Not that anyone will read this, but on the off chance that they do this is just part of an essay for english extension which I'm going to post here because the school e-mail's down an need to be able to access it from home...yeh, awesome...
English
Area of Study: Imaginative Journeys - S. T. Coleridge - The Rime of the Ancyent Mariner - Kubla Khan - This Lime Tree Bower My Prison - The Frost at Midnight
Transformations: Emma/Clueless
http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/secondary/english/assets/docs/stage6/ext1/ext1_spec_fic.doc
English Extension 1
Mathematics
Mathematics Extension 1
Mathematics Extension 2
French Continuers
Studies of Religion
Common issues of exploration for the prescribed textsPart of the study that you undertake in this elective, will be to examine what makes the prescribed texts similar and where their own particular qualities set them apart. Roland Barthes, refers to “a kind of implicit contract between writer and reader” but he also recognises that “the writer may play against, as well as with, the prevailing generic conventions.” You need to identify these qualities in your responses to the prescribed texts as well as in your wider reading and viewing. The following points may be useful starting points for discussion and investigation:
· The use, misuse, abuse and absence of power
o Tolkien recognised a different threat: the uncontrollable growth of power ideologies and institutions, the unshakable thirst for control and dominance.1
o “Taking it. Holding it. Using it.” Ariane’s power principle from Cyteen (614)
o “Power and fear – fear and power!” Baron Vladimir Harkonnen in Dune (216)
o Men … “above all desire power.” Prologue, The Fellowship of the Ring
o As an example of the absence of power: Offred states, while preparing to take a bath that, “I don’t want to look at something (her body) that determines me so completely.” (73)
· Genetics and or breeding are a feature of all of the texts
o “We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans.” in Dune (16)
o “My fighting Uruk-hai.” Saruman’s specially bred creatures from orcs, which had at one time been elves who had been ‘turned by the forces of darkness’.
o The specifically bred azi are an essential part of the narrative of Cyteen.
o The handmaidens have been selected because of their capacity to have children and this is an essential part of the narrative of The Handmaid’s Tale.
· The misuse of technology, generally as connected to power, is a common feature of all these texts
o Technology assists in bringing about the social revolution which is the world as described by The Handmaid’s Tale. Atwood shows how “technological expansion” could amplify social and environmental instability, making us vulnerable to a government takeover by extreme right-wing religious fundamentalists. These religious fanatics halt the spiralling technological and industrial expansion.
o “Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But this only allowed other men with machines to enslave them.” Dune (17)
o “The rate of growth that sustains the technological capacity that makes civilisation possible is now exceeding the rate of cultural adaptation … the end will become more and more like the beginning, scattering of tribes of humans across our endless plain, in pointless conflict.” Cyteen (472)
o “The modern world is a machine and technologically driven world—we live in environments that are increasingly transmuted by us and for us by technological developments. Ultimately we feel more physically comfortable in this world than we do either intellectually or emotionally. There is a sense of a yearning for the natural harmony of our earlier existence, one not overwhelmed by technology.”2
o “But the assumption, in fact, manifests how through science and technology humans dehumanise themselves.” Extrapolation can lead to revelation of more extreme effects of human success, the ultimate being humanity’s self-destruction.3
· The nature of the tension that is generated is an essential part of each of the prescribed text’s atmosphere. This tension emerges from the nature and structure of the narrative. Each text creates tension in very particular and effective ways.
· Each text gives the impression that it is an account of actual historical events. The composers use a range of types of text to support their creation of verisimilitude
o The Fellowship of the Ring uses a prologue of the history of Middle-earth. Later, Gandalf leaves the Shire in a desperate attempt to find more information about the Ring. He enters the archives to discover a parchment dated “In the year 34:34 in the Second Age …” which accounts for the Ring’s use by Isildur, its first and last human owner.
o Cyteen employs a myriad of newspaper, interview, records of current affairs, archival details, diary and reportage texts to present the history and scientific background for particular chapters or as divisions between critical developments of the events.
o Dune uses excerpts from ‘collected sayings’, journals and histories of Princess Irulan to introduce each of the chapters.
o Atwood hints a number of times through the text that we are listening to Offred’s account of her experiences as a handmaid, which is confirmed in the final chapter of The Handmaid’s Tale.
· Being closely observed or spied upon is an important element of the building tension and fear that are produced in The Fellowship of the Ring, Cyteen and The Handmaid’s Tale
o Saruman describes the image of Sauron as “A great eye, lidless, wreathed in flames.” In The Eye of Power, Foucault defines the essential institutional model as Bentham’s eighteenth-century architectural device of the ‘Panopticon’, a ring-shaped building enclosing a tower that oversees cells that might contain a convict—or a lunatic, a patient, a worker, or a student. It is the same model used by Tolkien to locate the nature of Sauron’s power. “The ultimate form of visibility locates within the individual … an inspecting gaze, a gaze which each individual under its weight will end by interiorising to the point that he is his own overseer, each individual thus exercising this surveillance over, and against, himself.”4
o Grant and Justin are under constant supervision as is the younger Ari in Cyteen.
o In The Handmaid’s Tale there are references to the Eyes and the Aunts. The handmaidens’ behaviour and actions are very carefully monitored.
· The issue of class or status as a consequence of birth emerges as an issue in all of the prescribed texts
o A common irony of much science fiction is that the twentieth century technological revolution, whether it succeeds or self destructs, is the increasing “polarising effects of capitalism and patriarchy, leading to a society of even more rigid class and gender divisions.”5
o “The Duke felt in this moment that his own dearest dream was to end all clear class distinctions and never again think of deadly order.” Duke Atriedes in Dune (78)
o A man’s status is defined by whether he is “issued with a woman”. The Handmaid’s Tale (19)
· There have been strong elements of social satire, the cautionary tale have marked the genre’s history.6
· Politics is central to each of the texts: Dune, Cyteen, The Handmaid’s Tale and perhaps somewhat surprisingly, also in The Fellowship of the Ring, through the development of alliances and the initial formation of the Fellowship which was very much a political act.
· Religion: Dune and The Handmaid’s Tale.
· Myth making: Dune, Cyteen and The Fellowship of the Ring and arguably The Handmaid’s Tale.
o “Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind.” Collected sayings of Muad’Dib, Dune (123)
o “Much that once was is now lost …” and “History became legend, legend became myth …” Prologue, The Fellowship of the Ring
· Creation of a sense of wonder.
· Creation of a new world or setting for the composer to explore the themes and characters that they establish.
· The nature of the presentation of characters: In The Fellowship of the Ring and Cyteen there is an ensemble of characters, whereas in Dune, Paul Atriedes and in The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred is each clearly the major protagonist.
· The importance of trade and economics in general in science fiction
o “If you want profits you must rule.” Muad’Dib’s secret message to the Landsraad, Dune (372)
o “Trade and common interests have proven, in the end, more powerful in human affairs than all the warships ever launched.” Cyteen (4)
· Speculative fiction has had as a common thread “disquiet about human societies and where they are headed”.7
· What science fiction and fantasy allow is for the world of the hero to live on.8
· Perceptions of freedom
o The distinction between ‘freedom to’ and ‘freedom from’ The Handmaid’s Tale (34)
o “Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But this only allowed other men with machines to enslave them.” Dune (17)
o “They fought for the freedom of Middle-earth.” Prologue, The Fellowship of the Ring
o “The power of truth and its liberation from hegemony are indeed the great themes of The Lord of the Rings.”9
1 Casey Fredericks, (1982) The Future of Eternity: Mythologies of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Indiana University Press
2 Patricia Warwick (1977) “Images of the Man-Machine Intelligence Relationship in Science Fiction” in Many Futures, Many Worlds: Theme and Form in Science Fiction
3 Karl Kroeber (1988) Romantic Fantasy and Science Fiction, Yale University Press
4 Chance, Jane (2001) The Lord of the Rings: The Mythology of Power, Uni Press of Kentucky
5 Alice Adams, Reproducing the Womb (1994) Cornell University Press
6 Bill Menary (1991) The Mental Travellers: Four talks on speculative fiction, Adelaide (Consider the accuracy of this statement for most modern fantasy.)
7 Ibid.
8 Casey Fredericks (1982) The Future of Eternity: Mythologies of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Indiana University Press
9 Jane Chance (2001) The Lord Of the Rings: The Mythology of Power, Uni Press of Kentucky
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