AO4 and AO5

Question 1

What are some common themes in dystopians

Answer 1

gender
environment
fertility
social control
resistance
class
conformity
surveillance
language
nostalgia
secrecy

Question 2

examples of dystopia

Answer 2

Gullivers Travel - Swift
Brave New World - Huxley - natural reproduction replaced by test tubes
Never Let Me Go - Ishiguro - restriction of human relationships

Question 3

similarities with 1984

Answer 3

based on real life events of a totalitarian regime
two minutes of hate is linked to particicution
newspeak restricts language
mass hysteria caused by a secret police

Question 4

themes in Atwoods other writing

Answer 4

Heart goes last - nationwide economic collapse- position project promises steady work in exchange for freedom
oryx and care - a future world in which humanity has been wiped out

Question 5

What is the post modern novel

Answer 5

denies objectjeticy in reality and is in favour of experimentation

Question 6

Epigraph

Answer 6

‘A Modest Proposal’ - Swift - satire of the Irish potatoe faminine - show the governments mistreatment people and feed false information e.g by just eating their children instead

Question 7

Margaret Davies

Answer 7

‘every step, every mouthful of food, every move is observed, reported or approved’

Question 8

Oynett

Answer 8

the lesbian feminist Moira, a daring, street-smart improviser, is the only character to openly challenge the Gileadean theocracy’

Question 9

Greenwood

Answer 9

‘Atwood sees some of the tenets of cultural feminism and its insistence on ‘difference’ as potentially and dangerously close to the ideologies of evangelism’

Question 10

Carol bernan

Answer 10

Offred’s inner monologue as challenging patriarchal silencing, however passive ti may be

Question 11

Madonne Miner

Answer 11

Offred’s narration is marked by repression, fragmentation and trauma

Question 12

jacequeline rose

Answer 12

Desire in The Handmaid’s Tale is tightly controlled and forbidden, yet seeps through the cracks of repression

Question 13

Angela Gulick

Answer 13

Gilead is the logical extreme of patriarchal ideology — women are reduced to reproductive functions.

Question 14

Frederic Jameson

Answer 14

The Handmaid’s Tale critiques late capitalist structures through its portrayal of Gilead as a totalitarian theocracy built on class exploitation

Question 15

Lucie Armitt

Answer 15

The novel critiques consumerism and commodification, especially the reduction of people (especially women) to objects.