The Handmaid's Tale- Topic for Essay

 

Image Source: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/powers_of_persuasion/its_a_womans_war_too/images_html/we_can_do_it.html

For my analysis of The Handmaid’s Tale, I am going to focus on woman’s rights in the United states and how they have changed over the last hundred years or so. Throughout this text, I was confused how the woman were classified into different categories such as handmaids, wives, and marthas. I understood their roles, but how they got to be classified as such in the first place. Was it solely based on their fertility? Were the Martha’s sterile as well as the wives? I want to learn more about woman’s roles in the household throughout history, and how they have progressed or declined in “importance” since then. This book will serve very well in writing a paper concerning woman’s rights. By choosing this topic, I will have a immense amount of information to look at from Atwood’s novel, as well as in newspapers and books concerning feminist movements. It will better my understanding of Atwood as a author because one can obviously see that she is writing this novel with some sort of bias to culture, and perhaps what she sees being the future of our nation. I would also like to research her as an author, to be able to see if she openly speaks about her views on feminism and abortion etc. I think focusing on the text in the areas where Offred flashes back to her old life before the war will help me guide my paper. For example, she has a job, went to college, makes her own money, etc. These things are all taken away from her when she becomes a handmaid. Even wives of the commanders have extremely limited rights. Another question I may raise in my paper is the fact that woman are becoming more and more successful as the years progress. Could men be taking this as a threat to their control of society? For example, we have yet to have a woman serve as President of our country. However, we have made progress and woman have ran for the office, and woman also hold office in the Supreme Court. I think these type of connections with the world we live in today and the novel will make for a interesting paper.

Here is a link that will take you to a timeline of Women's Legal Rights in the U.S.

Mid-Session Check In

Dear Mrs. Cline,

Being more than halfway through the class, I feel like I have gotten quite a bit out of the coursework. I enjoy this class because we get to read material and respond to it, whereas my last english class was a lot of writing to persuade. I really enjoyed the novel that we read The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien as well as the play by Sean Huze. I read O’Brien’s novel in high school, but I feel by reading it again and responding to your prompts and papers, I have seen an even deeper meaning than the first time. I feel that the writing you have assigned for these works and throughout the course have been helpful in analyzing the material instead of just summarizing like I have done in the past. The readings really affected me because they were tied to true events, and being that I am living through the same time that the men in Huze’s play are, I felt even more connected to his characters. 

       The additional assignments such as “Shitty First Drafts”, “The Necessity to Speak” by Sam Hamill , and the extra credit Operation Homecoming were great assignments to help me as a student grow in the areas that they focused on. They connected well to what we were studying at the time, and helped give just a little bit of a deeper understanding. I also really enjoyed the poetry of witness assignments. I am usually not a fan of poetry, but these pieces were interesting and written in a way that I was really unfamiliar with, but connected with quickly. It was a great introduction to the reading of O’Brien’s novel. My biggest challenge this far in the class would probably be learning to analyze rather than just summarize, but I think at this point I am getting much better at it. My greatest success in this class would be learning to blog and to create an interesting post for my reader. 

        One of my favorite parts of your class is the way you make it feel like you are actually in a class even though it is all online. With the videos and the blogs we are able to get to know our classmates and our instructor better. As an instructor, I like that you make yourself available for our questions and have office hours so we are able to see you if we need anything cleared up. The lecture material that you post is also really helpful instead of just giving us text to read.  For my second half of the class, I hope to improve my writing skills even more. I also hope to master analyzing a text. Analyzing rather than summarizing has helped me in a few of my other classes this semester as well. I think it is a really good skill to have and will be helpful throughout my college career. Overall, I have really enjoyed the class up to this point!

Sincerely,

Kelsey Drake

Sean Huze: The Sand Storm

My initial reaction to Huze’s play The Sand Storm was that it was very raw and a truthful account of the events happening in Iraq. His use of stage direction adds a very vivid picture for the reader as if the play is being performed in one’s mind. His experience from his enlistment in the U.S. Marine Corps adds what just an author could never achieve. He has the memories that make this play come alive. He uses flashbacks throughout the play as well to tell the stories of the men. The play begins with Sergeant Casavecchia talking about the way that no one really knows what war is really like. He says, “Politicians, four-stars, Scott McLellan, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michael Moore...Shit. Like any of them know what the hell they’re talking about. But you all listen to ‘em don’t you? Your experts.” I liked this introduction because it is a very true statement. We listen to supposed “experts” about the War in Iraq or whatnot, yet many of these people have never ever served in a war nor experienced what these soldiers or marines are feeling. The men talk about the people that they kill, the civilians and enemies. This piece is extremely powerful because as I have seen in The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, many men begin to feel dehumanized after killing not only their foes, but innocent people as well. They tell stories of events that really affected them, and of different men that they encountered that were influential, such as Lt. Smith, who took his job seriously, and respected the men he was in charge of. One of my favorite pieces of the play was the ending. The men all stand on the stage and talk about Sergeant David Casavecchia, who died. They talk about the many things he was, a father, son, brother, friend, track star, quarterback, and a marine. This was powerful to me because these men are human. These men had a life before war, and will hopefully have one to follow. These men are assigned to do unthinkable things at times, and have many problems following the “unreality” that the war brings to them. When they return home, they have extremely hard times adjusting to normal life. Plays such as Huze’s give us civilians a little better of an understanding of what these men feel.

Here is a link to more information on Sean Huze. He is not only a writer but an actor as well! He played in the Green Zone with Matt Damon recently. Very Interesting!!!!

Operation Homecoming: Connections with The Things They Carried

The film Operation Homecoming film really opens ones eyes to the reality of the emotional burdens that soldiers develop from war. This film lets soldiers from multiple different wars to tell their stories, and show the importance of writing during their time in and after war. One great quote from the very beginning of the movie is, ““I may not be a very good soldier, but I am a good witness.” Watching this film along with reading Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried takes the understanding of the novel to a whole new level. I made multiple connections with the novel while watching the movie. For me, it gives O’Brien’s characters faces. It makes them as real as the men telling their stories in this film. The film shows the many hardships that soldiers deal with from their experiences from war.

The men’s accounts create a new understanding of war for people like me that have no idea what it is like. One of the soldiers talks about how a lot of people have a “romantic view of the war. He tells a story following, showing no romance, just pure fear of dying. People back home want exciting stories, “blood and gore”. These soldiers have an extremely hard time relating to people back home because they don’t know how to explain what happened without telling things they themselves are trying to forget.

Another soldier’s account talks about his sergeant telling him to take all the things that bother him emotionally and “put them in a shoebox, put the lid on it and deal with it later.” These young men had to do this often. They felt guilty about things that they did to save their own lives, as well as those in their platoon. Instead of letting these things eat them up inside and drive them crazy, they try to ignore the reality going on around them.

One of the most interesting parts of the film is Tim O’Brien’s inputs. He talks about a soldier living his life fearing death. This connects to the character’s fears in the novel. It takes such a strong emotional outlook to be able to survive war. One veteran explains that, “The longer that your in combat, the more sure you are that your not going to survive.” They see people dying all around them, and the reality of what is happening can not always be ignored. 

This film makes the idea of war so real to me. It makes me feel sorry for men and woman that go to war at such a young age and are expected to bear the extreme emotional pain that is thrust upon them.  A point made by Sangjoon Han, an soldier in the U.S. Army is that “from the time you are born you are told it is wrong to kill people, then you are put in a situation where they are telling you to do.” He says that it is not easy to just turn that thought off in one’s head. This moral struggle must be one of the hardest things for a soldier to deal with. They are “humane” people, but the things that they are expected to carry out are not.  As said in the film, “It puts you at war with yourself.”

This film makes me realize what the soldiers really went through, in the name of serving their country. One emotion that I felt after watching this film was an extreme disappointment in people that blame soldiers for the happenings of war. They are constantly trying to make the right  moral decision, but obviously as Tim O’Brien says in his novel, “War is not moral.” The film quotes Anthony Swafford from Jarhead as saying, “The most complex and dangerous conflicts, the most harrowing operation, and the most deadly wars, occur in the head.” This rings very true after listening the the many soldiers accounts and reading Tim O’Brien’s short stories in The Things They Carried. These soldiers not only have physical burdens they must face everyday, but emotional scars that could last them a lifetime. 

Works Cited

O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried.

Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience. Richard E. Robbins. The Documentary Group,2007. Film. 

The Things They Carried...

Image Source: http://www.vietnammemorial.com/vietnam-war.html  (THIS IS ALSO REALLY NEAT WEBSITE WITH INFO AND PICTURES ON THE VIETNAM WAR)

The Things They Carried is a collection of short stories by Tim O’Brien. The first story in the novel is a great introduction to the rest of the stories. I read the entire novel in high school and really enjoyed it. The story is following a platoon during the Vietnam war. The men in the platoon each have different stories and this first story in the novel introduces a few of them. “The Things They Carried” is the first of the short stories.  This story talks about the “things” that the soldiers carry. Some of these things are necessities, and tangible items. A lot of the weight they carry comes from weapons, ammunition, food, and other common everyday things that one would need when traveling on foot through unfamiliar territory. Others are emotions, feelings, and thoughts. O’Brien talks about how much each of the tangible items weigh. He also talks about the “emotional baggage of men who might die”. He explained that “intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.”

Two years ago, I interviewed a Veteran that served in the Vietnam War. He was in infantry and did much of what these men in the book did. He talked about how much the war changed him emotionally. He talked about some of the things that he carried. Some of the things were necessities, and other’s were to help him take his mind off the war. Much like Lieutenant Cross carries the letters and pictures from Martha. I think that O'Brien's message in this short story is that these young men not only were under extreme physical conditions, but mental as well. These men that returned from this war had many mental issues from the things that they experienced. 

**Instead of a link this week, I decided I would post a copy of an interview I conducted with a Vietnam Veteran Gary Mills. He was a radio repairmen and spent time in both the bush and camps. It was a very interesting assignment that I did during my Junior year in high school.**

Vietnam Veteran Interview

What were your feelings before entering the war?

I got drafted in 1966, and I had entered high school in 1961.  In 1962-63 I realized that I was going to have to serve my country.  Back then there was the draft, and if you were eighteen years old you had to do your duty and serve your country.  I knew that since I was not going to further my education I was going to most likely get drafted.  It didn’t bother me much or anything like that, it just kind of stayed in the back of my mind all the way through the end of my sophomore, junior, than senior year.  By that time, Vietnam was really happening in the news and everything like that.  I always toyed at night, lying in bed, thinking that I’d be going to a place called Vietnam. I didn’t know anything about it; it was called French Indochina when we were going to school. And that was about it until I graduated in 1964 and in 1966 I got drafted.  Until that point I hadn’t thought about it or what I was going to have to do. Men and boys were raised with the fact that they were to give duty to their country, and that was the way it was.

After you got drafted how long was it before you actually were sent over to Vietnam?

I got drafted on the 18^th of May, 1966, which was the largest draft call in the Vietnam War. On this day 76,000 draftees went into the service that day.   That was the largest soldier input into Vietnam, which was a year later with me, when I went to Vietnam in 1967. All of us that went in that day were for this big build up that Johnson was doing. And that’s what had happened about a year after they sent out the draft. All these new soldiers were going into Vietnam.

What did you feel after you got to Vietnam? Were you regretful?

No, I’m sixty-two know and back when I was a teenager, growing up you knew from a little age that you, boys, men, had to serve their country.  It was something that you got a callous started on ya’.  It wasn’t something that you graduated out of high school and the next day you got your draft notice, it’s something that you knew you had to do.  I didn’t regret it because I knew I had to give duty to my country.  My father and his brothers all served in the service and they all came home and I knew it was something that I had to do. I was going to try and do it as quick as I could and get out of it. 

Can you describe your first day there? 

I left Oakland Army terminal on February 18^th, 1967 and nineteen hours ten minutes later I was in Vietnam and at four in the morning we landed right outside of Saigon.  We were on a C-140 transport plane we all sat backwards in it and just before we were making our approach we veered off of our approach because it was being mortared. Right then I just knew I was prepared to get my life in order.  We made a couple passes and it subsided and we landed.  I hadn’t even touched down yet and when we touched down we were all in khakis and we had no weapons.  I’m just wondering what was going to happen when we got off the place. But it’s so natural for them because things like that happen all the time.

What was your job?
My job was a MOS and I was a field radio repairman.  I repaired radios that transmitted and received.  The main radio we repaired was the PRC which was the one that was carried on the backs of the soldiers.  We also repaired hand held radios that were called the PRC 25’s.  We repaired a wide range of radios but our main focus was field radios. My job was called 31E20.  I started work at about 8 in the morning until four or five in the afternoon at electronic maintenance where we would repair the radios that were sent to us and try to get them out as soon as possible. The motto of the radio repairmen was “without a radio you would die”.  A radio could get you ammunition, food, artillery or air support. You don’t have a radio you can’t communicate.

Did you make any friends right away?

I made friends in my tent with me I was in a in a camp called camp McDermott in the Riviera South Vietnam. There were ten of us in the tent, they became like your brothers, and you relied on em’.  I wasn’t in a combat unit but for men that were it was very hard to make friends because they could be there one minute and gone the next.  It was hard having the anxiety of losing friends.  In Feb 19^th I got to Vietnam and on Sept 4^th I got sent out in the bush.  I was there until I left on the 19^th of ’68.

So you did experience the loss of friends?

I have 6 friends on the wall, but I have 58,000 brothers and sisters on the wall. I had some really close friends die.

Did you have anything that you carried for good luck?

I carried a St. Christopher’s medal; I was dating a Catholic girl at the time. She was the Mother Superior’s pet student.  Mother Superior then went and had a sit in with the Pope, where he blessed a medal for me. I always say if it weren’t for those medals, I wouldn’t be here today.

Where did you travel while you were stationed out in the bush?

I was in an area called Two-Core, where I was with the 54^th Signal Battalion. We were all along the pacific coastline. We had a large area that they would ship us to fix radios in the area.  Usually the radios were on mountain tops, so they would fly us there. I traveled all the way from the coast to close to the Korean border. I have an awful lot of pictures.

Were you ever in a position where you were directly threatened?

Oh yes, I’ve been shot and mortared many times. The very first time it happened to me I was at a place called On-K at the foothills of Hong-Kong Mountain. The Viet-Kong were trying to put out our radio signals and hooch’s, and they didn’t have the range right so they were coming down on us.  The first mortar hit at bout two o’clock in the morning and it was the loudest explosion I had ever heard. There was debris, dust, it was loud, and there was confusion. While all this is going on every one is yelling, “Get to the bunker!”  As this happened and I don’t know how long went by, probably less than a minute.  But then I was in the bunker with my combat boots on and don’t recall ever putting my boots on or getting to the bunker.  I didn’t even know where the bunker was, I’m sure I just followed the other guys.  Then it all settled down and was quiet again. In the morning we all saw the real destruction it had caused.

Do you have long lasting effects from the war?

I have many effects from the war the main one being Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder and I am finally getting help with that.

What is one humorous story that you can share with me?

I was at a place called Bong-Song and I was repairing radios there.  I went on “Sandbag Detail”, and went down where the kids were filling sandbags down by the river.  I looked over and saw an M-48 tank, down the river and there were kids down there washing it. I wanted to check it out, so I started walking over there. I shouldn’t have left where I was supposed to stay. I was walking along and then all of a sudden I hear something in Vietnamese. People were yelling “Dong Lai!” at me, very loud and very persistent. It means “stop”. I did stop, and realized I was walking into one of our mine camps. I finally got my composure and walked out. 

Two days before I left, we were watching a movie called Dirty Dozen.  Everybody was drinking and having a good time because that is how you celebrated leaving. So we were all drinking and I got pretty drunk. I always had prided myself that I would never puke all over, anything like that, I had composure. But that night I tried to make it to a big trash bin.  It was a 55 gallon drum and I heaved, and fell in! I was yelling at all my buddies to get me out before I drowned!

Things like that make the days go faster.

Did you keep in touch with your family and friends?

Oh yes, I was quite the writer. Mail is the best thing ever when you’re in the service.  If the people of the United States wanted to do anything helpful for the war, they would write the soldier a letter.  Mail call is awesome!

How long were you over in Vietnam?

I was over there 365 days. Your tour to Vietnam was one year. You could re-enlist, which some of my friends did.

How did you feel after returning home?

I didn’t know how I was going to talk to everyone.  I was a completely different person than the one I was when I left this place. I wondered if I would fulfill my questions. Until about 2002 I didn’t talk to anyone much about it. Now, I want to enlighten the people and let them hear about my experiences.

Do you have any closing words that you would like to say?

 My main issue is that every American person should give something back to their country, because that will make them appreciate the United States of America better.

Poetry of Witness

Image Source:newsone.com

After reading multiple poems from the “Poetry of Witness” section, I found two that were really powerfully written. “The Woman Hanging From The Thirteenth Floor Window” by Joy Harjo and "Charlie Howard's Descent" by Mark Doty. Both of these poems really spoke to me because they make me feel like I want to help these people with their situations. In “The Woman Hanging From The Thirteenth Floor Window”, the woman feels like she has no identity. She is no one. Hario writes, “She is a woman of children, of the baby, Carlos, and of Margaret, and of Jimmy who is the oldest. She is her mother's daughter and her father's son. She is several pieces between the two husbands she has had.”  This makes me think of people that I have known that have gone through a very rough stage in life once their kids leave the house or perhaps they divorce their spouse of many years. They feel like they are no one without these people. They need to find what makes their life worth living. In this poem, the woman does exactly that, only she is hanging from a ledge contemplating suicide. She goes through a few stages in her life, thinks of her childhood, her children, and all of the beautiful things she has in her life. The last line of the poem leaves the reader with the mystery of the outcome. Did this woman end her life, or begin it by climbing back upon the ledge?

The second poem, “Charlie Howard’s Descent” also evoked a true emotion in me when I read it. Mark Doty uses great detail and specific words to key the reader in on the situation. The young man in the poem is homosexual and is being teased. In lines 12-13 Doty writes“What could he do, live with one hand tied behind his back?” This line clearly shows the frustration that the young man felt. He was born this way, why were others so unaccepting and judgmental of him."They didn't believe him when he said he couldn't swim." And for the last time, this boy is not believed when he speaks the truth.

Here is a link to a book with a collection of poetry of witness titles "Against Forgetting"which is based on 20th century events. Very interesting.

The Necessity to Speak- Sam Hamill

Sam Hamill’s essay “The Necessity to Speak” talks about the importance of taking responsibility for our actions and not being afraid to talk about the “uncomfortable” parts of life. He talks about us as human not being able to “bear very much reality” in life. He uses the example of teen pregnancy. Parents sometimes believe that if they do not discuss sex in the household that their children will not take part in it. This is obviously naive and completely untrue. The best thing that a parent can to is provide the information concerning contraceptives to their children. However, as Hamill also talks about in his essay, we don’t want to ruin our innocence with the reality of the situation. Hamill says that a “true poet is often faced with the difficult task of telling people what they already know but do not want to hear.” This theme is echoed throughout his essay.

Hamill also discusses the way that we view violence in our society. It is okay for a man to spank his child, but this in turn will create a more violent adult from the battered child. We turn our heads and ignore the battered woman and children, because we don’t really want to “deal” with it. This essay relates well to the poems of witness that we read this week because the people from these poems are speaking. They are telling of the dark parts of life. Much like the poem “The Woman Hanging From the Thirteenth Floor Window”. This poem tells the story of how this woman came to the point of wanting to end her life. 

Hamill’s essay also a tells a truth about poetry itself. He shows that you don’t have to have rhyme or rhythm to have poetry. Hamill says that the “poet is the vehicle used by poetry so that the IT can touch us.” Personally, I enjoyed this essay because Hamill was kurt and to the point about things. His points made sense and he did a great job giving tons of information and facts to support the multiple thesis throughout the essay.

Image Source: http://innerreflectionstranscribed.wordpress.com/2009/05/

Here is a link to a short biography on Sam Hamill. Very interesting man.