Revision notes for the kite runner, the handmaid's tale, and Blake's songs of innocence and experience. AQA English Lit B Paper 2 Social and political protest writing. Covers: various critical interpretations and author's intentions when writing,
PAPER 2 RESEARCH NOTES (Handmaid’s Tale, Blake and The Kite Runner)
CRITICS FOR THE HANDMAID'S TALE
Well known:
Howells and Staels: Offred’s means of survival is storytelling and resistance
Beran: Offred’s power is in language
Gottlieb: inevitable defeat of protagonist is a genre trope. ‘the central character cannot be
made responsible for his or her ultimate failure or defeat in the repressive system’
Mohr: offred is paralysed by her love relationships
Weiss: dystopian heroes never as ‘helpless as they like to believe’ express a ‘desire for
happiness over freedom when confronted with a stark choice’
NEW! Critics:
★ MALAK: ‘skilful portrayal of a state that in theory claims to be founded on Christian
principles. Yet in practice miserably lacks spirituality and benevolence.’
★ RESHMI: ‘the society of today where choices are too many may lead to a totalitarian
future that prohibits choice.’
★ WAGNER-LAWLOR: ‘"Offred is politically complacent before the takeover."
★ GOLDBLATT: ‘The work women do, conspires to maintain the subjection of their own
kind.’
★ DANIELS AND BOWEN: ‘Every step, every mouthful of food, every move is
observed, reported, circumvented or approved.’ (THE HANDMAIDS’ LIVES)
★ HOWELLS: ‘Atwood’s choice of a female narrator turns the traditionally masculine
dystopian genre upside down,’
★ SOMACARRERA: the Aunts’ power ‘is disguised as a spirit of camaraderie’
★ HOOPER: ‘Offred's monotonous manner of expression just drones and drones’
★ CIXOUS: ‘Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time.’
★ “In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood’s pessimism comes to the fore as she attempts to
frighten us into an awareness of our destiny before it’s too late” (Globe and Mail,
1985)
★ In America, reviewers appeared to find the novel particularly unsettling: “The
Handmaid’s Tale provides a compelling lesson in power politics and in reasonable
intentions gone hysteric” (Philadelphia Inquirer, 1986)
★ in 2018, a BBC article suggested that “Atwood’s novel has an eerie way of always
feeling of the moment”
HOSSEINI’S VIEWS AND INTENTIONS WHEN WRITING
Hosseini wanted to "write about Afghanistan before the Soviet war because that is largely a
forgotten period in modern Afghan history
Wanted to show the world that Afghanistan’s are not to be identified as simply terrorists or
Taliban because of the way the media has portrayed Afghanistan after 9/11
Hosseini is himself an Afghan refugee who settled in the United States who became acutely
aware that Afghanistan was mostly known in the West for negative reasons, such for its
seemingly incessant wars, tribalism, and religious fundamentalism.
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