Human Acts & Handmaid’s Tale
I think something I find as a huge linking point between the two is the idea of representation, how fiction can truly represent reality. Perhaps this idea is obvious in Human Acts which on its own is based off of real life events meaning the fiction was based off of real events, however in the Handmaid’s tale although the representation of misogyny is evidently drastic, the values held by certain characters seem to reflect what we are seeing in society now. That idea that one author is showing us what the world is and the other is representing what the world could be gives us a spectrum of how our actions and choices now will have an effect on our society in the future. I especially think it is interesting to look at the representation of the characters. Although in both stories the main characters are in harsh environments, none are portrayed to be damsels in distress. Even in Human Acts, where many characters have been tortured and hurt, we are shown their bravery and courage and made to feel proud of their choices rather than simply feeling pity. Offred is also not the typical oppressed woman that complains about the discrimination she faces, rather we get to see her critical thinking and intelligent nature as she persists in Gilead.
How do literary texts help our understanding of non literary texts?
One of the biggest ideas that I think I have gained greater appreciation for is that of who’s perspective a message is told from. In literary texts, we learn so much about how the narrative perspective influences the story. We have seen unreliable narrators such as Kathy in NLMG and various narrative perspectives in Human Acts and how these affect the way the story is told. Similarly in non literary texts such as movies, cartoons and anything visual, who’s perspective we see the situation from makes such a different to what we see and how we interpret it as readers. We could be a third party that sees a situation, or some authors give us a character’s perspective to understand the scenario better. This is something I found very interesting my exploration of cartoons in my HL essay, how we as an audience are strategically made to see a situation from someone’s POV.
More importantly, I’ve learnt the idea that the author’s intent can be so varying. With all the discussions we have done in class I have seen the unique ways that people have been able to receive an author’s work. That is something I learnt so much in my EE too where I had to research how academic experts may have interpreted the same text as me in a vary different manner. I really enjoy how both Lit and Non Lit texts have so much scope to be analysed and come to different conclusions. The literary technique of connotation has shown me how changing one specific word can make such a difference to meaning, the way in which changing the eye line composition or framing in a Non Lit text can completely change the message and intent.
