Mind Map of Symbolism in THT
Category: IO
The Prior Knowledge before reading THT
During our first discussion about “The Handmaids Tale” (THT) by Margaret Atwood, we talked about the genre and what we should expect to see with this sort of book. The genre is dystopian speculative fiction. Speculative fiction is an umbrella genre that deals with elements that are not of real-life with more imaginative themes, this encompasses science fiction as well. Science fiction mainly deals with fiction content with a basis in science. The scientific theories, elements and facts are what distinguishes sci-fi from fantasy. This book is classified as a dystopian fiction which takes place in a dystopian setting. Dystopia, according to Dictionary.com, is “an imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or injustice, typically one that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic.” When relating this to a dystopian fiction piece this would mean that this genre deals with social and political problems in an unideal world. This book can also be classed as a political fable meaning it is a story conveying a moral, in this case focusing on the political side. This means “The Handmaids Tale” will take place in a dystopian world, involving real-life elements while dealing with social and political issues that we could face in this situation.
Based off of a passage from Margaret Atwood’s Essay on her book, The Handmaids Tale, we can gain more information on the setting of the story and the issues that may be faced during the book. From this passage, we can glean that the elite people from the United States have used Bible-based religion in order to take control and oppression the majority of the population. We can see that the issues the book with deal with are oppression by the right-wing fundamentalists and infertility, maybe religion as well. Though this book was written in the 1980s and is a social critique during this time, these issues are not resolved and we still face these problems nowadays.
During Margaret Atwood’s research for this issue, she varied between historical and humanitarian concepts. With pamphlets from Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, Amnesty International reports of atrocities in Latin America, Iran and Philippines; newspaper cuttings from surrogate mothers, institutional control of human reproduction from Nazi Germany to Ceausescu’s Romania, new reproductive technologies as threats to women. These topics from discussing AIDS and sexually transmitted to disease, human rights during detention, birth rates and control, fertility, new methods of fertilisation (IVF). Her research also deals with Nazi Germany and their view on Eugenics, basically meaning that they believed that the human species needed to be perfected. These topics deal with the issues the book is based around. These being, in a general sense, fertility and political issues.
Intertextuality
To me, intertextuality is the connection between texts and similar works. It’s like a comparison through different literary and non-literary works, maybe be shared topics and issues. A technique used that could show intertextuality is parody or illusions. It’s mainly about how texts influence each other rather than a basic connection between the texts. Other sites describe intertextuality as using another text to create meaning for another text. This is something that we would have to consider in paper 2 as its a comparative essay so this idea that is important to focus on, this idea of intertextuality could help make our paper 2 better when writing it.
On a basic level, an example might be something simple like “He was lying so obviously, you could almost see his nose growing” but this is more allusion of intertextuality rather than a solid example. An example of intertextuality within media might be the Simpsons or Family guy where other famous films are reference like a “Star Wars” episode in Family guy or “Psycho” referenced in the Simpsons. This creates a greater meaning for those who understand both of the non-literary works. These are parodies through mixed media which is a technique of intertextuality.
Analysis of Political Cartoons
Through the past 3 classes, we have been analysing political cartoons by various artists. We looked at techniques to look for in the political cartoons and we looked further into the meaning behind them and the situations they were based on. The techniques that we used to analyse the political cartoons were: irony, analogy, symbolism, labelling and exaggeration. Irony (or sarcasm) is the difference between the way things are and how they should/ expected to be. An analogy is a comparison between two unlikely things, something complex explained with something familiar. Symbolism is using symbols or objects to mean larger concepts. Labelling (or captions, notes, stereotypes) is used to make objects clear for what they stand for. Other things we could look for in the political cartoon is colour and visual weight.
One of the examples of a political cartoon was “Assault on Lady Liberty” by Bruce Mackinnon. This cartoon is showing a republican (as labelled by the elephant design on the cufflinks) on top of Lady Justice pinning her down to the ground representing men being above justice and how women are usually submissive to men and could be considered beneath men. This cartoon is directly related to the sexual assault allegation made by Christine Ford against Brett Kavanaugh after Kavanaugh supposedly assaulted Ford when they were high school. She came public when he was up to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, which he became regardless. This caused people to think she did it for publicity. Others thought it shouldn’t be cared about as it happened in high school and the allegation wasn’t definite. In my opinion, this shouldn’t matter as it’s still an issue that others face and this would raise awareness for other situations and others might speak out due to the bravery of Ford saying this against a Judge.
Another cartoon we looked at was “Rule of Law” by Adam Zyglis. This referenced a 2005 video with lewd and inappropriate comments about touching women as they will let you do anything to them because they are ‘stars’. On the image, it shows Trump and an elephant man, representing a republican, with black ink on their hands and behind Lady Justice with black ink handprints over her. She holds unbalanced scales showing the injustice with all of these other situations weighing down equality and on her sword the #metoo movement as something to fight for. This is representing the way people have an unspoken rule when it comes to sexual assaults that they, meaning rich men can get away with it even if it’s against the law.
(SEE PAPER 1 PRACTICE ESSAY FOR MORE DETAIL)
The third cartoon we looked at was “Tic Tac Trump” by Nick Anderson. Again this referenced a comment made in the 2005 video mainly talking about how Trump needed a tic tac as if he sees a beautiful woman he would just kiss them. This image is exaggerated with Trumps caricature-like style and the expressions on the three women labelled as Liberty, Justice and Truth. Trump trying to kiss these women is representing him taking advantage of his power to abuse these three values.
The final political cartoon was “Young lady here to see you now Mr Weinstein” which is referencing the many sexual assault allegations towards Harvey Weinstein an American film producer. He sexually assaulted over 80 women throughout his career but they only came to light around 2016 which was the start of the #metoo movement. Lady Justice bursting through the door represents Weinstein abusing the justice system to get away with these assaults. Though the way the door is broken of the hinges represents how women are fighting for justice, the red door symbolising a red carpet in reference to the number of celebrities who have spoken out against him.
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