Rape Fantasies
Sadly rape is an all too common accurance, which has been going on forever.
Since it does happen a lot, there are a lot of people talking about the subject. In
Margaret Atwood's short story "Rape Fantasies", several women casually discuss
their personal rape fantasies. The main idea being portrayed through out the story is
that women battle with feeling powerful and powerless. She also discusses the distinction
between between fantasy and fear in her story. Through character descriptions, certain
settings in the story, the point of view, the tone, the dialogue, most forms of irony, and
symbolism, Margaret Atwood was confidently able to reinerate her theme of power and
powerless; fantasy and fear.
Estelle was the main character. She was the first person narrator. According to
Darlene, Estelle has the "mark of an original mind." Estelle has rape fantasies where she
is able to talk the rapist out of finishing the act. She humanizes her rapist because that is
how she regains her feeling of power. She tries to steal all the power back by starting
a dialogue with the attacker. Throughout the story, Estelle demonstrates that she does
believe women have the right to say no but will they have the power to say no. She
doubts the power of women. The only reason Estelle can talk about such a terrefying
situation is through defensive humor. Estelle does not want to be secluded. She wants
to be independent but is terrified of it. Through making comments like "it's getting so
you can hardly be socialable anymore, and how are you supposed to meet people if you
can't trust them even that basic amount?" Through this statement you can tell she desires
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...nd her fear and feeling of powerlessness. We are able to recount memories
of times that we felt the same way, whic gives the story meaning and depth. This is
also why the author has her speaking in monologue form. It is anoher way we feel
connected to her. During her monologue, she sets a comoic and ironic tone. She trys
to bright lightness to a dark topic.
During the whole story, Estelle tries to bring comic relief to a frightening topic. In
the begining of the story, she talks about how much magainze talk about rape. "Rape, Ten
Things to do About it, Like it was ten new hairdo's or something." She is trying to be
funny about a non-funny topic. Later in the story, she slightly laughts at the girls rape
fantasies, which the other girls did not like but she was trying to casually point out the
harm that they are forgetting.
In the end, Norma comes back to Jimmy because the person she lives with is too serious. In “The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn’t Flash Red Anymore,” Victor and Adrian talk about the basketball stars on the reservation, hoping that someone on the reservation can resist alcohol and develop his or her basketball skills to be a successful ballplayer. The function of Alexie’s humor shifts throughout his stories. In “A Drug Called Tradition,” Alexie’s humor effectively accomplishes one of his goals by obliging readers to reconsider their concepts, while his humor helps his characters improve their situations in “The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor.” In “The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn’t Flash Red Anymore,” humor mitigates the characters’ pain and despair.
Lou Ann feels obligated to stay with Angel. When Taylor asks if Lou Ann would move back in with Angel if he wanted things to go back to the way they were, she responded “Well, what else could I do? He’s my husband, isn’t he?” (157) Lou Ann doesn’t believe that she could live without Angel because she was raised believing that she should depend on her husband for support. Teen mothers had to drop out of school to care for their child. At Taylor’s old high school, “girls were dropping by the wayside like seeds off a poppyseed bun . . . there were maybe two boys to every one of us” (4) Girls had to give up their education to care for their child while boys could remain in school. This shows inequality because even if a boy was the father of that child, he could still receive an education while the mother cannot. When comforting Estevan after Esperanza tries to kill herself, Taylor feels that she is being a stereotypical housewife. She unintentionally fell back onto old traditions where the woman cooks for the man, saying “From my earliest memory, times of crisis seemed to end up with women in the kitchen preparing food for the men.” (177) This stereotype suggests that a woman’s place is in the home while the men are the ones supporting the
...portant than anything and she did not let anyone or anything stop her from her main goal. This plays themes were based on love, passion, rage and vengeance.
On March 23, 2017 at approximately 0709 hours, I was dispatched to 25408 MC RD S.6, within the County of Montezuma, State of Colorado, reference a cold attempted suicide by a juvenile.
The first influential factor to the atrophy of social life that Eitzen writes about is moving away. Americans nowadays are always on the go – if moving is the most convenient idea, they will move with no regard to formed relationships that will soon be broken. People are often forced to move in order to follow a job or because of problems within the family. Constantly moving about causes a decline in intimate relationships. This is also true in people who live alone. The lack of regular and reliable social interaction can lead to a less sociable personality and less motivation to form real relationships. Real relationships are what lead to a healthy social life.
...The significance of Estelle's need to explain her position to the listener, despite her fears, she sees the risk being worth it as opposed to the alternative of isolation form human interaction, which not only unveils Estelle's vulnerability but in turn gives Estelle credibility ("I Just Don't Understand It." Gale).
...e relationship with men, as nothing but tools she can sharpen and destroy, lives through lust and an uncanny ability to blend into any social class makes her unique. Her character is proven as an unreliable narrator as she exaggerates parts of the story and tries to explain that she is in fact not guilty of being a mistress, but a person caught in a crossfire between two others.
Instead of proclaiming her feelings out loud, she suppresses them. The result is a series of recordings, which describes her life, and the things she wishes she could change.
...re many similarities when it comes to technique, characterization, themes, and ideologies based on the author's own beliefs and life experiences. However, we also see that it appears the author herself often struggles with the issue of being herself and expressing her own individuality, or obeying the rules, regulations and mores of a society into which she was born an innocent child, one who by nature of her sex was deemed inferior to men who controlled the definition of the norms. We see this kind of environment as repressive and responsible for abnormal psyches in the plots of many of her works.
She makes Estella be the young lady she herself wanted to be. In order to succeed in making Estella into a proper woman, Miss Havisham teaches her lessons. Miss Havisham is training Estella to be “hard and haughty and capricious to the last degree [and] … to wreak vengeance on all the male sex”(720). Miss Havisham doesn't want Estella to get harmed the way she did, so she makes Estella grow up to harm other surroundings. Miss Havisham is worried about Estella because she's worried if Estella falls in love with someone that will eventually end up breaking her heart, so she makes Estella get revenge on all men. Even though Miss Havisham tried everything she can in the process of making Estella a lady, the outcome is unexpected. Miss Havisham interrupts the fact of how she is devastated of the result of Estella
play like format to captivate the reader. The subject matter of her work is very
In my eyes, Estelle is a na?ve narrator and her naivete is disproved. From her first fantasy, she went so far as to ask the rapeman to help her to find her plastic lemon in her purse. More surprising is that the rapeman so far as to help Estelle. At last, Estelle squirt him in the eye by the lemon. That is ridiculous and it will never appear this situation in the real life. What wil...
Is anyone truly a stranger to nightmares? Has anyone not woken up in a feverish sweat with a racing pulse or pounding heart? Whose eyes have never wildly searched their room for the phantoms of a dream? Now, what if the familiar consolation of learning it was all in your head never came? How do you wake up from a nightmare that is, in fact, a reality? I think I’m getting ahead of myself. What I mean to say is, I was raped, and rape is a nightmare.