy paperback in Barnes & Noble stores. While it is most often used as a way of talking about media and censorship, Fahrenheit 451 also represents a literary mode that seeks to prevent a certain future by describing it. This mode is often -- but not always -- dystopian. It is distinguished most by a moralistic and apocalyptic state of mind. Let's call it Cassandraism, after the daughter of Troy whose prophecies were not believed. Launched with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Cassandraism remains the most socially acceptable branch on the family tree of science fiction, embracing such respectably literary figures as Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and Margaret Atwood, who with her 1986 novel The Handmaid's Tale became its foremost contemporary practitioner. In Atwood's new novel Oryx and Crake, digital convergence and genetic engineering are combined and carried to their logical conclusion, a media-filtered apocalypse that the characters (and, one senses, the author) simultaneously yearn for and struggle against. Like the Bible's Book of Revelation, Oryx and Crake should be read not as a prediction of the future, but as a nightmare of the present. It stands in a tradition of novels like Brave New World or 1984 that are vaticinia ex eventu: history disguised as prophecy. If the imaginative success of a Cassandraist novel as a warning must be measured in direct...
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...How does Atwood’s portrayal of control on pages 22-23 typify Atwood’s treatment of women in the rest of the novel? In Margaret Atwood’s novel ‘The Handmaids Tale ‘women are objectified and live under an oppressive regime. In this essay I will be exploring Atwood’s presentation of women and women’s purpose in society. In ‘The Handmaids Tale ‘phallic imagery is used to distinguish women’s position in society. “The commander’s wife directs, pointing with her stick.” Serena Joy’s stick can be seen as phallic imagery; throughout the novel phallic imagery is used to represent the hierarchy amongst the women. At the red centre the aunts carried cattle prods and this solidified their superiority. Serena Joy also carries a stick and this can be seen as the transition of power from the aunts to Serena Joy, the aunts previously had control over Offred however now Offred is Serena Joy’s handmaid the power over her has been bestowed upon Serena Joy. Atwood also presents Serena Joy as ‘The commanders wife ‘, by not calling Serena Joy by her name we are able to understand how powerless women are in the Gilead regime as they are not referred to by their own name but by their husbands title. This then suggests that women are nothing without their husbands and their only duty is to be wives. In Simone de Beauvoir’s novel ‘ The second sex ‘ she focuses on the concept of ‘ the other ‘ , this concept refers to the treatment of women as the ‘ other ‘ in relation to men. I believe this concept...
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