Holiday by Margaret Atwood
'Holiday' by Margaret Atwood has a simple and familiar subject but the
real meaning behind the simple story is hard hitting and in many ways
it is a warning.
She talks of a holiday and story shows how she is at a barbeque with
her family in the countryside. However she interweaves a bleak image
of our future within this straightforward story. It starts of with
Atwood describing her daughter eating sausages. She uses the words
''barbarism'' and creates an image of '' burst meat dripping down her
chin'' these words create a very primitive and uncivilized image. She
describes them standing beneath a large leafed tree with nature as
their only protection. This scene uses nature and portrays a primitive
scene where meat is being eaten in an uncivilized way with nature as a
shelter and a fire burning before of them.
The next stanza makes the impact of this primordial scene clearer. She
says ''this could be where we end up'' and says that we could end up
like our ancient ancestors. The rest of the stanza creates a very
austere and depressing image of how humankind may end up- Without
trees or rain, without shelter or animals for food. She says that
language, will only consist of 2 words ''hunger' and 'none' as humans
will be struggling to live and their will be no food left for us.
Why do we end up like this? This is answered in the next stanza where
she says 'there is too much dust in the stratosphere'. The bleak
future is going to be a result of our own actions. We humans are
continuously destroying nature, unknowingly causing our own death.
She warns us of the troubled times ahead through the next st...
... middle of paper ...
...t down large amounts of
trees. It is already been said that in a years time there will be no
oil left for us as we would have used it all up. Global warming is
solely our fault. The increased use of CFC's in air conditioners,
refrigerators, deodorants and other electrical appliances has
increased the earth's temperature greatly and caused many holes in the
ozone layer. Animals are killed in plentiful and now we have large
amounts of endangered species. Soon as she says there will be no
animals left for us to feed on, no trees or water.
With so many factors against us there is no chance of survival for
humankind on this planet.
Margaret Atwood conveys her story very subtly warning us of what we
may become and urges us to stop what we are doing and sit up and take
notice of how it will affect us in the long term.
I read a book about the Boston Massacre the was originally named the bloody massacre. The amount of killed persons is generally accepted to be 5 people. The Fifth of March is a 1993 novel about the Boston Massacre (of March 5, 1770) by historian and author Ann Rinaldi, who was also the author of many other historical fiction novels such as Girl in Blue and A Break with Charity. This book is about a young indentured servant girl named Rachel Marsh who finds herself changing as she meets many people, including young Matthew Kilroy, a British private in the 29th regiment.
Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate is the story of an African boy, Kek, who loses his father and a brother and flees, leaving his mother to secure his safety. Kek, now in Minnesota, is faced with difficulties of adapting to a new life and of finding his lost mother. He believes that his mother still lives and would soon join him in the new found family. Kek is taken from the airport by a caregiver who takes him to live with his aunt. It is here that Kek meets all that amazed him compared to his home in Sudan, Africa. Home of the brave shows conflicts that Kek faces. He is caught between two worlds, Africa and America. He feels guilty leaving behind his people to live in a distant land especially his mother, who he left in the midst of an attack.
she relates the story of her survival in the wilderness for a period of three
Wintergirls is a book related to eating disorders. The author’s purpose of writing this book is to inform readers what a person with an eating disorder. It depicts the inner and outer conflicts that characters like Lia and Cassie face with disorder. It all began with a competition between two characters of who can be the skinniest. Cassie dies in the attempt of winning the game. Lia, the main character in this novel, always keeps track of her food consumption. For example, one breakfast morning, Lia said she didn’t want “a muffin (410),…orange (75),…toast (87),…waffles (180)” (Anderson 5). Lia constantly keeps track of the calories she eats. Unlike Cassie who follows the path of bulimia, Lia inhibits herself from eating, therefore not getting the proper nutrients. This allows the readers to know how a person with a disorder like Lia can restrain herself from eating foods that we’re used to eating in our regular lives. Her ultimate goal frequently change, getting lower and lower each time. Lia strives for a “five hundred calories a day” (Anderson 189). Her constant change of goals allows the readers to know the struggles a girl with such a mindset may feel.
In The Handmaid’s Tale, much use is made of imagery; to enable the reader to create a more detailed mental picture of the novel’s action and also to intensify the emotive language used. In particular, Atwood uses many images involving flowers and plants.
In the short stories "The Story of an Hour," by Chopin and "A Rose for
A woman’s power and privileges depend on which societal class she is in. In Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale each group of women are each represented in a different way. The three classes of women from the novel are the Handmaids, the Marthas and the Wives. The ways in which the women are portrayed reflect their societal power and their privileges that they bestow.
“What happened ten years ago?” Jonas asked. The main character in Lois Lowry novel, The Giver is Jonas, who lives in a Dystopian Society. The problem he forces is that he realizes that the community is hiding many secrets such as what release truly is. During the course of the story Jonas became conscious of what his community is doing to his life. Jonas inherited many different types traits, learning many life lessons and enduring horrible secrets from the community. He thoroughly shows that he was proud of what he is accomplishing such as becoming receiver, sympathetic toward the cruel tactics of releasing the innocent or the guilty, and curious to know how his life is going to change after being presented with his job in the society.
Dystopian literature brings warning to the modern world and allows the audience to experience a new perception of life. The 1993 novel, The Giver, by Lois Lowry, fits into the dystopian genre because it makes judgment about modern society. She inscribed her novel “For all the children to whom we entrust the future”, which serves as a hope for a better future (Franklin). She targets the younger generation because they are the future. In Lowry’s novel, The Giver, Lowry’s perspective on modern society is that it tends to stay within its comfort zone, which creates limitations in life. The dystopian characteristics of the novel, importance of memory, the history surrounding the novel, and Lowry’s personal background all convey the notion that modern society should freedom bestowed it and to fully appreciate life in itself; society tends to take life’s freedoms for granted.
In the novel, The Giver by Lois Lowry, the author makes it clear through the main character Jonas that freedom and safety need to find an equal balance. Lowry shows the importance of deep emotions and family through Jonas. Jonas becomes the new receiver of memory and learns about the past. He also learned about the way it was when people knew what love was. Jonas’ father releases newborn children because they don’t weight the correct amount of weight or they don’t sleep well through the night. Release is a nice way of saying kill; the people of the community don’t know what kill means. They don’t have the freedom to expand their vocabulary. Lois Lowry makes it clear that safety has a negative side and you need that you need freedom to have a high functioning community.
“The Giver” a novel by Lois Lowry (1993), is an, engaging science fiction tale that provides the reader with examples of thought provoking ethical and moral quandaries. It is a novel geared to the young teenage reader but also kept me riveted. Assigning this novel as a class assignment would provide many opportunities for teachers and students to discuss values and morals.
Margaret Atwood’s “Happy Endings” is an Author’s telling of societal beliefs that encompass the stereotypical gender roles and the pursuit of love in the middle class with dreams of romance and marriage. Atwood writes about the predictable ways in which many life stories are concluded for the middle class; talking about the typical everyday existence of the average, ordinary person and how they live their lives. Atwood provides the framework for several possibilities regarding her characters’ lives and how each character eventually completes their life with their respective “happy ending”.
Throughout many of Toni Morrison?s novels, the plot is built around some conflict for her characters to overcome. Paradise, in particular, uses the relationships between women as a means of reaching this desired end. Paradise, a novel centered around the destruction of a convent and the women in it, supports this idea by showing how this building serves as a haven for dejected women (Smith). The bulk of the novel takes place during and after WWII and focuses on an all black town in Oklahoma. It is through the course of the novel that we see Morrison weave the bonds of women into the text as a means of healing the scars inflicted upon her characters in their respective societies.
Nine patriarchs found a town. Four women flee a life. Only one paradise is attained. Toni Morrison's novel Paradise revolves around the concept of "paradise," and those who believe they have it and those who actually do. Morrison uses a town and a former convent, each with its own religious center, to tell her tale about finding solace in an oppressive world. Whether fleeing inter- and intra-racial conflict or emotional hurt, the characters travel a path of self-isolation and eventual redemption. In her novel Paradise, Toni Morrison uses the town of Ruby and four broken women to demonstrate how "paradise" can not be achieved through isolation, but rather only through understanding and acceptance.
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any”-Alice Walker. What this quote really means is that people are hopeless and they don’t realize on what they could do. They only focus on what’s going to happen next and about their safety, but they don’t notice that they are giving up their power to the government, leaving them powerless. Margaret Atwood examines power and peoples attempts to control each other. People in Gilead are viewed based on their social classes. This includes the Handmaids, Wives, Commanders, Aunts, Angles, Eyes, Martha’s, and the Econowives. It’s either they have power in their hands, or they don’t have power at all.