September 15, 2010
The prompt is a question one must answer regarding the literary excerpt one is analyzing.
A.P. stands for "answer the prompt"!!!!!!
Read the title!!!!!
Prompt for THE HANDMAID’S TALE:
Analyze how Margaret Atwood uses figurative language to show the theme of dominance and powerlessness in the excerpt from THE HANDMAID’S TALE.
Figurative language:
Metaphor
Simile
Imagery
Personification
Tone
Symbolism
Create a grid or a “t-graph” for dominance and powerlessness.
Structure:
First paragraph:
(Intro)
Suggestion: Use an excerpt from the piece that you are analyzing in the first paragraph.
You must include in the first paragraph:
The topic sentence. You must include the name of the author and the title of the book. You must include the prompt in the first paragraph.
Through the use of such figurative language as metaphor, symbolism, imagery and tone Margaret Atwood establishes the theme of control and dominance in THE HANDMAID’S TALE.
Or:
The Taliban, in an extreme reaction to European colonization, waged a ruthless war against the West and targeted as its victim modernity and the concomitant rise of women’s rights. The Taliban denied the Afghani women the most basic of human rights – the right to be educated, the right to engage in meaningful work, the right to determine one’s own destiny. There are uneasy parallels which exist between all religious fundamentalism and extreme right wing political thought. Margaret Atwood's THE HANDMAID TALE was written as a warning to the 1980's Americans who seemed to be sleeping, unaware, of the dangers posed by the rise of Christian televangelists, fundamentalism and the sharp turn towards far right politics. In her dystopic view of an America in the not too distant future, the first to fall victim to political oppression would be the hard won, recently earned and all too fragile rights of women. In an America undone by rampant corporate greed and devastated by ecological disaster, where the environment has been laid waste by toxins affecting the very survival of humans, women and their basic rights as humans will be crushed by the patriarchal system. In a world where human greed and stupidity have dangerously tilted the delicate ecosystem and tipped our species into possible extinction, the militaristic, fundamentalist, right wing patriarchy will seize power and strip women of their rights and reduce them to mindless, uneducated baby factories. This is what Margaret Atwood is warning us about in THE HANDMAID TALE.
or:
One aspect that all totalitarian governments share is the need to destroy resistance from any perceived threat. The Taliban, in an extreme reaction to European colonization, tried to root out all aspects of the West and modernity. One obvious example of the West is its democratic principle and the concomitant idea of women’s rights, which was one of the first things to fall victim to the vicious Taliban regime. In an effort to destroy any vestige of the West, and to exert an iron hold on the people of Afghanistan, the women were denied the right to work, to attend school or to determine their destiny. There are uneasy parallels that exist between all religious fundamentalism and extreme right wing political thought. Margaret Atwood wrote THE HANDMAID’S TALE as a reaction to the rise of extreme right wing politics - and its handmaiden, religious fundamentalism - in America during the 1980's. Her vision of the America of the future is a dystopic one in which the world has become diseased, the birthrates have fallen and the human race is on the verge of extinction due to environmental pollution. In a vacuum of power, the crudest and the most brutal force which offers the quickest solution will be the one to seize control. Such is the case in Atwood’s America – an America she envisions as being Talibanesque in its brutality against women. In Atwood’s America of the future, draconian measures are taken to control and confine woman, taking away the most basic of her human rights – the right to read, the right to work, the right to live a life not fettered by her biology – instead, Atwood warns, this America will turn her into a baby factory whose sole purpose is to service the men and to produce babies for the continuation of the species.
'"Could I have a match?' I ask her. Surprising how much like a small begging child she makes me feel."
This is how you enclose a quotation inside a larger quotation:
" 'Could I have a match?' I ask her. Surprising how much like a small begging child she makes me feel." Offred is a grown woman in a dystopic world envisioned by Margaret Atwood in which women are enslaved for their fertility in a society destroyed by manmade environmental disasters. Through the use of imagery and symbolism Atwood creates a world devoid of hope.
How to do body paragraphs:
Body Paragraph:
Topic sentence (one sentence)
Develop the topic sentence (two to three sentences)
Give examples that prove your topic sentence
Explain how your example proves your topic sentence
Show/explain how your example proves the prompt.
Nice tidy segue (transition) sentence to pave your way to the next paragraph.
Check the blog each day for the class notes. I will post the important class notes, etc. each day on the blog.
hollywoodhighschool.net
Blogs
jbridges
AP English
How to embed quotations:
Atwood uses cool, slick imagery “…ice floating in a bowl of water…” to create a glacial world of indifference to human need.
Atwood’s use of childhood symbols “…a doll and her bed made from a matchbox…”, or Offred’s need to "...ask for a match..." and the disapproving response from Rita all suggest the overwhelming oppression of women.
Allusion: a reference in a piece of literature to either an historical event, or another literary piece, including the Bible, Shakespeare or Greek mythology or any other piece of literature.
Difference in status: who has more power?
Ostentatious: excessive showy.
Nostalgic: longing for another time or place now lost.
Poignant: bittersweet
Resolute: strong, firm, unyielding, steadfast
Objective: without emotional bias, not subjective; without a personal opinion or prejudice; like a camera simply recording what has occurred. Like a newspaper account; journalism should be objective. Not slanted in any emotional direction.
Bitterly: angry, sour about how things have turned out.
Remorseful: to regret something you have done; to be sorry or regretful
Reluctant: not wanting to do something; resistant to take action; hesitation
Indifferent: not caring about the outcome
Rules:
Never refer to the writer by her/his first name.
The first time one uses the name of the writer one may use the full name.
The last name, such as in this case, Atwood, can be used subsequently.
Ms. Atwood can be used subsequently.
Example of a flat, uninspiring sentence:
Atwood uses metaphor to convey the imbalance of power between the two women.
Uses: employs, conveys,
Conveys; to show
Put descriptive adjectives before nouns;
Descriptive adverbs before verbs.
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