paper topic for handmaid's tale

In my paper I'm going to focus on rebellion; why Offred was content during a period of the story and then chose to rebel. What makes a person rebel and why it is important to challenge societies norms.

ending of handmaid's tale

well the ending left us with a lot of unanswered questions. Offred has slowly gained more and more power throughout the story, but the story leaves us with the eyes coming to get her and doesn't tell us what they do to her, if anything. The handmaids beat a few of the eyes. The society seems to become unhinged and likely on it's way to destruction. The handmaids eventually gained enough courage to rebel and are probably the cause for the chaos. It was an interesting story but the ending leaves a lot of questions unanswered.

handmaid's tale pgs. 199-250

Offred sees a picture of her grown daughter. Offred is pressured to try to have a child with Nick. Offred and the Commander are still spending time together and he takes her out to dinner. Offred finds out about a colony that is resisting the new society. Moira escaped and became a prostitute. Ofglen tells Offred that the eyes know about her meeting with the Commander. We are starting to find out a lot, and it seems the story is coming to it's climax.

handmaid's tale pgs. 151-195

Offred and Commander are becoming very good friends. They play more scrabble and the Commander lets her read newspapers. The commander seems to feel sorry for the position Offred has been put in. It kind of seems like he is trying to make it up to her by giving her certain priveledges. Offred talks about her past with luke and her child. We are starting to find out about how the new society came to be.

Handmaid 100-150

In this section of the story Janine has a baby and all the handmaids are required to help with her birth. Offred secretly meets Moira. Moira escapes. The part I found most interesting was when Offred and the Commander played scrabble together. The commander is breaking the rules by letting Offred play scrabble and spell words. Offred seems to really enjoy it and the relationship between her and the commander is becoming more intimate.Offred also has flashbacks and wonders if talks about Luke and her daughter.

handmaid's tale pg. 49-99

Offred goes to the doctor to see if she is pregnant. she isn't and the doctor offers to have sex with her, she refuses. the doctor say that most older men are sterile or to old. Offred finds this surprising because in Gilead there are suppose to be no sterile men.offred meats moira and secretly talks to her in the bathroom. Offred explains how the woman are forced to listen to the beatitudes playing over the tape player. Janine tells of how she was raped when she was 14, and is told by the aunts and other women that it was her fault because she led them on. In Geliead the women have almost no freedom whatsoever, unless you are a wife.

handmaid's tale pg. 1-49

The united states goverment has been taken over and now is a new society with really different rules.
Women are either wives, handmaides, or marths or something. offred is the handmaid of fred. her purpose is to produce children with fred. women have basically no rights and men are very constricted on who and when they can marry. handmaides wear red. wives wear blue. male gaurds called angels patrol the handmaids. sounds like a distorted society.

thoughts about scene presentation

I thought our play went well. Everyone in our group did a great job. Doing the play made me realize how much preparation and work it takes to put on a real play in a theater. To depict the actions of your character takes a lot of practice and dedication. You have to put yourself in your character's shoes and portray how he or she is feeling. It was fun doing our scene even though I had no very little acting experience. I also enjoyed seeing the other groups plays.

my parts paraphrased

Act 2 scene 1

MACBETH

A friend.

 

MACBETH Because we were unprepared for the king’s visit, we weren’t able to entertain him as well as we would have wanted to.

MACBETH

I don’t think about them now. But when we have an hour to spare we can talk more about it, if you’re willing.

MACBETH

If you stick with me, when the time comes, there will be something in it for you.

MACBETH

Rest easy in the meantime

MACBETH

(to the SERVANT) Go and tell your mistress to strike the bell when my drink is ready. Get yourself to bed.

The servent exits

Is this a dagger I see in front of me, with its handle pointing toward my hand? (to the dagger) Come, let me hold you. (he grabs at the air in front of him without touching anything) I don’t have you but I can still see you. Fateful apparition, isn’t it possible to touch you as well as see you? Or are you nothing more than a dagger created by the mind, a hallucination from my fevered brain? I can still see you, and you look as real as this other dagger that I’m pulling out now. (he draws a dagger) You’re leading me toward the place I was going already, and I was planning to use a weapon just like you. My eyesight must either be the one sense that’s not working, or else it’s the only one that’s working right. I can still see you, and I see blood splotches on your blade and handle that weren’t there before. (to himself) There’s no dagger here. It’s the murder I’m about to do that’s making me think I see one. Now half the world is asleep and being deceived by evil nightmares. Witches are offering sacrifices to their goddess Hecate. Old man murder, having been roused by the howls of his wolf, walks silently to his destination, moving like tarquin, as quiet as a ghost. (speaking to the ground) Hard ground, don’t listen to the direction of my steps. I don’t want you to echo back where I am and break the terrible stillness of this moment, a silence that is so appropriate for what I’m about to do. While I stay here talking, Duncan lives. The more I talk, the more my courage cools.

I’m going now. The murder is as good as done. The bell is telling me to do it. Don’t listen to the bell, Duncan, because it summons you either to heaven or to hell. (macbeth exits)

Macbeth and his wife

I'm choosing to write my paper on the relationship between macbeth and lady macbeth. Lady macbeth plays a large role in the story and, at times, seems to control macbeth's actions. I will discuss how lady macbeth used her role to influence macbeth's decisions, and what the motives were behind lady macbath's actions. Lady macbeth was macbeth's head advisor and had a major influence on him.

How ill you expand the idea bout lady macbeth's manipulation skills? (Cole)
I will point to specific instances in the play where lady macbeth tries to persuade macbeth and hopefully draw parallels between her persuasion techniques

How do you know she wasn't always that way? (Spencer)
I have no way of telling, but I can develop and opinion based on the facts.

Macbeth

The story really took a turn for the worst in the last two acts for Macbeth. He became obsessed with power and control. His character was transformed from a noble warrior to a greedy king. He became paranoid with the witches professes. I think the story shows how power can distort your thoughts and actions and how perceiving to know the future can be detrimental to yourself. I thought this was a cool story and ,having never read it before, was interested throughout.

Macbeth relationship with the witches

If it were not for the witches, I don't think Macbeth would have killed Duncan. Macbeth was a trustworthy and honest man before he came in contact with the witches, he fought for his country and king. The tempted Macbeth with their story of fame and riches. After seeing the first part of their story come true Macbeth seemed to be interested in the next part about him becoming king. Until that point Macbeth couldn't have imagined himself becoming king; but the witches planted that seed in his mind and Macbeth eventually would become obsessed with the witches foresight's and base his actions on them.

the love song of j. alfred prufrock

I have no idea what this poem was about. Maybe a sailor, because in the end it talks about water and waves. I really have no idea. In the beginning of the poem I thought it was maybe about a relationship between a man and woman that was very tense. He talks about himself going bald a few times so i think its an older man. I'm not sure about this poem.

"Daddy"

Just reading this poem, without doing any research, I would guess this is about a young girl who had sexual relations with her father.  I'm guessing that the town's people found out and they killed the father because of it.  Some parts of the poem seem like the young woman hated her father, but others seem like she wanted him back; maybe only to kill him herself.  Didn't really like this poem.

leda and the swan

I may be wrong, but this poem seems to be about a male swan having sexual relations with a woman.  pretty strange to say the least.  It seems it is not consensual, so that makes it even worse.  From doing a little research, the swan is suppose to be a greek god "zeus" that has taken the form of a swan to hide his true identity while he rapes this mortal woman who he fell in love with; and would eventually give birth to helen of troy.  I think its almost impossible to tell that just from reading the poem.

London

I walk through the streets
and keep track of every face i meet
they look week and destruct

In every man
in every baby
in every voice
the mind is ill

the chimney sweepers cry
the churches are dark
the soldiers feels regret
for the people he's killed

but over everything i hear
the young harlot's yell at their babies

the chinmey sweepers

My mother died when I was young,
My father made me work
As a chimney sweeper i cried.

my friend Tom Docre cried
when his head was shaved
i tried to cheer him up

He stoped crying and that night
had a dream
thousands of chimney sweepers, like us
were killed and put in coffins of black soot

He dreamed that an angel came to them
she opened the coffins and let them free
they were happy
they washed themselves in the river and laid underneath the sun

Clean and with no worries
they fly among the clouds
the angel told tom to be good while on earth
so that he can live a happy after life

Tom woke from his dream
We went back to work
it was cold, but tom was happy and war
if they struggle through life they will be rewarded

paper topic

my paper thesis is--the community conspires, almost unconsciously, to protect both miss Emily and the small town from the shame and stigma of Miss Emily’s illness and behavior.

Harrison Bergeron

I liked this story.  Variety is good, and the story brought that out.  Without variety the world would be boring like in the story.  The fact that it was George and Hazels son who was shot on tv was interesting because I don't think they even realized it was him, or couldn't even remember they had a son.  It was kind of a sad story because of that.   The overall idea of the story, i think, is very unrealistic but makes you think. 

the ones who walk away from Omelas

I had never read this story before.  I kind of made me think of our lives here.  We live privileged lives for the most part.  We all have everything we need to survive and most of us have love ones around us we can go to for support of comfort; but yet we all know there are many people in America, and in the world, who have none of those.  We probably don't think about it every day, but there are people who live a life more or less like the boy in the story.  We don't get upset about it, it's just the way it is, it doesn't even really bother us.  Are we just as cynical as the people in Omelas?

The lottery response

This was a very interesting story.  After reading the first few lines I remembered I had read this story before and excited to hear it again.  The whole idea of the story is a little disturbed.  Randomly picking one person to be stoned for no apparent reason seems very ridiculous.  I don't know when or where this story takes place but it seems to be in the colonial period, if it even takes place in America.  It seemed the town people didn't even care that they were going to kill someone; even Mrs. Hutchinson's son and daughter made a joke of it to to the crowd when they found out it wasn't going to be them.

young goodman brown blog

I found this story to be rather confusing.  It was a hard read and his writing style was very old style.  I still don't know if it was a dream goodman brown had or real life.  I believe he somehow gave his soul to the devil.  It also might have been some sort of witchcraft gathering.  I don't know if his wife, Faith, was a witch but she was at the gathering so im not sure what that represented.  I think the old man he met in the woods represented the devil.  It seemed like he knew he was going into the woods with bad intentions and was trying to talk himself out of it.

A Tell-Tale Heart

This story kept me interested.  It was interesting how it was told from the perspective of the so called "not mad" woman.  I think she was deffiinatly "mad".  I would have given her the benefit of the doubt until she started hearing the heart beating under the floor boards at the end of the story.  The way she described the eye of the old man kind of made me want to kill him too.  Is that the sole reason she killed him?  I wonder if the man suspected she would do something like that to him; especially when she described how scared when he sat up in his bed. 

a rose for emily response

I had never read the book, "A Rose for Emily", before this.  It was an interesting read.  I don't know how she could have endured the smell of sleeping next to a dead body.  I think Emily was mentaly crazy; although I don't think she was born that way.  I think she slowly became crazy from the environment she grew up in.  Her father was very controlling and I question if he had a physical relationship with her.  Where was her mother?  The story leaves a lot of things for the reader to imagine or decide for his or her self.