nolite te basterdes corborun... oh you know what I mean!

I revisited and revised a blog post from over a year ago to submit to Vermont College of Fine Arts as a critical essay on an application and thought that I would post it here. It is (hopefully) quite a bit tighter than my original posting. You can find the original post here.

Revised Version

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale was not required reading in any of my Literature classes. This is unfortunate. I truly wish it had been required reading for me, particularly alongside Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, as Ms. Atwood's novel tackles many of the same topics surrounding religion and social class. Ms. Atwood, however, is not shy about delving deeply into gender roles and feminism in her very multi-layered novel. The Handmaid's Tale is an onion, and every layer drags you deeper into despair and pain, and at the core is the fragility of human self-esteem.

It is a classic cautionary tale, describing what might happen if people (particularly women but applies to both genders) allow themselves…