Good observations about this story Hamdi. Let’s consider some elements and themes found in this story. How are gender issues treated in this story? Is Silko a feminist or is she merely reinforcing patriarchal stereotypes? Is the narrator breaking free from oppression or merely giving in to a new oppressor?
She shows how women can only be categorised as either an angel or a whore. It shows the way that women can only be judged at the time. She also frequently alludes to the “bad” women in literature to show how women could only be categorised in those binary opposites like Lady Macbeth or Eve. She uses rhetorical devices to explain how bad women are needed to disrupt the static order which is Patriarchy. Atwood also shows her opposition to the extreme feminism that existed in her time where feminism was influencing the creation of literature at the time.
In 1892, Henry Gallwey , the Vice Consul, traveled to Benin to sign a treaty and bring Benin under British protection. Henry Gallwey wrote about the events on his time in Benin, which gave Britain a "fair" reason to occupy Benin from barbaric people. Gallweys accounts did often describe the Benin people in a negative way. On the other hand, we have to take those accounts into consideration, since Benin was an oral society with no written accounts. It seems unfair to the Benin people to simply judge the whole situation by only analyzing Gallweys accounts.
Nicole Ruiz Mrs. Andrews AP Language and Composition/Period2 23 September 2013 During the late 1700’s, the colonies in America were upset and resentful of the British tyranny. In order to make the separation between the two groups official, Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. Two hundred years later, women were facing the same injustice, only it was from men; and to protest against the unfair treatment, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions. Both parties of oppression fought against the same outcome, unjust treatment. Stanton's declaration was a parody to Jefferson's and closely resembled his work.
In Oceania the society is manipulated by the government through destroying trust of people, the creation of the thought police and the fear that lies in Room named 101. This government manipulation causes people to betray one another something which is approved by the ‘’Big brother” since it allows the discovery of any type of betrayal towards Big Brother. In the society where Winston lives the government has abolished the trust, love and bonding between family and friends, “It was my little girl, said Parsons with a sort of doleful pride. She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I was saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day.
Joanne Chang Mr. John Gr. 11 English December 5, 2010 Novel Film Comparison of A Tale of Two Cities and Les Misérables (1998) In the late eighteenth century, a movement of terror revealed its mask. After the impulsive investment of France to profit a fruitless battle of the failed attempt to colonize North America, France had sunk into an ocean of deep debt. Despite the knowledge of the financial catastrophe, the French aristocrats continued their luxurious and extravagant living, sparing nothing but poverty for their people. As the peasants realized the corruption in their government, oppression became the trigger to the series of bloody and violent acts for justice against the aristocrats – the French Revolution.
How has your understanding of the contextual values portrayed in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf been shaped by your study of A Room of One’s Own? Edward Albee’s 1962 dramatic play, ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’, written at a time of change after World War II, addresses the fragmentation of the human condition, the artifice of the American Dream and the destructive nature of illusions. Meanwhile, Virginia Woolf’s polemic on women and fiction in 1928, ‘A Room of One’s Own’, examines the paradigms of gender inequality and attitudes towards women’s independence in the early 20th century, and truth and illusion. Although written in different contexts, both authors reflect similar values of their time. Woolf endeavours to prove that for women, financial and intellectual freedom is a necessity to attaining happiness.
The single party in power led, by Big Brother, controls mass media and uses the fear of death, to create obedience. This depicts Oceania realistically enough to remind readers that such a society has indeed existed, for example in fascist Spain, Stalin's Russia, and even in North Korea. All these governments are totalitarian, they have removed all humanity, by removing all freedom: drastically changing the lives of every citizen. Worse yet, if people forget the lessons history has taught them, about each of these dictatorships, we will have a society as brutally repulsive as the society Winston Smith lives in.
In the name of preserving law and order in a white-dominated society, Klansmen punished newly freed blacks for a variety of reasons, including behaving in an "impudent" manner toward whites. They whipped the teachers of freedmen's schools and burnt their schoolhouses. But first and foremost, the Klan sought to do away with Republican influence in the South by terrorizing and murdering its party leaders and all those who voted for it…in outright defiance of the Republican-led federal government, Southern Democrats formed organizations that violently intimidated blacks and Republicans who tried to win political power...” It was all about change, evolving and becoming better then what the country was about, at that time. The founders of the KKK were stubborn to change; they had the mentality of supremacy, and tried by any means necessary to dominate others and deter the changes around
Nigerian tribes were outweighed in military resources and skills compared to British forces. Because of the colonization of Nigeria, the country witnessed political, cultural, and economic change during the colonial period". British Colonialism installed in Nigeria the foundations of a modern democracy. All important decisions were made under a British governor. In 1966, the dream of flourishing democracy was diminished when a series of massacres occurred, inter-country arguments came about, and a military coup started the first of a series of military governments.