The Handmaid's Tale and Philosophy

The Handmaid's Tale and Philosophy

Author: Rachel Robison-Greene

Publisher: Open Court Publishing

Published: 2018-12-04

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0812699963

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In The Handmaid’s Tale and Philosophy, philosophers give their insights into the blockbuster best-selling novel and record-breaking TV series, The Handmaid’s Tale. The story involves a future breakaway state in New England, beset by environmental disaster and a plummeting birth rate, in which the few remaining fertile women are conscripted to have sex and bear children to the most powerful men, all justified and rationalized by religious fundamentalism. Among the questions raised by this riveting and harrowing story: ● The Handmaid’s Tale displays the connection between sex and power. What light does this story shed on sex and power in our own society? ● The divinity of the feminine is associated with the female capacity to give birth. Is this association inherently exploitative? ● In the story, the revolution rapidly rebranded people by changing their names and placing them into functional groups with specific titles. How important is change in language to the suppression of individual freedom? ● The Handmaid’s Tale sees everything through the eyes of one character. How is it possible to construct a self and an identity at odds with the definition which the culture attempts to impose? ● In oppressive societies, even the most oppressed do show some freedom of choice. What is the limit of autonomy in a repressive society ruled by a fanatical ideology? ● Our present ethics of sex relies heavily on the notion of consent, but in the world of The Handmaid’s Tale there is little scope for consent. How is the power of consent constricted by the broader social conditions? ● The feminist idea of Care Ethics can be used to critique various gender relationships. How does Care Ethics evaluate our own society and the society depicted in The Handmaid’s Tale? ● The society portrayed in the story is marked by fierce religiosity, yet the Christian God presumably disapproves of its brutal exploitation and oppression. What is the relation between a loving Deity and the literal interpretation of scriptural passages? ● Among many dystopian stories, what makes The Handmaid’s Tale particularly memorable, and what purpose is served by the contemplation of imaginary dystopias? ● Suicide is common in The Handmaid’s Tale, and contemplating the possibility of suicide is even more common. Can life be worth living if the political and religious structure is thoroughly malign? ● Beneath the theocratic preaching, there is the practical suggestion that everything is being arranged for the good of society and therefore of everyone. Who gets to decide and enforce what is in society’s best interests?


How to Write a Killer Essay: The Handmaid's Tale

How to Write a Killer Essay: The Handmaid's Tale

Author: Becky Czlapinski

Publisher: Becky Walters Czlapinski

Published: 2023-06-24

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13:

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Do you feel a bit overwhelmed with the assignment you have related to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale? This guide will help place the play in context, and shed light on the many motifs and themes of the play. You will be provided with a detailed scene-by-scene summary and analysis and Critical Theory overviews, as well as step-by-step instruction on how to write a great essay.


A Study Guide for Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

A Study Guide for Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

Author: Gale, Cengage Learning

Publisher: Gale, Cengage Learning

Published: 2015-03-13

Total Pages: 35

ISBN-13: 1410335941

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A Study Guide for Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.


The Complicit Text

The Complicit Text

Author: Ivan Stacy

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-12-10

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1498598714

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The Complicit Text: Failures of Witnessing in Postwar Fiction identifies the causes of complicity in the face of unfolding atrocities by examining the works of Albert Camus, Milan Kunera, Kazuo Ishiguro, W. G. Sebald, Thomas Pynchon, and Margaret Atwood. Ivan Stacy argues that complicity often stems from narrative failures to bear witness to wrongdoing. However, literary fiction, he contends, can at once embody and examine forms of complicity on three different levels: as a theme within literary texts, as a narrative form, and also as it implicates readers themselves through empathetic engagement with the text. Furthermore, Stacy questions what forms of non-complicit action are possible and explores the potential for productive forms of compromise. Stacy discusses both individual dilemmas of complicity in the shadow of World War II and collective complicity in the context of contemporary concerns, such as the hegemony of neoliberalism and the climate emergency.


Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter

Author: William Baker

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2008-11-08

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 0826499716

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A succinct examination of Nobel prize-winner, Harold Pinter's creative output, providing introduction to drama (including theatre, film, TV and radio) and Pinter's letters prose and journalism.


The Handmaid's Tale (MAXNotes Literature Guides)

The Handmaid's Tale (MAXNotes Literature Guides)

Author: Malcolm Foster

Publisher: Research & Education Assoc.

Published: 2013-01-01

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 0738672904

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REA's MAXnotes for Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale MAXnotes offer a fresh look at masterpieces of literature, presented in a lively and interesting fashion. Written by literary experts who currently teach the subject, MAXnotes will enhance your understanding and enjoyment of the work. MAXnotes are designed to stimulate independent thought about the literary work by raising various issues and thought-provoking ideas and questions. MAXnotes cover the essentials of what one should know about each work, including an overall summary, character lists, an explanation and discussion of the plot, the work's historical context, illustrations to convey the mood of the work, and a biography of the author. Each chapter is individually summarized and analyzed, and has study questions and answers.


Margaret Atwood: An Introduction to Critical Views of Her Fiction

Margaret Atwood: An Introduction to Critical Views of Her Fiction

Author: Gina Wisker

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2011-12-29

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1350310549

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Margaret Atwood is an internationally renowned, highly versatile author whose work creatively explores what it means to be human through genres ranging from feminist fable to science fiction and Gothic romance. In this timely new study, Gina Wisker reassesses Atwood's entire fictional output to date, providing both original analysis and a lively overview of the criticism surrounding her work. Margaret Atwood: An Introduction to Critical Views of Her Fiction: - Covers all of Atwood's novels as well as her short stories. - Surveys the critical reception of her fiction and the fascinating debates developed by key Atwood critics. - Explores the main approaches to reading Atwood's work and examines issues such as her interventions in genre writing and ecology, as well as her feminism, post-feminism and narrative usage, both conventional and experimental. Concise and approachable, this is an ideal volume for anyone studying the fiction of this major contemporary writer.


The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale

Author: Karen A. Ritzenhoff

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2019-06-06

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1498589154

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The Handmaid's Tale: Teaching Dystopia, Feminism, and Resistance across Disciplines and Borders offers an interdisciplinary analysis of how Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, as well as its film and television adaptations, can be employed across different academic fields in high school, college and university classrooms. Scholars from a variety of disciplines and cultural contexts contribute to wide-ranging analytical strategies, ranging from religion and science to the role of journalism in democracy, while still embracing gender studies in a broader methodological and theoretical framework. The volume examines both the formal and stylistic ways in which Atwood's classic work and its adaptations can be brought to life in the classroom through different lenses and pedagogies.


The White Storm

The White Storm

Author: Martin Gelin

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2025-01-21

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 1493086367

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A piercing examination of America's struggle with racism and why this now threatens the survival of the nation's democracy When the U.S. Capitol was stormed in 2021, it was an attack on the very idea of America as a pluralist democracy. It was also a reminder that the worst threat to the United States today doesn’t come from any foreign despot, but from domestic racism. In The White Storm, the journalist and author Martin Gelin looks back at two decades as a political correspondent and three centuries of American history to understand this moment of crisis. In the vein of Alexis de Tocqueville or Tony Judt, fellow Europeans who traveled America searching for answers to its political contradictions, this is a journey across time and space, from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello to the slave plantations of Louisiana, from mass prisons in rural Arizona to memorials for lynching victims in Alabama. The book reveals how every step forward for Black Americans is met with a fierce backlash from white Americans, taking two recurring forms: violent extremism and a flight from the commons. The white backlash always grows in proportion to the black advances. After Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election, a Black man at a polling station in Detroit said: "We used to pick cotton, now we pick presidents." It is precisely this Black agency that white nationalists refuse to accept. The White Storm reveals how racism has permeated almost every significant conflict in America’s past. Now it threatens American democracy itself.


The End of the World

The End of the World

Author: Maria Manuel Lisboa

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1906924503

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Our fear of the world ending, like our fear of the dark, is ancient, deep-seated and perennial. It crosses boundaries of space and time, recurs in all human communities and finds expression in every aspect of cultural production - from pre-historic cave paintings to high-tech computer games. This volume examines historical and imaginary scenarios of apocalypse, the depiction of its likely triggers, and imagined landscapes in the aftermath of global destruction. Its discussion moves effortlessly from classic novels including Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, to blockbuster films such as Blade Runner, Armageddon and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Lisboa also takes into account religious doctrine, scientific research and the visual arts to create a penetrating, multi-disciplinary study that provides profound insight into one of Western culture's most fascinating and enduring preoccupations.