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THT Epigraphs and historical notes - Coggle Diagram
THT Epigraphs and historical notes
Epigraphs
Genesis: "she bare Jacob no children"- objectifying women as just sexual and reproductive figures with no control over their bodies
Genesis: "give me children or else I die"- echoed in the novel, inspired the ceremony.
Swift: satirist who addresses poor living conditions for Irish people and put forward radical solution eg. cannibalism and treating women as animals. Satirical thread in the novel, introducing ideas of dehumanising and abusing women
Swift: satirical attack outlines a proposal to solve the problem. His pamphlet is an attack on how the leading classes were disinterested in the suffering of the poor.
The novel also makes an attack on a social issue in a world that doesn't exist but could. Handmaids used like the children in Swift's satire
Sufi proverb: human survival is instinct that needs no instruction OR satirical comment on Gilead where rules are enforced on all aspects of human life but not all things need control
Sufi proverb: live with what you have however life-destroying. Gilead perspective
Historical notes
Makes the story realistic and capable of happening- reinforces speculative fiction
Also distances us from events so we feel we do not have to be concerned about it as it is history
Tries to ridicule and degrade Offred showing us society hasn't changed with regards to women- evokes more sympathy or more questioning
not meant to be a satisfying ending meant to pull us into future immediately. Is it hopeful, suggesting the resistance got her out and the period of theocracy has ended
"the word tail; that being, to some extent, the word bone"- sexual joke (Got some tail meaning got sex linking to tailbone of a woman)
whole book is about sexual slavery and rape and they mock it showing the further you get in history the less real it seems. Nobody to first hand tell the story
"Gileadean society was under a good deal of pressure [...] our job is not to censure but to understand"- justify what they did suggesting we should not disapprove but what Gilead did was wrong and it is their duty as a historian to have an opinion and warn us of history
romanticises the horror and make it seem almost fictional and distant
"she was among the first wave of women recruited for reproductive purposes"- euphemism using military language to dehumanise the process so there is no one to blame. Makes it seem like it had to be done
readers wonder did it get worse or better, making us ask more questions. Legitimises it and diminishes women's experience of the cruel world to a "simple tactic"
The underground frailroad- doesn't empathise with the suffering. Everything in book really happened
"thirty cassette tapes"- oral tradition of storytelling. women were not educated. Legitimise women's experience with a technology twist
"little was truly original with or indigenous of Gilead its genius was synthesis"- praises Gilead as seems impressed with their intelligence. Mirrors Nazis policy which was not a cohesive ideology but the horrors were pieced together, justifies it
"some of them could have been filled by our anonymous author"- her information in not sufficient, judges her as an individual for doing a disservice to history. He views the story with an objective mind
"any crumbs the goddess of history has designed"- metaphor for her story, diminishes and disregards her emotional account. Femininity of history shows the male voice criticism our female protagonist showing men taking from women
Piexoto fails to recognise the story isn't a factual account for male historians but an emotional story to enlighten the future to the horrors of the regime. His sarcastic and crude tone shows he believes he is above the actual victim