Topic proposal for The Handmaid's Tale

My topic proposal for my third and final essay this semester on The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood will be to write about the techniques used in Nazi Germany to oppress people, and how this closely relates to the Gileadean government and their oppression of women in the Handmaid’s Tale. Margaret Atwood paints an incredibly intriguing world in which a women is nothing more then viable ovaries who are not permitted to read, or write or fully live. This world is very similar to the world created for the Jews in Germany and I believe by researching and comparing these two worlds, I will fully understand and appreciate the text of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The Nazi’s in Germany during the 1930’s and 40’s, oppressed large groups of people, mainly being the Jewish. I find this topic very similar to how women were oppressed and brainwashed in the Handmaid’s Tale and how this power over people can lead to unimaginable horrors and living conditions. I absolutely believe by furthering my understanding of the techniques used by totalitarianism governments and how they gain control of large numbers of people, will lead me to fully understand the text of Atwood’s book. The Handmaid’s in Atwood’s book are very similar to the Jewish that were oppressed in Nazi Germany during the holocaust. I often wonder why such a large group of people would not fight back or somehow try to take back control of their lives, even when the cost is death? Would it not be better to die trying than to do nothing at all? This is a question I hope to answer in my research, so I can better understand the submissiveness of the oppressed and brainwashed, and I can learn more about what it may have been like to live in a world where you are nothing more then a commodity for trade.

For more information on author Margaret Atwood

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Mid Term Check In

Dear Professor Cline,
   I must first say, I appreciate this class very much. I have always had a love for writing, and I enjoy being able to further my understanding of English and writing. My biggest challenge in this class has definitely been literary analysis. When trying to write my essay, I felt lost at first. I had a hard time trying to express what I was saying without putting a lot of my own emotion into my writing. Writing without emotion is very hard for me, which is why I enjoy more creative writing. Writing a good essay is a very hard thing to do. I definitely believe my strongest area so far has been my ability to take the constructive criticism and apply it to better my writing.
   The readings we have done in this class so far have really affected me emotionally. I’ve really enjoyed everything we’ve been given to read so far and I look forward to what is in store. The Handmaid’s Tale is a very interesting book and provoked a lot of thought about what it would be like for me if such a world became our own. It’s interesting to think about those type of hypothetical things and how I would react to it.
   For me, literary analysis is very different then other writing I’ve done in college so far. I do not specifically enjoy that type of writing, but I appreciate being taught how to do it. I do enjoy challenging myself. I believe literary analysis is very important, although I do believe it is a harder form of writing for me. I enjoy more creative writing.
   My goal for the second half of the semester is to continue to do my best and take in every detail of criticism I am given and apply it to my writing. I hope to gain a good understanding for different forms of essays and writing, and I hope to get an A for the semester. I will continue to work hard and give my all in every piece of writing I turn in.
   Thank you so much for everything I have learned from this class so far, and for all I will learn the rest of the semester!
Sincerely,
Heather Audis

The Sand Storm

The Sand Storm by Sean Huze is an incredibly honest and powerful play that centers around a group of marines, each telling their war story after being deployed in Iraq. My initial reaction to reading this play was sadness. I felt so sad for all the heinous things those marines had to live through and witness. I can’t even imagine having to shoot innocent women and children, then live with those memories for the rest of my life. It breaks my heart that these guys suffer emotionally from the pain of war and are expected to return home and act as if nothing has changed them. After I read one particular line, I felt overwhelmed with grief for our military. “Father, son, brother, friend. Track star, quarterback, Marine. The things we use to define ourselves, who we are, what we are. Boom! Just like that. And you’re gone. Fucking mist and a memory is all that’s left.” (Huze 16) How profound this line is to someone who fights wars and defends our freedom. One moment you can be saving lives or taking them, and the next you could be gone. And maybe to those marines, they are dying for something they don’t really understand. Sean Huze uses profanity and harsh language in his play, maybe to signify how harsh and profane war is? Maybe he is angry about the things he saw, and how could he not be? I felt as though the profanity only added to the emotion of the play. The truth is, that is how a lot of marines talk and it is simply their honest words coming out, letting civilians know how hard it is over there. My husband also served in OIF, received a purple heart and a bronze star with valor, all before his 22^nd birthday. I read things like this and my heart breaks again. I remember the awful things he’s seen and the stories he’s told me, and I become sad. I know I cannot erase his memories of the dead bodies and the awful screams, nor can I erase the memories of the marines in Sean Huze’s play, but the empathy I feel for those guys who fight such a war is strong. This play is an eye opener for those who don’t know what our military goes through and it is the stories of so many who have a hard time sharing them.


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To learn more on Sean Huze

On the Rainy River

  

On the Rainy River is a short story inside the book by Tim O’Brien called The Things They carried. I believed this short story to be brutally honest and compelling. It is the personal story of the author who, at the time was a 21 year old college student with his whole life ahead of him, receives the dreaded call to the Vietnam war in the summer of 1968. With the fear of war and death plaguing him, Tim is driven to drive to the border of Minnesota and Canada, where he meets a mild mannered and non prying man, who, unbeknownst to him at the time, offers him just the thing he needs to ultimately decide between a life of running away, or a life of facing the call to war.
　
   I cannot even begin to imagine being forced to fight a war, let alone one you do not understand or stand behind. At the tender age of twenty one, there are so many life experiences you have not had, and it must have been difficult for Tim to have to rationalize being forced to fight for your country. After all, that is a huge responsibility to burden a young man with. Who wants to shed blood over something they do not support? I felt this was Tim O’Brien’s greatest fear, and yet he was also so consumed with the thought of how he would be letting down his family and friends if he ran. I don’t think this is a question anyone should be forced to answer. I think the old man that Tim meets up at Tip Top Lodge made Tim realize that sometimes in life we must do things we really don’t want to do and although he was young and scared, it was a call to duty he had to answer. I’m sure all the young men at that time were facing those same emotions and fears, and I can’t even imagine having to stare death in the face when it was forced upon me. I can only sympathize for the brave young men that fought in the Vietnam War.

To learn more about the Vietnam War
image for river

The Poems that Grabbed Me...

Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting by Kevin C. Powers really emotionally broke me for a minute. This poem brought out emotions in me I keep buried, and pieces of the past that truly tested me. I connected with this poem for so many reasons, but mostly because my husband was a soldier. I know what it means to receive a letter from what seems like a million miles away, written by a shaky and scared hand.  A hand whose finger holds the symbol of the vow you made with him that pretty April afternoon. A letter written by a hand whose owner is more selfless and brave then many of us can comphrehend and a hand that has seen the true face of war and death. I read the words of this poem, the author is probably a soldier himself I guess, and I see my husbands face. I recall the times that war sent him so far away from me, and the times that letters were all we had. I reflect on the time that we were worlds apart, sharing our love through 30 second phone calls, and letters. Letters to me then were more then words on a page, or the smell of distance and oil, they were all that we had most of the time. "I tell her I love her like not killing or ten minutes of sleep." (Powers line 1) This line was so emotionally powerful to me in so many ways. The empathy I have for this soldier, who wants nothing more then to be with his love, to not kill, and to just get a good nights rest, are all things most of us take for granted.  We don't often think about the little things in our lives that come so easy to us,  things that a soldier must live without, or for guilts sake, live with. Although to some, letters are nothing more then archaic and a thing of the past, to a soldier,  they are nothing to take for granted.

The Woman Hanging From the Thirteenth Floor Window by Joy Harjo also touched me emotionally. Being a wife and a mother myself, I felt the raw honesty in this poem. Women in today's society take on many different roles and responsibilities, it is so easy to lose yourself.  "She is her mother's daughter, and her father's son." (Harjo line 8) I believe this line implied the expectations women must sometimes live up to, and the roles different genders see in us. Sometimes a woman can feel overwhelmed and transparent, as though who she really is does not matter, because she is a mother and a wife first and foremost. She takes care of everyone else, and only in private, she can silently fall apart. "She thinks of all the women she has been, of all the men." (Harjo line 51) I felt this line meant how easy it is to stand in a man's shadow, all the while losing tiny pieces of who you are until you feel so empty.  When you try to please everyone, you forget about the things that you, as a woman, love. I think in today's society many women, at some point, just feel lost. I love my husband and children more then anything else, but there are some days, I just need a moment. A moment that is no one else's but my own. A moment to reclaim my own thoughts and opinions and just be in connection with myself. I really believe this keeps me grounded. I think we all have days where we just feel like falling, and we have to take a moment, gather ourselves and our thoughts again, and climb back inside that window that is within ourselves.


To learn more about Kevin C. Powers
For Image: Letter Written
To learn more about Joy harjo
For Image: Girl on Ledge

The Necessity To Speak

Sam Hamill wrote the Necessity to Speak, an essay I had to read for English class. I must say, after reading the essay, many tangled thoughts filled my mind. I had to pause, then like opening your eyes from a lengthy nap, I drowsily tried to untangle what I had read. Sometimes readings like this make me disoriented, too many observations and words in my head like a giant gnarled ball of string. Sometimes it’s easier to throw that old ball of yarn into the waste paper basket then to actually sit there and untangle the mess. It then dawned on me, “that is what Sam Hamill is writing about,“  although not in such simple context.

Denial is a sick thing. It can destroy a person from the inside out and it can eat at you like a slow death. Sam Hamill’s essay made me look at some of the hard truths, myself, and so many choose to deny. Sometimes it is easier to turn your back and pretend things aren’t really there, like the man on the corner begging for change, or the small child who approaches you with a heavy basket full of roses, trying to make a dollar. Do we actually care that he gets beat when turn out backs to him, crushing the dream of filling his 50 per day quota? Do we actually notice that the man begging for change is a disabled vet, who, at his best, was a leader and a loyal member to a brotherhood that would have never predicted he’d be homeless and cold on the side of the road one day?  “And we go on living close lived lives, pretending we are not each personally responsible for the deaths we buy and sell. ( Hamill page 546) We pretend that our own lives are our world, and everything beyond what we see and live on a daily basis are like the stars. Occasionally we will see them glowing, and may comment on them from time to time, but we never really see them. We don’t know what makes them shine or fade, and once they are all burnt out and no longer there, it’s as if they never were.

Sam Hamill’s essay was about so many things, the easiness of masculinity and how it can consume so many lives, mostly women. It was about the cycle of abuse, the cynicism in violence, and the embarrassment we feel from emotion. I can’t disagree with any of these things, but mostly this essay, to me, was about denial. If we pretend something isn’t there, does it dissipate?  “We don’t want to know what the world is like, we can’t bear very much reality.” (Hamill page 546) After all, painful true reality is nothing nice. We all wear rose colored glasses to some degree in our lives. I believe Hamill wanted us to find strength in his words and conviction in not turning our backs to things that happen right before our eyes. As he said so simply, and yet so foreign to so many of us “We are all impoverished by our silence.” (Hamill page 551) I couldn’t agree more.


image taken from The Poetry Foundation

The Good Reader

What is a good reader? Vladimir Nabokov had a very strong and precise opinion on what makes a good reader. After all, Vladimir Nabokov was one of the most imaginitive and accomplished writers of the century. http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/lifetimes/nabokov.html He said “….the good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary and some artistic sense.” Having three out of four on Nabokov’s list, I would certainly consider myself a good reader. I must agree with Nabokov when he said “A good reader should notice and fondle details.” I believe reading to be a personal experience that a reader must have, getting lost in the pages of a distant world, leaving, for that brief moment in time, your place of reality, and escaping to a place the author has painted so vividly for you. A good reader absolutely notices details and appreciates every word the author has laid out.


I believe Nabokov was telling us, that we, as readers, owe it to the author, who has worked so hard to lay out a beautiful masterpiece, an art of words, to open his or her book with an open mind. Not a mind clouded by preconceived notions, or a hasty disposition. After all, as Nabokov stated, …”writing is a very futile business.” How could we call ourselves a “good reader” if we simply hurry through a book, ignoring the beautiful details, failing to picture the scene the author is creating, and trampling on the delight of a good story with ill thoughts already in our heads? I have to agree with Nabokov and his passion for wanting us to be good readers.

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