About "The Road"

I found that the novel by Cormac McCarthy was a very interesting read. The post-apocalyptic setting that the audience is given at the very beginning of the novel starts the fear for the father and son. I think that this is an amazing novel that could very well be helpful to push society to reduce the pollution in the atmosphere because of the horrific images that "The Road" leaves with the reader. / Throughout the novel we are never privy to the name of the father and son. This lack of information has an effect that I had not realized. By refraining from naming the two main characters the author has made it so that they could be anyone, you and your father, your brother and father, it makes the experiences that they go through a lot more personal. By doing this McCarthy has written a books the touches everyone because the environment that the father and son live in is not so impossible with the way that we are pollution and living now./ The recurring image of “carrying the fire” has great significance in “The Road.” When the little boy talks about carrying the fire and others that also carry the fire, he is talking about goodness, hope, love, everything that the world before him no longer has but had before the unexplained apocalypse. At the beginning of the novel McCarthy begins with a lot of dark imagery while at the end after the father has died, the boy finds others who “carry the fire” and the boys prospects are looking up after the death of his father. /

Houses

After reading "How Fiction Works" by James Wood, we see that the style that "The Road" is written in is indirect. McCarthy uses this style of writing to make the information presented more reliable and less personal to the father or child. We are rarely given information about the area that the father does not already have so "The Road" has some limitations to the descriptions that we read."The Road" is very enthralling read because of the way that it is written; because we never really get a huge influx in information but what we do get is well rounded and not biased toward one character./ In Wood's text he describes a house with "many windows, but only two or three doors," comparing the house to writing an how it can be done. I think that this is a very interesting idea that Wood has put forward. I think that if the windows are different ways to write (perspectives) then the doors would be the products./When Wood’s talks about the unreliability of first person narratives and other styles of writing I found it interesting. Thinking back to the other novels that we read this year such as “We” and “The Handmaids Tale” it is obvious that we were obviously not getting truly reliable information as we only got parts of the story as well as information that the characters were (themselves) unsure of.

Falling Women

In Atwood's novel "The Handmaids Tale," the notion of love has been twisted and warped since Gilead had been formed. In this excerpt Atwood shows Offreds reaction and connection to love as well as the doubts involved due to the horrible conditions that she is required to live in. Through the use of specific diction the mood of this excerpt is felt, while imagery and irony helps intensify the tone./ The diction in this excerpt clearly portrays the reaction of the commander to love as well as Offreds own feelings toward love. While Offred talks about love she expresses the opinion that love was inevitable by using “one way or another,” “it was the central thing,” “we we’re falling women.” The diction used to describe the commander’s reaction is also quite vivid as Atwood uses “sneered.” The reaction of both the commander and Offred displays that the world they live in does not have the same connections to love as it used to have. This diction also affects the mood of this excerpt because the it shows that the commander does not take love seriously while women (in general) were centered on it. Near the end of the excerpt, Offred beings to explain the negative side of love by comparing love to pain. This idea is very similar to the purpose of the handmaids and Gilead, the love if freedom and uncontrollable, while when they do start to control people they are no longer able to love, creating mutants./ When Offred describes those who have never been in love as, “mutant[s], a creature from outer space,” the imagery that is provided intensifies the tone because the audience can feel Offreds disgust and revulsion. This imagery is very effective because the reader pictures disfigured people, while the handmaids and people living in Gilead do not know what love is and have never experienced it. “The shadows in the sockets of his eyes darker and more cavernous than in day-time,” this imagery illustrates the doubt and fear the creeps into everything in the lives of the people that live in Gilead.

Uncomfortable

After researching about feminism in the world I found an interesting articles about Germany. This article, published in 2005, was about the legalization of prostitution. I found this article to be quite disturbing because of the ability of a woman to lose her benefits because she did not feel comfortable selling her body in a brothel. I think that the original intention of this action was good. I would have made the conditions for the prostitutes better with "proper contracts, proper health insurance" but these benefit were never felt during the actual event. While instead of helping the prostitutes is hindered other women in the country, women were at risk of losing their benefits while unemployed because they did not take up jobs in the "sex trade." This is similar to The Handmaids Tale because in this new society women are no longer abused or raped and they are "equal" however these benefits are not really felt by the women. Insted the handmaids are restricted, controlled and subjugated. http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/jan/05013106.html

No Way to Win

At the beginning of the text by Susan Faludi, Blame It on Feminism it appears that the liberation of women have caused all this pain. They “have never been more miserable,” they experience “an infertility epidemic,” “a man shortage,” “loneliness,” “identity crisis,” and they experience these things “precisely because they are free.” From these issues it appears that the liberation of women is actually painful to the women. In The Handmaids Tale we see something similar to this, the handmaids are protected, there is no rape anymore, they all have homes, and they are fed and clothed, however their lives are not pleasant. With this “freedom” they also lost education, their rights to read and learn, they also are forced to produce offspring or move to the colonies, they are also hated by the wives that can no longer produce children. Like the women in Faludi’s text the handmaids have been “robbed” of something, love, while the women in Blame It on Feminism lost men.

                Blame It on Feminism also describes how women are not actually really free, they still have many places in their live that are lesser than men’s. I thought that it was interesting that even though liberation has so far appeared to hurt the liberated, that some of the women that are written about in this text feel that they should still strive for equality. Though I see the benefit in becoming equal to men it also would seem apparent how freedom is causing pain among women. The statistics that Faludi provides are “75 to 95 percent of women credit the feminist campaign with improving their lives, and a similar portion say that the women’s movement should keep pushing forward,” this means that that either women think that liberation is more important, the consequences are not as bad as they are portrayed, or the problems may be fixed if equality is reached.

                Continuing through Faludi’s writing she explains that the problems created by the liberation of women are actually hugely exaggerated by the media.  This explains women’s insistence that equality of women is still fought for. This is seen in The Handmaids Tale because we see that the women in that society have a group that recognizes each other by the word mayday , and this group is against this regime and the way that they are force to live their lives.

The Next Glass Ceiling

In the text by Naomi Wolf, she talks about the problems that women face now that they have gained their rights. It seems as though women have lost the rights to their own body. In The Beauty Myth Wolf writes about how after women obtained rights and jobs the next problem was image. Now that women have all that power the last thing left to be controlled by is their image. Through statistics Wolf tells us that as women got more and more power the number of eating disorders and cosmetic surgery shot up. It appears that men used the last thing they could to stay in control of the women.

In The Handmaids Tale we see that women’s rights seem to have been removed even though they appear to have the power (as they produce the next generation). By doing this the society has also removed the women’s need to be beautiful. Wolf writes about the fact that in many religions goddesses “only function [is] the service of the divine ‘womb.’” This is seen in The Handmaids Tale because the handmaids are needed and are “special” because of the service they provide but they are really only needed for their reproductive ability.

The power that is exercised by men (in Wolf’s essay) to control the thoughts of women through the advertisements (ex: “diet and skin care industries because the new cultural censors of women’s intellectual space.”) is also seen in The Handmaids Tale. During the novel we see that the education of the handmaids is not important any longer and that the next generation of handmaids will not know how to read or write. This affects the power that they could potentially have.

I think that in The Handmaids Tale the struggle between Beauty and power has been shown very well. Throughout the novel Offred mentions that she used to wear makeup and now she no longer does anything to try and beautify herself. While she is taking a bath she tries not to look at herself so that she won’t see what defines her so completely. From this we see that in an attempt at liberation of women, beauty has been discarded, however women’s freedom has been even more restricted.  

Power or Lack Thereof

In the short text, Lusting for Freedom, by Rebecca Walker, she talks about the power that is gained in sexual relationships, and the power of one’s body. I think that this connects very strongly to the novel The Handmaids Tale, because of the portrayal of women and their purpose in society. In The Handmaids Tale women are given the responsibility to produce the next generation for the community that they are living in, to produce the people that will never know what it is like to be free.

The power that the Handmaids hold is really just an illusion. This is because even though they are the only ones that produce children for the civilization, if they are infertile, and cannot produce children they are sent away to the colonies. The connection between this and the text Lusting for Freedom is that in the text Walker emphasizes that power and trust that is gained, while in The Handmaids Tale the ceremony is their twisted version of sex where there is no trust between the Handmaid and the wives, and the power of the women is removed from them because they have no say in what is being done to them.

Walker also mentions that “Sex can also be power because knowledge is power.” I think that in The Handmaids Tale the society has attempted to make this untrue. They have removed all education for the Handmaids, they are no longer allowed to read, all knowledge will be unimportant to the Handmaids anyway because the single job that they are given does not require it. In The Handmaids Tale the necessity of knowledge has been removed and therefore the power gained through sex has also been removed.

The shame that Offred feels during the ceremony is also similar to the shame that Walker mentions in Lusting for Freedom. In Lusting for Freedom Walker talks about the judgments that are imposed that “encourage shame within individuals.” This is seen in The Handmaids Tale because of the shame that Offred feels because of the ceremony and her sole purpose in society. I think that in Walkers text she almost sums up the problem with the ceremony, “Sex in silence and filled with shame is sex where our agency is denied.”

What We All Want to Be

The first text that we read I thought was very true on many levels. We all crave to be perfect, whatever image of perfect is thrown at us. Unfortunately it seems as though Barbie is that perfect. Throughout this text it is apparent that the author feels that the Barbie constricts children's view of the possibilities of the world. I personally agree with this idea, whether it is a Barbie or other "perfect" doll little girls all find that they themselves are not perfect in comparison to these plastic role models. The concept of having these other Barbies (Birkenstock Barbie, Bisexual Barbie, Bite-The-Bullet Barbie, Blue Collar Barbie, and others) does not seem to mesh with the worlds ideals, whether we want to or not. Many people would believe that companies that produce these other barbies were trying to confuse and destroy their little girls child hood, while the “normal” Barbie does just the same thing though it lacks the perspective of the rest of the world.

In the handmaids tale you see this happening to the women living in the area. The longer they live there the more they are programmed to be “perfect.” They all are there for the birth of a child, witnessing the job they are also supposed to be fulfilling. While the Barbie shows them what they should look like the women in the Handmaids tale are shown what they are meant to produce.

In the second text I found that the problems the author points out are similar to my complaints when I browse through a magazine.  The models in the pictures are unhealthy, that’s really the only thing to say. The models in pictures, on runways, in movies, are all underweight and its disgusting. Why can’t people be average sized? We have Super Über Skinny models and Plus Size models, what about the NORMAL people? Huh? It appears in the media that being a stick figure with skin is acceptable (though skinnier would be better), or weighty with large curves (stretch marks included) is the only way to go. So either you have to be overweight or underweight. You choose…  Both not the best options in the world but apparently those are the only two body shapes the world interprets as beautiful cause you never see a normal person in a magazine, only one of the two extremes. In this article http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-418780/The-stunning-size-12-model-branded-fat-TV-competition.html the controversy over the weight of models has become appearnt. Now that the public is seeing that the models that they are exposed to are unhealthily skinny people have started to fuss over the images we are trying to get across to younger girls and such.