9. Salvaging
Lesson objectives
We will look at the reliability of our narrator
We will focus on the anti-hero and narrative choices in chapters
41 - 46
We will consider our initial influencing contexts
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Slide 1: Slide
EngelsUpper Secondary (Key Stage 4)GCSE
This lesson contains 12 slides, with text slides.
Items in this lesson
Lesson objectives
We will look at the reliability of our narrator
We will focus on the anti-hero and narrative choices in chapters
41 - 46
We will consider our initial influencing contexts
Slide 1 - Slide
Slide 2 - Slide
Offred is an unreliable narrator, and at this point in the novel she actually admits to fabricating parts of her story.
Chapter Forty
“I made that up. It didn’t happen that way. Here is what happened.” pg 261 chpt 40
“It didn’t happen that way either. I’m not sure how it happened; not exactly. All I can hope for is a reconstruction: the way love feels is always only approximate.” pg 263 chpt 40
After telling two different versions of the encounter with Nick, Offred admits the falsity of both, but does not offer the truth of what actually occurred. Answer these question in your exercise book.
1. What is the difference between both accounts?
2. Which do you feel is nearer to the truth: what actually happened?
3. Why doest the narrator not tell the truth? What is the message?
Slide 3 - Slide
Offred can be described as an anti-hero, since she is so often a passive rather than active character: things happen to her rather than as a result of her actions, and she not only lacks the qualities of archetypal heroes of novels, but is conscious of this and discusses this disparity with us, her audience.
You often find anti-heroes in postmodern narratives, because they subvert the traditional idea of the fictional hero, who is a character that is brave, selfless, and through whose actions the plot is driven forward.
Salvaging Chapter 41 pg 267
Slide 4 - Slide
Find and mark this extract:
I wish this story was different....This is the story, then. Chapter 41 pgs 267 -268
Chapter 41 pg 267
Analyse the extract from Chapter 41. Investigate how Atwood:
1. Portrays Offred’s desire to tell her story in a particular way.
2. Comments on the nature of this novel and its style and structure. Consider how it uses conventions of postmodern fiction (relativity rather than certainty, meta-narrative, the antihero, focus on subjectivity rather than objectivity, intertextuality).
Slide 5 - Slide
Chapter 41 stylistic choices. Which techniques are used?
" so much whispering, so much speculation about others, so much gossip "
"And there is so much time to be endured, time heavy
as fried food or thick fog"
Simile
Anaphora
"in the future or in Heaven or in prison or underground"
polysyndeton
"I tell , therefore you are"
Allusion
Rene Descartes I think, therefore I am: Cogito, ergo sum
"with this sad and hungry and sordid, this limping and mutilated story
Personification
"otherwise decorous and matronly and somnambulant."
Polysyndeton
Tricolon
Slide 6 - Slide
Central Idea
Do not write about the text.
instead, write about how the author uses the text to communicate a message to the reader.
Slide 7 - Slide
A + B = X
X = A + B
A = linguistic or stylistic technique
B = (intended) effect on the reader (audience)
X = Insightful idea you have
Linguistic and stylistic choices
Slide 8 - Slide
Use at least three quotes in your answer
" so much whispering, so much speculation about others, so much gossip "
"And there is so much time to be endured, time heavy
as fried food or thick fog"
"in the future or in Heaven or in prison or underground"
"I tell , therefore you are"
"with this sad and hungry and sordid, this limping and mutilated story
"otherwise decorous and matronly and somnambulant."
Discuss how authorial choices in this extract aid in conveying postmodern concerns.
Write at least one paragraph in your exercise book.
Slide 9 - Slide
Salvage: to save goods from damage or destruction, especially from a ship that has sunk or been damaged or a building that has been damaged by fire or a flood.
Cambridge dictionary definition
What is ironic about the execution being called a “Salvaging”? What might Gilead claim is being “salvaged”?
Slide 10 - Slide
"The kind of speculative fiction about the future that I write is always based on things that are in process right now. So it's not that I imagine them, it's that I notice that people are working on them and I take it a few steps further down the road. So it doesn't come out of nowhere, it comes out of real life."
Atwood in 2018
Slide 11 - Slide
Concepts we generated:
Power dynamics, oppression, patriarchy, identity, rebellion
Concepts HL literature
