For the second paper 1 practice it is on articles as a non-literary text type. I chose quotes to do with juxtaposition and irony, descriptive language and their connotations, and the tone. These techniques link with the situation and how Donegan is presenting the different sides of #MeToo movement and the two sides with the feminist and anti-feminist ‘groups’.
It was hard to decide the different body paragraphs and what to talk about as some things were hard to pick out from the text but also hard to explain. The thesis as well, it is still confusing to write about what Donegan is trying to communicate through the article.
Through the article there was a lot of different language used and different connotations to the words which made it harder to pick out a consistent tone but also a lot of the words linked in with other sections of my essay outline. The descriptive language was the easiest to decide quotes to use as there are a lot of words used that fit with this and the connotations also are clearer to pick out. Though explaining the irony and juxtaposition used in the article was harder as the way it was used I felt it was harder to find good examples. With the tone, it changes as there is a negative tone through most of the article when talking about the assault cases and the anti-feminist movement, probably to do with Donegan’s bias. Though the article kind of intended to show hope for the movement which is shown by the title and how the article ends as well.
After reading The Handmaid’s Tale for the first time I really like the book. I think because it is set in a dystopian society and could be something that happens to us, it makes it more interesting to read and see how the author, Margaret Atwood, portrays the world. I also think that the fact that this was written in the ’80s and the problems Margaret Atwood researched and the issues that were present in this time period still apply.
My favourite section of the book was from Jezebels’ to the end of the book (Page 205- 320). I liked it the most as a lot of things happened throughout this section. It involved the wife, Offred and Nick, Offred and the Commander, it showed the ways that Offred has changed with her views on Love and Luke as well. Then we find out about what happened with Offred at the end. At the end of the book, Serena Joy finds out about Offred and the commander, which she doesn’t take well. Offred knows that something might happen but she doesn’t do anything. She hears the black van and Nick is the one who opens the door which makes her accuse him of being an eye. Nick says that it’s ok and that she should go with them. He says it’s Mayday which links with the earlier quote about what Mayday means when Ofglen said it was a password. “‘There’s a password,’ she says… ‘Mayday,’ I repeat… M’aidez.” (Page 208). Offred ends up going with the van.
The ending, usually something that answers questions, creates more. Is she took to the colonies, killed or saved? Who are the mayday people that took her? Was it really someone that was helpful? Is Nick helpful? Will she see Luke and her daughter again? What would happen with Luke/ Nick Triangle? Does Nick actually like Offred or is he just doing it to be paid? We can guess but never really fully know.
I think during my next reading I want to look more into the symbolism and look deeper into the book and analyse it more as this will be interesting in order to look at how it connects with women inequality, views of the future and other issues the book brings up.
After the book ends there is a section titled Historical Notes. It is written as if its a transcript of a conference about the Gileadean Society set in 2195. It’s talking about this as if it was in the past with someone specialised in 20th to 21st-century archives. This society has led to an association and people study and learn about this time period. People study this time period. The keynote briefly passes over one of the changes the Gileadean society caused. “What was once the city of Bangor, in what, at the time prior to the inception of the Gileadean regime, would have been the state of Maine.” (Page 309). References the historical information Margaret Atwood did for this book but in a way to say this is what caused the Gileadean Society. They propose various ideas that link to what we are doing in class by looking at different questions the book opens up. They propose that the names used in the book were pseudonyms and because of the name “Offred’ they can propose ideas as to who the commander was due to finding high-ranking Gileadean officials with the name or nickname as “Fred”. They propose that it was “Nick” who “by evidence of the very existence of the tapes” must have helped “Offred” to escape with the Mayday group who they said was a “shadowy… underground group” (Page 318).
The person who is speaking as an “expert” at the keynote, a man named “Professor Pieixoto”. He seems like an arrogant speaker like he’s an expert in this field. When he asks at the end if there’s “any questions” (Page 320), he asks it kind of cockily like there’s no reason anyone shouldn’t know about this society after he has spoke. Also, it’s like him making himself the authority figure of this section of history. He is also kind of dismissing Offred’s story, yes he is being objective about history but he is almost saying that her account wasn’t as good, in terms of history. “She could have told us much about the workings of the Gileadean empire, had she had the instincts of a reporter or a spy.” (Page 318).
At the end of the book, by saying that someone must have escaped in order to have the tapes, it gives a prediction based off of ‘facts’ which can technically answer some of the questions proposed when we finished the book. Though it doesn’t answer all the questions and also creates more about who really was Offred, Nick, Moira and the people that made up the society. It answers some questions but still keeps the mystery that Margaret Atwood created through her ending.
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.
For this practice essay it was on the political cartoon by Adam Zyglis, called “Rule of Law”. 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’.
For my essay I analysed the text and the images used in the political cartoon. For the text I discussed the title of the political cartoon which is shown on the base of the statue. I also discussed the papers in the unbalanced scale and what Trump is saying in the speech bubble. For the images I talked about the elephant caricature, the statue itself and the #metoo movement poster.I got 9/10 points.
To improve I could make my analysis more detailed and give more examples of irony as well, while explicitly referencing juxtaposition. If I was considering the other criteria, for organising, to improve I could separate the juxtaposition from the two paragraphs rather than including it together like I did. There was a lot of Irony in this political cartoon so that would be a better option. In general I could vary my sentence structure and make sure my spelling and grammar is accurate. This was a good practice essay and next time I will make sure to be more detailed in my analysis to improve that strand.
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.
Evie's Learner Portfolio 