This is the work I am most proud of. It might not be the best, but I worked hard to make these.
These photo's looked amazing when I took them in David Dilworth's class my freshman year. I have since not taken many photos though I have always been happy with the one's that have have taken in the past. These 3 photos were the best I ever took and will remain that way if I find myself loosing interest in photography.
The Handmaid's Tale Unit Essay Throughout the history of humanity, books have played a vital role in the passing of knowledge from one generation to the next. Some focus on history, some on herbology, and architecture while others focus on a less realistic version of our world. Yevgeni Zamyatin's book “We” was one of the first novels that portrayed a dystopian society and were published in 1924. In Yevgeni’s book, the world was conquered by one country. This book is considered the stepping stone from which many other books are written off of. One such book is Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid's Tale”. This book is able to create a convincing dystopian society by using some commonly known strategies to build this society. Survival, government control, and loss of individualism is prominent theme throughout the book. Survival is key. No matter in what scenario the goal is to live through it. Our protagonist Offred is always fighting to live. She is either fighting through past trauma or fighting for her future. No matter the cost she wants to survive. “I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight” (p. 13). Feeling alive is often overlooked by many people. Some people seek the thrill, while others enjoy the simple things in life such as feeling sunlight on your skin. The situation that Gilead creates isolates women and makes their lives repetitive and dull, creating a lifeless environment. A Handmaid’s job is to give a child to an important person due to the lack of fertility in this world. “Give me children or else I die” (p. 73). If the Handmaids fail enough times they will be sent out to the colonies where they will be put to hard labor. This can often result in their death. In most societies, the government is in control of the people. But, unlike in real life, once they start controlling the people to a certain degree, society starts to turn into a dystopia. There are thousands of other handmaids out there and they live by a strict code. “A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.” (p.48) They have ways of greeting, and saying goodbye to each other and if they do not follow these strict codes, they could get in trouble. They strip Offred as well as all the other handmaids of all their rights and force her to bear the baby of an important general, forced to suffer through mental torture as they are molded into this new society by the government and people around them. “My arms are raised; she holds my hands, each of mine in each of hers. this is supposed to signify that we are one flesh, one being. What it really means is that she is in control, of the process and thus of the product. If any.” (p. 29) The goal of this ceremony is to keep continued control over the handmaids. They aren’t meant to feel like they are individuals. They all wear the same white veil with a red dress to keep them from looking different. The goal of this society is to discard individualism among the handmaids. These handmaids aren’t meant to break any rules. The loss of individualism is a major theme in most dystopian books. The main character is always struggling to be themselves and to find themselves. You have a name. I have a name. Our names are the only thing that will distinguish us from each other when we turn in this essay. “My name isn’t Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it’s forbidden. I tell myself it doesn’t matter, your name is like your telephone number, useful only to others; but what I tell myself is wrong, it does matter” (p.26). Without my name, I could be you and you could be me. Are we even individuals if we do not have a name? Without names, Gilead is able to keep people like Offred from being their own person, thus creating a loss of individuality. It feels almost as if their name’s could be switched and no one would bat an eye. ““I am Ofglen,” the woman says. Word perfect. And of course she is, the new one, and Ofglen, wherever she is, is no longer Ofglen. I never did know her real name. That is how you can get lost, in a sea of names”(p.81). This new handmaid just replaced the original Ofglen. They were able to just swap her out for a random handmaid and give them her name. No one would notice if the same happened to Offred or any other handmaid. Margret Atwood’s book “The Handmaid's Tale” is a phenomenal take on the dystopian book genre. It uses 3 of 5 distinct characters of a dystopian society. Margret Atwood draws from books like “Fahrenheit 451” and “We” to help guide her through the concept of losing individualism. Like in “Lord of the Flies”, another amazing dystopian novel, she makes survival something that the handmaids need to focus on. You can bet that “The Handmaid’s Tale” influenced the creation of one of the biggest books and movie series in the modern day: “The Hunger games.” These common themes, survival, government control, and loss of individuality are prominent in this book and can be seen in many of the iconic dystopian novels that everyone knows.
The reason I used this essay as one of my works is because I felt like I did a good job on it even though I may have only gotten a B. I worked hard writing it, and put in real effort to get it to the word limit.