'Thing fall apart the centre cannot hold' is a line in W.B Yeats poem 'The Second Coming' because of its stunning, violent imagery and terrifying ritualistic language, "The Second Coming" is one of Yeats's most famous poems, its set in a world on the threshold of apocalypse must like the three texts. The texts 'Henry IV Part 2' by William Shakespeare, 'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood and the poem 'The Waste Land' by T.S Eliot deals with the topic of disintegration of and within civilisation. The authors each explore this disintegration with their own medium, Shakespeare through a play, Eliot a poem and Atwood a novel, despite the differences in form all three texts contain similarities in content, exploring conflict in gender, the role of power and religious influences. Gender conflict is based on the beliefs various societies have established on the roles men and women play in those cultures, and the change and breakdown of these roles is vital in the disintegration of all three texts. Eliot's 'The Waste Land' uses sex as a landmark to illustrate how low society has fallen, the separation of sex from love to Eliot stripped any beauty sex in the modern world could hold, as all significance is lost along with its connection to love. The loss of love is perhaps most clearly shown by the 'carbuncular' clerk for whom love, passion, nor even response is required in order for sexual gratification, his 'Exploring hands encounter no defence; His vanity requires no response, And makes a welcome of indifference.' The typist neither speaks nor acts in her own defence and so the clerk assumes a right to his own pleasure, it seems he almost hopes for her indifference, the attitude shown here starkly contrasts 'The change of Philomel, ... ... middle of paper ... ...s, Colleen. The love song of T.S. Eliot: elegiac homoeroticism in the early poetry. Gender, Desire, and Sexuality in T. S. Eliot. Ed. Cassandra Laity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. p. 20 Porfert, Joseph. Hell On Earth: The Feminist Dystopia of The Handmaid’s Tale. http://al.odu.edu/english/pubspdfs/Joseph-Porfert-essay.pdf [accessed on 07/01/2014] Shakespeare, William. Henry IV Part 2. Ed. Peter Davidson. Penguin; New Ed edition, 2005 Tolan, Fiona. Margaret Atwood: Feminism and Fiction. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. p. 152-53 Rabkin, N. Rabbits, Ducks, and Henry V in Shakespeare an Anthology of Criticism and Theory 1945-2000. Ed, McDonald, R. Blackwell 2004, p.249-250) Rackin, Phyllis Shakespeare and Women. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. p. 68 2008-9 http://www.royal.gov.uk/historyofthemonarchy/kingsandqueensofengland/thelancastrians/ henryiv.spx [accessed 22/12/2012]
The novel “The Handmaid’s Tale written by Margaret Atwood shows the way of life for women in the
Corso spent much of his early life between foster parents and prison, the latter being where he was introduced to poetry. Now credited as a key member of the “Beat Generation”, a group of poets who were opposed to social conformity and the traditional forms of poetry, Corso typically wrote poetry “on serious philosophical issues” (Olson 53). On the other hand, Eliot’s upbringing was more traditional, where he attended Harvard and went on to become a figure of immense influence in the literary world. Eliot’s first major poetic publication, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, bears many resemblances to Corso’s postmodern poem Marriage, a poem written to criticize the philosophical issues associated with marriage. To begin with, Corso’s Marriage opens with two rhetorical questions that the speaker attempts to answer throughout the course of the poem.
Wisker, Gina. Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale: A Reader's Guide. London; New York : Continuum, c2010. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.
When read for the first time, The Waste Land appears to be a concoction of sorts, a disjointed poem. Lines are written in different languages, narrators change, and the scenes seem disconnected, except for the repeated references to the desert and death. When read over again, however, the pieces become coherent. The Waste Land is categorized as a poem, but exhibited visually, it appears to be a literary collage. And when standing back and viewing the collage from afar, a common theme soon emerges. Eliot collects aspects from different cultures or what he calls cultural memories. These assembled memories depict a lifeless world, in which the barrenness of these scenes speak of a wasted condition. He concentrates on women, including examples of violence committed against them and the women's subsequent lack of response to this violence, to show how apathetic the world is. But The Waste Land is not a social commentary on the plight of women. Rather, the women's non-reaction to the violence against them becomes a metaphor for the impotence of the human race to respond to pain. Violence recurs throughout time, and as Eliot points to in his essay "Tradition and Individual Talent" in the epigraph, we can break this cycle of violence and move ahead only by learning from the past and applying this knowledge to the present.
Spurr, David. Conflicts in Consciousness: T.S. Eliot’s Poetry & Criticism. Urbana: U of Illinois P. 1984.
Taking Over The novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood explores a new “America” in the future, where the government gains total control. Restricting almost anything, these handmaids had very few rights and were valued only if their ovaries were viable. As the government started to push religion around, the handmaids were being affected by having strict clothing, punishments for disobeying, and fear that this world would never end. Forcing these women to the lower class, all freedom was lost, fear was a normal thing and they had to cope with it.
The Handmaids Tale, written by Margaret Attwood, goes on to explore the consequences that come to be from the reversal of womens rights in a society called Gilead. It is what one can consider a cautionary tale. In the new world of Gilead, a group of conservative religious extremists have taken power, and have turned the sexual revolution upside down. The society of Gilead is founded on what is to be considered a return to traditional values, gender roles and the subjugation of women by men, and the Bible is used as the guiding principle. It differs completely from the society, which was once the place in which Feminists argued for liberation from the traditional gender roles. What women had worked hard for in the area of gaining rights to birth control, legalization of abortion and an increasing number of active female voters, had been completely reversed in a short period of time. Not only were women now forbidden to vote in Gilead, they were also denied the right to read or write, according to the new laws of the establishment. The Handmaids Tale portrays that of a totalitarian society, and reflects a dystopia, which goes on to explore the interaction between sexuality and politics.
Williamson, George. A Reader's Guide to T.S. Eliot; a Poem by Poem Analysis. New York:
The Handmaid’s Tale (Contemporary Classics). Journals Bertens, H. (2001) Literary Theory: The Basics, The Politics of Class: Marxism. Abingdon, Routledge. Sourced in AQA Critical Anthology LITB4/PM Issued September 2008.
Callaway, Alanna A., "Woman disunited ; Margaret Atwood's The handmaid's tale as a critique of feminism" (2008). Master's theses. Paper 3505. http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/3505
Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale": A Contextual Dystopia, David Ketterer, Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Jul., 1989), pp. 209-217
In the first stanza of William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming”, the speaker paints a picture of chaos and frightening sight. The first image we read is the gyre. “Turning and turning in the widening gyre” (1), Tracy Caldwell says “the gyre refers to Yeats’ personal understanding of cyclical events in history explained in his work, ‘A Vision’, which details the theory of metaphysics and history he claimed to have received from the spirit world” (2). In the second line, the speaker states that order is loose that “the falcon cannot hear the falconer” (2). “The circular motion of the falcon not only refers to the gyre explained above, but also may refer to the loss of gravitational center, exerting a powerful force of integration kept in place only if the falcon would (or could) keep its normal orbit around the falconer” (Caldwell 2). Bloom says “and the falcon represents his mastery of nature, now in the act of falling apart” (2). “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” (4). Everything is out of control. “The ceremony of innocence is drowned/the best lack all conviction, while ...
The Handmaid's Tale presents an extreme example of sexism and misogyny by featuring the complete objectification of women in the society of Gilead. Yet by also highlighting the mistreatment of women in the cultures that precede and follow the Gileadean era, Margaret Atwood is suggesting that sexism and misogyny are deeply embedded in any society and that serious and deliberate attention must be given to these forms of discrimination in order to eliminate them.
In The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood explores the role that women play in society and the consequences of a countryís value system. She reveals that values held in the United States are a threat to the livelihood and status of women. As one critic writes, “the author has concluded that present social trends are dangerous to individual welfare” (Prescott 151).
T.S Eliot, widely considered to be one of the fathers of modern poetry, has written many great poems. Among the most well known of these are “The Waste Land, and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, which share similar messages, but are also quite different. In both poems, Eliot uses various poetic techniques to convey themes of repression, alienation, and a general breakdown in western society. Some of the best techniques to examine are ones such as theme, structure, imagery and language, which all figure prominently in his poetry. These techniques in particular are used by Eliot to both enhance and support the purpose of his poems.