compare the ways in which the writers of your choen texts present different perspectives on truth

Thesis

• Both Atwood and Shelley explore different perspectives on truth through its weaponization to justify control

• Atwood, drawing on Cold War concerns about state sanctioned surveillance, explore how truth can equate to religion

• While Shelley, writing amid the growing appreciation for science, suggests that truth can equate to science

• Perhaps both authors present a warning to societies that corrupt and reject the multifaceted nature of truth

Both = truth is an authority

HMT = truth is religious authority

Frank = truth is scientific authority

AO1

• HMT = features of Gilead become microcosm for religious authority

  • ‘where I am is not a prison but a privilege, as Aunt Lydia said’

  • ‘your position is an honor’

  • ‘you must be a worthy vessel’

  • ‘the republic of Gilead knows no bounds. Gilead is within you’

  • ‘blessed by the fruit’ ‘may the Lord open’

  • concept of the handmaids = rachel and leah

  • the angels

  • the eyes

  • sons of Jacob

  • all those in a position of power

• Frank

  • ‘a modern system of science had been introduced which possessed much greater powers than the ancient’

  • ‘Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate’

  • ‘Sir Isaac Newton is said to have avowed that he felt like a child picking up shells beside the great and unexplored ocean of truth.’

  • ‘My father was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a child’s blindness, added to a student’s thirst for knowledge.’

AO2

• HMT

  • metaphor

  • paradox

  • objectification

  • wider metaphor for religious power and control

  • religious imagery

• Frank

  • hyperbole

  • metaphor

  • personification

  • juxtaposition

  • imagery

  • foreshadowing

AO3

• HMT

  • puritanism

  • iranian revolution

  • characteristics of dystopian literature

  • totalitarian regimes

• Frank

  • enlightenment

AO4

• Both = truth is an authority that legitimises control

• HMT = truth is religious authority

• Frank = truth is scientific authority

HMT AO3

• puritanism = Atwood influence by her studies made Gilead mirror Puritan New England through:

  • Religious absolutism

  • Strict social hierarchy

  • Biblical justification for oppression

• iranian revolution = The Islamic Revolution in Iran inspired Gilead.

  • Women lost rights

  • Strict dress codes were imposed

  • Religious law controlled public/private life

• characteristics of dystopian literature

  • Oppressive environment or government

  • Extreme interpretation of laws

• totalitarian regimes

  • The setting of Gilead draws parallels to various totalitarian regimes throughout history.

  • Atwood was influenced by the rise of authoritarian governments, particularly in the 20th century, such as Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.

  • The use of religious justification for oppressive laws in Gilead mirrors real-world examples of theocratic governance.

Frank AO3

• movement that prioritised reason, science and progress

• rooted in the scientific revolution

• marked a shift from religious authority to rational inquiry

Both = truth is distorted and weaponised to legitimise control

AO1

• HMT = religious doctorine

  • ‘we were a society dying of too much choice’ = inherently juxtaposes itself - choice = freedom

  • ‘all flesh is weak. all flesh is grass, I corrected her’

  • ‘God made them that way but he did not make you that way’

  • ‘forgive them, for they not know what they do’

  • ‘blessed are the meek. she didn’t go on to say anything about inheritying the earth’

  • ‘blessed are the silent. I knoew they made that up’

  • epigraph = rachel and leah

• Frank = creation of the Creature - scientific procreation

  • "Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world."

  • removes the role of the woman

  • "A new species would bless me as its creator and source;’

  • ‘I pursued nature to her hiding places. who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil’

  • ‘filthy creation’

  • ‘the dissecting room and the slaughter furnished many of my materials; and often did my nature turn with loathing for my occupation’

  • male narrative
    

AO2

• HMT

  • juxtapostion

  • biblical allusion

    • grass = Isaiah 40:6

    • blessed = beatitudes

  • declarative sentences

  • significance of subordinate clause

  • metaphor

• Frank

  • metaphor

  • semantic field of procreation

  • personification

AO3

• HMT

  • cold war surveillance

  • feminism

  • politics and religion

  • rachel and leah

• Frank

  • mothers death

  • mary wollstonecraft

  • enlightenment

  • gothic

  • galvanism

  • women

AO4

HMT AO3

• cold war surveillance

• feminism

• politics and religion

  • Reagan emphasised conservatism and his belief in family values alluding to the traditional, heterosexual, nuclear family

  • he appealed to the white working class americans who felt racist resentment against the advances that black people had made during the civil rights movement

• rachel and leah

  • It is a teaching from the book of Genesis that forms the basis of the relationship between Handmaids, Commanders and Wives.

  • It sets up sanctioned adultery within marriage as long as the goal is to have children.

Frank AO3

• mothers death = her mother’s death created a lifelong fascination with birth, motherhood and the connection between life and death that is central to the novel

• mary wollstonecraft = advocates for women’s rights and equality, arguing that women’s lack of education caused their perceived inferiority

• enlightenment

• gothic = centered on mystery, terror and the supernatural

• galvanism = performed one of the first experiments with nerve impulses through electrical charges, making a frog's muscle twitch by jolting them with a spark from an electrostatic machine.

• women =

Both = truth is ultimately multifaceted - warning against absolutist conceptions

AO1

• HMT

  • ‘context is all’

  • ‘freedom to and freedom from. in the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. now you are being given freedom from’

  • ‘we didn’t want to lay upon her the burden of our truth’ (Off to H)

  • ‘whatever the truth is I will be ready for it’

  • ‘our job is not to censure but to understand’

  • ‘this contradictory way of believing seems to me, right now, the only way I can believe anything’

• Frank = different perspective on the creatures nature

• ‘such a thing that Dante could not have conceieved’

• ‘wretch’ ‘miserable monster’ ‘demonical corpse’ ‘half extinguished light’

• ‘the deformity of its aspect more hideous than belongs to humanity’

• ‘I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel’

• ‘I was benevolent and good, misery made me a fiend’

• ‘shall I respect man who he condemns me’

• ‘did I request thee, maker, from my clay to mould me man, did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?’

• ‘revenge is dearer than light or food’

AO2

• HMT

  • hyperbole

  • paradox

  • metaphor

• Frank

  • pronoun ‘it’

  • grotesque imagery

  • hyperbole

  • metaphor

  • rehtorical question

AO3

• HMT

  • masculine dystopia

• Frank

  • prometheus

  • noble savage

  • rousseau

  • paradise lost

    dantes inferno

AO4

HMT AO3

• The roots of Gilead lie in Atwood’s reading of masculine dystopian fiction, such as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

• Atwood subverts the genre of masculine dystopia by handing the story to a female; the novel can be interpreted as critiquing women’s marginalisation in a patriarchy

Frank AO3

• prometheus = Greek Titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity, symbolising knowledge, progress, and defiance of divine authority.

• noble savage = stock character that embodies a ‘native’ or ‘outsider’ who has not been corrupted by civilisation, symbol

• rousseau = His theory was that people begin life as innocents, and may become corrupted/evil over time due to culture and society

• paradise lost

• dantes inferno = It is an allegorical story about the human soul’s journey to God, depicted as a harrowing, guided tour through the nine concentric circles of Hell