I need your help with an assignment. I need a journal page (at least one full page) and a 10-slide presentation that connects back to the book or one of its broader themes. It should be based only on chapters 10 to 25 (not beyond that) and relate to a real-life event—just one event, focusing on it only. I need you to relate the book to a real-life event, focusing only on one event in this presentation
I’ve attached the novel, rubric, and add a YouTube video that I want to present in class. The video should relate to the novel and its themes, making sure it aligns with the content from chapters 10 to 25.
Please read the rubric carefully to make sure everything meets the requirements. Let me know if you have any questions or need anything else. I really appreciate your help.
The Handmaid's Tale INTERNATIONAL ACCLAIM FOR The Handmaid’s Tale “A novel that brilliantly illuminates some of the darker interconnections of politics and sex.… Satisfying, disturbing and compelling.” – Washington Post “The most poetically satisfying and intense of all Atwood’s novels.” – Maclean’s “It deserves an honored place on the small shelf of cautionary tales that have entered modern folklore.…” – Publishers Weekly “Imaginative, even audacious, and conveys a chilling sense of fear and menace.” – Globe and Mail “This visionary novel … can be read as a companion volume to Orwell’s 1984 – its verso, in fact. It gives you the same degree of chill, even as it suggests the varieties of tyrannical experience; it evokes the same kind of horror even as its mordant wit makes you smile.” – E. L. Doctorow “Deserves the highest praise.” – San Francisco Chronicle “In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood has written the most chilling cautionary novel of the century.” – Phoenix Gazette “A sly and beautifully crafted story about the fate of an ordinary woman caught o guard by extraordinary events.… A compelling fable of our time.” – Glamour BOOKS BY MARGARET ATWOOD FICTION The Edible Woman (1969) Surfacing (1972) Lady Oracle (1976) Dancing Girls (1977) Life Before Man (1979) Bodily Harm (1981) Murder in the Dark (1983) Bluebeard’s Egg (1983) The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) Cat’s Eye (1988) Wilderness Tips (1991) Good Bones (1992) The Robber Bride (1993) Alias Grace (1996) The Blind Assassin (2000) Good Bones and Simple Murders (2001) Oryx and Crake (2003) The Penelopiad (2005) The Tent (2006) FOR CHILDREN Up in the Tree (1978) Anna’s Pet (with Joyce Barkhouse) (1980) For the Birds (1990) Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut (1995) Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda (2004) NON-FICTION Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972) Days of the Rebels 1815–1840 (1977) Second Words (1982) Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature (1996) Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing (2002) Moving Targets: Writing with Intent 1982–2004 (2004) POETRY Double Persephone (1961) The Circle Game (1966) The Animals in That Country (1968) The Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970) Procedures for Underground (1970) Power Politics (1971) You Are Happy (1974) Selected Poems (1976) Two-Headed Poems (1978) True Stories (1981) Interlunar (1984) Selected Poems II: Poems Selected and New 1976–1986 (1986) Morning in the Burned House (1995) Copyright © 1985 by O.W. Toad Ltd. First cloth edition published in Canada by McClelland & Stewart in 1985. All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Atwood, Margaret, 1939– The handmaid’s tale / Margaret Atwood eISBN: 978-1-55199-496-3 I. Title. PS8501.T86H35 2002 C813′.54 C2002-902571-0 PR9199.3.A8.H3 2002 We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. The author would like to thank the D.A.A.D. in West Berlin and the English Department at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, for providing time and space. Lines from “Heartbreak Hotel” © 1956 Tree Publishing c/o Dunbar Music Canada Ltd. Reprinted by permission. SERIES EDITOR: ELLEN SELIGMAN EMBLEM EDITIONS McClelland & Stewart Ltd. 75 Sherbourne Street Toronto, Ontario M5A 2P9 www.mcclelland.com/emblem v3.1 http://www.mcclelland.com/emblem For Mary Webster and Perry Miller And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die. And Jacob’s anger was kindled against Rachel; and he said, Am I in God’s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her. – Genesis, 30:1-3 But as to myself, having been wearied out for many years with o ering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal … –Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal In the desert there is no sign that says, Thou shalt not eat stones. – Sufi proverb CONTENTS Cover Other Books by This Author Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph I Night II Shopping III Night IV Waiting Room V Nap VI Household VII Night VIII Birth Day IX Night X Soul Scrolls XI Night XII Jezebel’s XIII Night XIV Salvaging XV Night Historical Notes About the Author I NIGHT CHAPTER ONE We slept in what had once been the gymnasium. The oor was of varnished wood, with stripes and circles painted on it, for the games that were formerly played there; the hoops for the basketball nets were still in place, though the nets were gone. A balcony ran around the room, for the spectators, and I thought I could smell, faintly like an afterimage, the pungent scent of sweat, shot through with the sweet taint of chewing gum and perfume from the watching girls, felt-skirted as I knew from pictures, later in mini-skirts, then pants, then in one earring, spiky green-streaked hair. Dances would have been held there; the music lingered, a palimpsest of unheard sound, style upon style, an undercurrent of drums, a forlorn wail, garlands made of tissue-paper owers, cardboard devils, a revolving ball of mirrors, powdering the dancers with a snow of light. There was old sex in the room and loneliness, and expectation, of something without a shape or name. I remember that yearning, for something that was always about to happen and was never the same as the hands that were on us there and then, in the small of the back, or out back, in the parking lot, or in the television room with the sound turned down and only the pictures flickering over lifting flesh. We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability? It was in the air; and it was still in the air, an afterthought, as we tried to sleep, in the army cots that had been set up in rows, with spaces between so we could not talk. We had annelette sheets, like children’s, and army-issue blankets, old ones that still said u.s. We folded our clothes neatly and laid them on the stools at the ends of the beds. The lights were turned down but not out. Aunt Sara and Aunt Elizabeth patrolled; they had electric cattle prods slung on thongs from their leather belts. No guns though, even they could not be trusted with guns. Guns were for the guards, specially picked from the Angels. The guards weren’t allowed inside the building except when called, and we weren’t allowed out, except for our walks, twice daily, two by two around the football eld which was enclosed now by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The Angels stood outside it with their backs to us. They were objects of fear to us, but of something else as well. If only they would look. If only we could talk to them. Something could be exchanged, we thought, some deal made, some trade-o , we still had our bodies. That was our fantasy. We learned to whisper almost without sound. In the semi-darkness we could stretch out our arms, when the Aunts weren’t looking, and touch each other’s hands across space. We learned to lip-read, our heads at on the beds, turned sideways, watching each other’s mouths. In this way we exchanged names, from bed to bed: Alma. Janine. Dolores. Moira. June. II SHOPPING CHAPTER TWO A chair, a table, a lamp. Above, on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath, and in the centre of it a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out. There must have been a chandelier, once. They’ve removed anything you could tie a rope to. A window, two white curtains. Under the window, a window seat with a little cushion. When the window is partly open – it only opens partly – the air can come in and make the curtains move. I can sit in the chair, or on the window seat, hands folded, and watch this. Sunlight comes in through the window too, and falls on the oor, which is made of wood, in narrow strips, highly polished. I can smell the polish. There’s a rug on the oor, oval, of braided rags. This is the kind of touch they like: folk art, archaic, made by women, in their spare time, from things that have no further use. A return to traditional values. Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want? On the wall above the chair, a picture, framed but with no glass: a print of owers, blue irises, watercolour. Flowers are still allowed. Does each of us have the same print, the same chair, the same white curtains, I wonder? Government issue? Think of it as being in the army, said Aunt Lydia. A bed. Single, mattress medium-hard, covered with a ocked white spread. Nothing takes place in the bed but sleep; or no sleep. I try not to think too much. Like other things now, thought must be rationed. There’s a lot that doesn’t bear thinking about. Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last. I know why there is no glass, in front of the watercolour picture of blue irises, and why the window only opens partly and why the glass in it is shatterproof. It isn’t running away they’re afraid of. We wouldn’t get far. It’s those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge. So. Apart from these details, this could be a college guest room, for the less distinguished visitors; or a room in a rooming house, of former times, for ladies in reduced circumstances. That is what we are now. The circumstances have been reduced; for those of us who still have circumstances. But a chair, sunlight, owers: these are not to be dismissed. I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight. Where I am is not a prison but a privilege, as Aunt Lydia said, who was in love with either/or. The bell that measures time is ringing. Time here is measured by bells, as once in nunneries. As in a nunnery too, there are few mirrors. I get up out of the chair, advance my feet into the sunlight, in their red shoes, at- heeled to save the spine and not for dancing. The red gloves are lying on the bed. I pick them up, pull them onto my hands, nger by nger. Everything except the wings around my face is red: the colour of blood, which de nes us. The skirt is ankle-length, full, gathered to a at yoke that extends over the breasts, the sleeves are full. The white wings too are prescribed issue; they are to keep us from seeing, but also from being seen. I never looked good in red, it’s not my colour. I pick up the shopping basket, put it over my arm. The door of the room – not my room, I refuse to say my – is not locked. In fact it doesn’t shut properly. I go out into the polished hallway, which has a runner down the centre, dusty pink. Like a path through the forest, like a carpet for royalty, it shows me the way. The carpet bends and goes down the front staircase and I go with it, one hand on the banister, once a tree, turned in another century, rubbed to a warm gloss. Late Victorian, the house is, a family house, built for a large rich family. There’s a grandfather clock in the hallway, which doles out time, and then the door to the motherly front sitting room, with its eshtones and hints. A sitting room in which I never sit, but stand or kneel only. At the end of the hallway, above the front door, is a fanlight of coloured glass: owers, red and blue. There remains a mirror, on the hall wall. If I turn my head so that the white wings framing my face direct my vision towards it, I can see it as I go down the stairs, round, convex, a pier-glass, like the eye of a sh, and myself in it like a distorted shadow, a parody of something, some fairytale gure in a red cloak, descending towards a