Margaret Atwood Background Information

Assignment: On page 4 of your notebook, "Margaret Atwood's Biography," jot down a few interesting facts about Margaret Atwood and respond to one of the quotations from the video clip of Bill Moyers PBS show Faith & Reason.

Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, in 1939.

Atwood was raised a strict agnostic, and she believes atheism is a religion.

Her formal degrees are from the University of Toronto and Radcliffe College. She has also received 16 honorary degrees.

She is Canada's most eminent novelist and poet.

Her novels include strong women characters, and the books explore contemporary issues and sexual politics.

Her novels: The Edible Woman (1969); Surfacing (1973); Lady Oracle (1977); Life Before Man (1980); Bodily Harm (1982); The Handmaid's Tale (1986); Cat's Eye (1989); The Robber Bride (1993); Alias Grace (1996); The Blind Assassin (2000); and Oryx and Crake (2003),

The Handmaid's Tale film was released in 1990, and the book was recently staged as an opera.

For more information on Margaret Atwood, read her full biography at Contemporarywriters.com.

View this ten-minute clip of a Bill Moyers interview with Margaret Atwood to hear first-hand some of the political and religious beliefs that influenced The Handmaid's Tale.


After viewing the clip, respond in your journal to one of the following Atwood quotations from the video clip. Your personal response should be at least one full-paragraph. You may also wish to make connections between the quotation and films, books, and current events.

1. "When societies come under stress, these kinds of things happen. People start looking around for human sacrifices--for someone they can blame."


2. "In order to preserve our freedoms, we have to give them up for now."


3. "The theocracy that I put in The Handmaid's Tale never calls itself Christian. In fact, it never says anything about Christianity . . . . The slogans are all from the Old Testament."


4. "I believe in the America of Thoreau. Thoreau, the conscientious objector. Thoreau, the man who stood upon his principles."

Handmaid's Tale Vocabulary Words

The following vocabulary words appear in Parts I and II of The Handmaid's Tale. The words should be added to your notebook to study for the vocabulary section of the multiple choice final exam for the novel.

palimpsest: a parchment from which writing has been erased to make room for another text

pedantic: overly concerned with minute details

debase: to reduce in value or dignity
pungent: sharply affecting taste or smell
catkins: drooping cluster of cylindrical flowers

servile: submissive; fawning

surly: rude; unfriendly; bad-tempered

stipple: a painting made with dots or small spots

Good Citizens

Thanks to the following students for donating supplies to Room 271:

Rob Q. (and he's a newbie)

Magic Markers Needed

Yikes!! The office supply cabinet is nearly out of magic markers and only three colors remain. To make all of our Thinking Map posters, A to Z lists, and other signs, we will be nearly out of markers soon. Besides, with Tommy, Luigi and Jack in first hour, I am afraid that we will all be doing a lot of "black boxing," and the office is out of black markers.

Brian brought up a valid point yesterday. Brian argued that good citizens who donate to a needy cause get a tax deduction, so that good citizens of room 271 should have some incentive for donating Kleenex, scissors, glue sticks and markers. I'll consider suggestions for rewards that you leave on the comments section of the post.

Swift's "A Modest Proposal"

If you would like to finish reading Jonathan Swift's satirical essay about solving the poverty and overpopulation problems of Ireland, click here to read "A Modest Proposal."

If you didn't get a chance to share your ideas about Swift's proposal in class today, click on the comments for this blog post. You may wish to comment about how Swift connects to the concepts that we are exploring as part of the Atwood and Austen unit. Those concepts are sexism, oppression, religious fanaticism, censorship, civil liberties, utopias and men & women in love.

One of three epigraphs to The Handmaid’s Tale:

But as to myself, having been wearied out for many years with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal . . .

--Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal

World Lit II Course Overview

World Lit II examines the essential question: How do humans express themselves through their political and personal relationships?

Atwood and Austen

In February we will read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and view the hot new Kiera Knightley re-make of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Political and personal concepts studied during this unit include women's roles, oppression, civil liberties, sexism, censorship, religious fanaticism, the death penalty, love and war. We will also make thematic connections to short stories and poetry in the World Masterpieces textbook. For a list of potential poems and short stories, click here.

Choice Unit

In March students pick one of the following novels to read:

Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
July’s People by Nadine Gordimer
Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya
Waiting by Jin Ha

This choice unit continues to explore many of the concepts introduced in The Handmaid's Tale, and book clubs discuss how people survive political upheavals while maintaining their personal relationships. Poetry and short stories centering on issues of love, war and politics round out the choice unit.

With March also comes a World Lit all-time favorite--the Bollywood blockbuster Lagaan. 99% of World Lit students love this film. In fact, whenever I run into past World Lit students, they ask me if I have shown Lagaan yet. A few years ago a bunch of World Lit boys, inspired by this film, even started playing cricket on Sunday afternoons at an Edina park.

Politics and Relationships in Plays

During the Fourth Quarter World Lit students will not only read the following plays (either in their entirety or excerpts), but also see the dramas come to life through film. The guiding question for this drama unit is: What are the personal and societal obstacles that people must overcome to have a successful marriage/committed relationship?

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
Othello by William Shakespeare
A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

Work, Respect, Belong

Our classroom community will function more smoothly if we all follow the maxim: Work, Respect, Belong. In a cooperative education classroom group members rely on each other, so everyone must be individually accountable. Groups get along best when everyone does his or her part and when everyone reads the assignments.

Classroom Supplies

World Literature students use a single subject, composition notebook to showcase their thinking and writing in World Literature. Notebooks need to be in class every day as participation points are given on a regular basis. Use a Sharpie to write your name on the notebook and bring it to class every day starting Thursday, January 31.

Fully prepared students also come to class each day with a pen, pencil, highlighter, glue stick, and post-it notes.

Outstanding citizens of Room 271 donate Kleenex, markers, glue sticks and scissors for the common good.

Ekphrasic Poetry

In class we discussed two Ekphrasic poems, "How Long?" inspired by Goya's Colosso and Picasso's "Dream and Lie of Franco" inspired by Picasso's own painting Guernica. If you didn't comment much in class during the discussion, please feel free to comment below.

You may also use this blog post to share your original Ekphrasic poem composition.

Choice Book Blog Assignment

Create a blog to capture your discussions in class and to start new discussions with your book club. Decide which group member will be the blog administrator. Perhaps someone who was a religion blog administrator wishes to simply use that blog, revising the graphics and adding new posts. Or perhaps someone else wants to take a hand at blogger.

Instructions on creating a blog from scratch can be found on Mr. Hatten's website.The blog will be your group's visual aid for a presentation on your book on Finals Day.

The presentation (and hence the blog) needs to include the following elements:

1. Brief plot summary
2. Setting--details, connection to themes, and artist or poetic representation (Haiku)
3. Character development--describe the main characters (bubble map) and bring them to life with an artistic or poetic representation (sonnet). Character posts could also include analogies (remember your bridge maps) between the characters and pop culture and/or current events. Questions to consider: If you were casting a movie version of the book, whom would you cast? What political or public figures relate to your novel's characters? To discuss character development a great strategy is to compare and contrast the character at the beginning of the book with the same character at the end of the book. A double bubble map works well here. How an author develops a character through foils to other characters could also be discussed during the character portion of the presentation. Again, a double bubble for comparison and contrast will provide an active tool to facilitate a deeper discussion on character foils in the novel.
4. Biographical information about the author and historical context information that is relevant to your book.
5. Poetry’s connection to your novel. Does your author directly address the need for poetry in a person's life at a thematic level? If not, what can you infer about poetry's importance from the setting, plot, characters and other themes in the novel?
6. Hour 2 students should include connections between your novel and the other ones being read during this world literature choice unit. Refer to the double bubble maps in your notebooks.
7. Discuss music’s connection to your novel. Revisit the same types of questions that you did during poetry discussion day.
8. Discuss art & your novel. Refer to the same questions that you asked during poetry and music discussion days.
9. Discuss the role of science, religion, and philosophy in the lives of the characters in your novel. This discussion should lead to thematic connections that the author is making about some or all of these topics.
10. Other Themes--What life lessons is the author teaching in your novel that were not discussed on music, poetry, art, science, religion and philosophy discussion days? Remember that theme analysis needs to go beyond a topic. Theme has action! Theme = topic + action verb + prepositional phrase and/or direct object. A great way to discover themes in a novel is to analyse the conflicts in the book. What are the causes and effects of the conflict? A Multi-flow map is a great tool for these conflict discussions that often lead to the deepest theme discussions.

Anytime that you use sources other than your brain, you need to cite your sources and paraphrase information so that it is in your own words on your blog. This includes Sparknotes! Remember that a hotlink to the exact web page that you used for a particular blog post is an easy and credible way to cite sources.

You do not need to create all of your blog posts at the last minute. You can build posts throughout the unit by having members compose reflections that capture your book club discussions. You can even scan some of the Thinking Maps that you create in your notebook and any artwork that you create. Add those jpeg files as images to a blog post.

MIA Field Trip

World Lit students attending the field trip to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts should meet at door 12 at 9:20 a.m. on Wednesday, January 9. Bring lunch or money to buy lunch at the cafe.

Elements of Art PowerPoint on Edline

The PowerPoint that I showed today in class can be found on Edline. I was unable to post it to blogger, but you can simply click on the Edline link to review the PowerPoint if you missed it.

While you are on Edline, check your grade to make sure that you are not missing any points or assignments.