In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood presents childhood as a precious resource taken away from kids born in the dystopian Gilead society. To illustrate this, Atwood uses the cruel nature of birth and oppressive family structure in Gilead. From the beginning, the concepts of mother and kin are separated in Gilead; although Offred may give birth […]
Category: English Learning Portfolio
Medea: Final Thoughts
Having just finished Medea, I feel quite a lot like Medea during her monologue: conflicted. On one hand, throughout the play, I was heavily invested in Medea’s side of the story, namely the unfairness of being abandoned by her own husband and left in exile by Creon. However, I am not very sure whether there […]
Medea Reflection Post
What is the significance of the information the Nurse gives the audience? The nurse portrays Medea as reacting very negatively to the news that her husband, Jason, has started a new relationship with the king Creon’s daughter. For example, the Nurse notes, “She has not raised her eyes, or moved her cheek from hard ground”. […]
Intersectionality in “The Handmaid’s Tale”
Intersectionality is the interconnected nature of social categories such as race, class, gender, and sexuality, regarded often as creating overlapping systems of discrimination and oppression. In The Handmaid’s Tale, intersectionality serves as an overlying idea of a possible root of the issues behind the oppressive nature of life in Gilead. Gilead is a society built […]
Is Atwood’s novel ultimately a feminist work of literature, or does it offer a critique of feminism?
I believe that Atwood’s novel is ultimately a feminist work of literature, as it focuses on the critique and negative portrayal of a dystopian future that while paints women such as handmaids as important to the community’s functioning, is nonetheless still misogynistic in their objectification of such women. There are, however, elements of the novel […]
What is the symbolic power of naming as described in The Handmaid’s Tale? Link to your wider reading about the politics of naming.
In The Handmaid’s Tale, names serve as a symbol for a person’s identity. With handmaids all having a name that starts with “Of” and ending with the commander’s name, Atwood uses this as a way of denoting the lack of freedom handmaids have in the book, wherein their entire identity is based upon the commander […]
What is the most effective way that Atwood creates a repressive atmosphere in chapters 1-6?
In chapters 1-6, Atwood most effectively creates a repressive atmosphere by consistently contrasting traditional connotations and symbols of freedom or comfort with what the handmaids and Offred encounter in the story. In chapter 1, Atwood focuses on the presentation of the handmaids as living in a prison-like atmosphere, where almost nothing is within their control. […]
Quick Political Cartoon: The Handmaid’s Tale
I sketched this political cartoon alluding to The Handmaid’s Tale. The main allusion was to the “wings” that the handmaids wear in the story, and I used this to illustrate that politicians (as the one illustrated) are so blinded by their sense of supposed moral purity (symbolized by the “wings”) in Alabama that they are […]
English IO Reflection
Reflecting on my IO experience, something that was challenging initially was ensuring that I was not over-analyzing my text and packing in too much analysis/content into the 10-minute timeframe. This involved a lot of careful planning and cutting to only keep the content that I saw as necessary while dropping off everything that may have […]
Headline Formation and Biases
Headline 1: Trump defunds the WHO – experts warn of incoming dark ages for global healthcare cooperation Headline 2: Trump administration ceases funding of the WHO Headline 3: Trump ceases funding of the WHO after experts demonstrated records of pro-China bias The first example headline is one that is modeled after a headline pertaining […]