Women's Role in "The Handmaid's Tale" and "Persepolis

1. AGENDA • FOCUS: What are you noticing about the role of women in this book? What is anaphora and epistrophe? • *Opening: Female Identity Picture Response • *Mentor Text: “Persepolis” • *Seminar: Ch. 1-4 • *New Vocab—Anaphora and Epistrophe • *Try your own poem with Anaphora and Epistrophe • *Closing: shares • *HW: Read Ch. 5-12.

2. MATERIALS • *Female Identity Pictures • *Mentor Text: “Persepolis” • *Anaphora and Epistrophe Handout

3. OPENING: PICTURE POSTERS On your desks are pictures of women that depict different ideas. Pick one of the pictures and in your writer’s notebook, discuss what the picture looks like, what it says about a woman’s identity or role in society, and what you think…

4. ANNOUNCEMENTS • HW: Read chapters 5-12 of The Handmaid’s Tale! • HW: Pivotal Passage Write Paper due Friday. Artistic Character Representation Project due Monday.

5. MENTOR TEXT: PERSEPOLIS • Let’s look at a mentor text that I think is a great parallel to the book, The Handmaid’s Tale. It is a graphic novel called Persepolis. • Let’s read through it twice, once silently so you can read and annotate, and twice out loud; as you read, consider how it compares to The Handmaid’s Tale. • Noticed, the similarities between the veil as well as how woman are treated inferior in parts of the Middle East. Also, Offred lives in a theocracy (a government ruled by religion) and so do regions of the Middle East.

6. SEMINAR • Let’s discuss chapters 1-4. • What are you noticing and understanding about Atwood’s world, setting, characters, writing style, etc.?

7. NEW VOCABULARY • Today we are going to learn some new AP Vocabulary: Epistrophe and Anaphora. • Anaphora is a word, phrase, etc. that repeats at the START of a sentence/line over and over again. • Epistrophe is a word, phrase, etc. that repeats at the END of a sentence/line over and over again. • Let’s look at some poems and see these structural techniques in action. We also need to discuss WHY…why the author uses the anaphora and epistrophe (which will vary poem to poem).

8. POEM STUDIES • Here is what I noticed…did you? • POEM #1 and #2 • The first poem is by Shakespeare! It is clearly a 14 line sonnet and has a couplet which is a easy tell-tale sign of a Shakespearen sonnet. • The first poem discuss all the woes of the world and how the persona wants to die to escape these things, however, they can’t die because even though they could escape all of these evils things, they wouldn’t want to leave their loved one alone. • The anaphora helps create a dramatic list. You feel just as tired as the persona does because of all of the “and”s. • The second poem uses epistrophe to really emphasize the “you.” It shows intense focus on whoever the “who” is (this is actually lines from a play).

9. POEM STUDIES • Here is what I noticed…did you? • POEM #3 • There is an interesting mix of anaphora that helps show the list of duties the person must complete and the anaphora varies a little bit to also show the person’s dialect. • The poem starts off with the domestic cliché idea of the woman as the one who cleans and takes care of the home, hence the title, “Woman Work.” • The poem has a clear tone shift in the second stanza where it shifts to nature images. Nature seems to provide this persona an escape from their responsibilities. It is also interesting how she takes negative nature—like snow and storms—and makes them a positive image. • At the end it appears that nature, night time are the only times she can find peace and freedom from all of the “woman work” she is expected to do every day.

10. WRITER’s NOTEBOOK PROMPT • You try writing with anaphora and/or epistrophe yourself. Pick a topic and write in your writer’s notebook. • Write Time… • Closing: Let’s share! • HW: Remember to read chapters 5-12!!