This document holds everything you need to pass A-level English Literature! Not only are the quotes clearly written out with page numbers, but they are organised thematically. Furthermore, some key quotes have added analysis to aid idea generation.
The Handmaids Tale
Atwood once called the handmaid’s tale “speculative fiction”. The mix of past and present
tense and imagery helps to form this because Atwood is forming her world on the basis of
key features from our own.
The Book “invents nothing we haven’t already invented”
The Handmaid's Tale is clearly in the tradition of American dystopias with their well-known
themes of totalitarian control, use of military and secret police, manipulation through
organized use of media, re-writing of history, re-education.
In theory this book is in the epistolary form
This shifts the orality of the book because it is a verbal retelling, thus why the stream
of thought is so prevalent.
Identity We were the people who were not Ironic because women can’t
in the papers. We lived in the read. But also the whole idea
blank white spaces at the edges of that history is written around
print.’ (p.66) key figures and the real people
My self is a thing I must now who lived the experience
compose, as one composes a become marginalized.
speech. What I must present is a Reforming one’s self in to
made thing, not something becoming the embodiment of
born.’76 the politics that surround the
We are two-legged wombs, that’s world that you live in.
all: sacred vessels, By stripping them of identity it
To him I am not merely empty (the becomes a lot easier for them
commander to feel like there is nothing
worth fighting for.
Objectification.
Feeling seen becomes a
blessing.
Night The night is mine, my own time, to The connotations of night imply
do with it as I will, as long as I am retrospective thought. Perhaps
this is why it is a constant
quiet 49 reference through the book as it
give’s Offred the chance to pull
the story together. Very oral.
The Female Nature demands variety for men … Justification. Men like to use
experience To trick the men into thinking they this type of pseudoscience in
were several different women order to give a civilised front to
COMMANDER 249 their purely selfish desires.
Job’s repeated in Soul scrolls Jobs act as a key element of
“A rat in a maze is free to go second wave feminism, we
anywhere, as long as it stays inside never really progress because
, the maze.” men only pretend to think we
This way they’re protected, they need jobs.
can fulfil their biological destinies This looks at trying to play on
in peace. With full support and that traditional perception that
encouragement. women want that protected
The spectacles women used to world of male dominance.
make of themselves. Oiling Again an attempt to justify.
themselves like roast meat on a Animal imagery, making it look
spit, and bare backs and like that was archaic. Play on
shoulders- the evangelical rights morality
Such things do not happen to nice shift under Regan.
women Rape culture. Guilt.
I felt love was going on without Are women able to truly love
me (abt Luke) someone who seeks to oppress
"What we're aiming for, is a spirit them?
of camaraderie among women. IRONIC as they have never
We must all pull together." been more divided.
The obsessiveness looks to
make this concept alien.
Particularly in the wake of the
religious movement which
wanted women to remain
docile.
Voice The past is a great darkness, filled This again draws the reader to
with echo’s. question the objectivity of
Offred’s narration and whether
what see is saying is true.
Speculative fiction after all.
Bodies She’s a flag on a hilltop, showing The use of a body becomes a
us what can still be done: we too kind of Semaphore (an
can be saved” apparatus for conveying
Nick- my flag, my semaphore. information by means of visual
Body language. signs). Women’s bodies
become envy and aspiration
and an ever changing goal. This
creates internal discord.
Even Offred acknowledges that
the society has become so
repressed that people act as
one of the only forms of
reading.
Unreliable I made that up. It didn’t happen Clearly there is reference to
narrator that way. Here is what happened.’ the concept of storytelling
(p.273) here. As if she wishes the truth
I’d like to believe this story I’m was better, or worse just so
telling. I need to believe it. I must that she does not love nick.
believe it. There is escape in the fact that
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