I have worked with Ana Blumberg over the past year to create a sustainable and efficient Student Government Club at SLA. We were very ambitious at the beginning, planning out elections and the rules of the student government. We soon realized that we needed to get a group of interested students together to help us. And that was harder than we expected. After lots of trial and error, we ended up with a great group of about 30 interested and willing students to participate in the club. Knowing there wasn’t much time left in the year, we didn’t have time to hold these elections, we decided to do a fundraiser instead. And this way we would have starting funding for the club to continue next year and hopefully do even more amazing things.

Annotated Bibliography https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cBf6lO42IgF487fNAUZTe3p1AomTz3jA5BOEqQnC2Wk/edit?usp=sharing

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey wrestles with authority and how humans choose to respond to it. The reader is introduced to Randle McMurphy, a diagnosed “psychopath” who changes the dynamic in the psych ward of the hospital. The ward is led by Big Nurse Ratched, a controlling authority figure for the patients. She asserts her dominance by manipulating the patients with fear, and controlling everything in the ward to her liking. The narrator, Bromden, feels that she “is able to set the wall clock at whatever speed she wants…” (68). Another patient says that Big Nurse is one of those “people who try to make you weak so they can get you to toe the line, to follow their rules, to live like they want you to. And the best way to do this … is to weaken you by gettin’ you where it hurts the worst” (54). Big Nurse clearly has a hold on her patients. Until McMurphy comes into the picture.

McMurphy knows her game, or at least he thinks he does. He is determined to defeat her at her own manipulation game. He first tries this by trying to just voice his annoyance, specifically about how loud the radio plays when they are in the day room. He complains multiple times throughout the evening, but eventually gets to bed.

The next morning, he is up and about before 6:45, which is strictly against ward rules, and he is singing, loud enough to wake up Bromden at least. He surprises Big Nurse with his partial nudity, and she is completely caught off-guard by his singing. He has her so worked up that she starts yelling at her employees, a rare occurrence. McMurphy has taken his anger with the constant radio noise, and flipped it on its head to use as leverage. He is taking what Big Nurse has told him and using it against her to get ahead.

I chose this moment from the text because I have used a very similar tactic to get what I wanted. In 4th grade at Greene Street Friends School, gym class was the best class. Unlike middle school P.E, gym class was another word for fun games and challenges with your class. We played kickball, jumped off of springboards, did relay races, and much more. In 4th grade, one of our units was yoga. In comparison, yoga sucked. Many of my classmates agreed.

Greene Street, being a quaker school, taught us about peaceful protesting, and encouraged us to do so if we felt something was unjust. Memorably, we learned about the many sit-ins that happened during the civil rights movement in the 1960s. My classmates and I decided to apply this knowledge to our yoga unit.

We organized a protest and originally got almost half the class behind it. When it came time, we, instead of following our instructor’s directions and movements, sat silently on our mats, criss-cross applesauce. Granted, this protest was completely unsuccessful, and we actually got in pretty big trouble for doing it. And, of course, protesting against yoga is never something I would do now, in fact I quite enjoy a relaxing yoga session. But I stand by our actions, and I would 100% do it again if we were protesting something else. We were exercising our constitutional rights as Americans to peacefully protest, and we were using what the school had taught us to our advantage.

I relate to McMurphy in many ways, and I don’t think that makes me crazy. Although our circumstances were different, we both used disobedience as a way to try to get what we wanted. He truly gave them a taste of their own medicine (no pun intended). And maybe this tactic doesn’t always work in all circumstances. Maybe it ultimately won’t work for McMurphy just as it didn’t work for my classmates and me. But whoever is the target of the “protest” cannot deny that it’s at least a very clever strategy.

Aside from the clever-ness of our 4th grade scheme, there was also a certain innocence that McMurphy lacks. McMurphy’s final goal is to get under Big Nurse’s skin, he doesn’t necessarily care about the bonuses that might come with that. My classmates and I just hated doing yoga when we could be playing games. We weren’t consciously using our newfound knowledge of peaceful protest against the gym teacher, we simply wanted a little more say in what we were learning. And that’s what McMurphy and I have in common, when put in a controlled environment, all we really want is a bit of that control.

I have portrayed Offred looking in the mirror at Jezebel’s. In my drawing she is looking at herself in the mirror in the room’s bathroom. We don’t see the front of her face in this drawing, we only see what she sees in the mirror. She looks disheveled and pale, and her makeup is running, as she describes in the book. (insert quote). Her hair is all over the place and the lingerie she is wearing is falling off of her shoulders due to how ill fitting it is. I made the bodysuit super sparkly or glittery because Atwood describes the look of it in detail, and Offred mentions what she is wearing a few times throughout the night.

I also made the background of the drawing all blue or white. The blue represents the sadness that Offred feels. That is only my interpretation because her feelings are sometimes unclear in the writing, but when I read I get a general melancholy feeling from our narrator. The emotion might not be sadness, but could be insecurity or longing, which are sad feelings to me.

The items that are dark blue (the washcloth, the soap bar, and the clock) are all items that Offred does not have access to inn Gilead, or at least not clear access. She points out the bar of soap and the washcloth, but she does not say that there is a clock in the bathroom. I added the clock because the commander is waiting outside for her to finish freshening up. Time is also an interesting concept in Gilead. “Time here is measured by bells, as once in nunneries” (8). Even when she is away from Gilead, there is still someone expecting her, someone waiting for her arrival.

I wanted to draw this scene because I think it is one of the most important and unique scenes in the book so far. There are no mirrors in the bathroom in Gilead because they don’t want people to be able to look at themselves, avoiding vanity from anyone. This is the first time that Offred gets a good look at herself since “the time before.” All she can do when she looks in the mirror is see her flaws and imperfections. Her makeup is smudged, her clothes don’t fit right, she’s got stray hairs flying everywhere. Gilead has taught her to cover up her imperfections, and to completely hide them so that she appears as a perfect doll for men to play with.

This idea rings so true to my life and my feminine experience. The patriarchy has somehow drilled into my brain that if I don’t have a button nose, if I don’t have a flat stomach, etc. then I am not good enough, or that lacking those qualities makes me less feminine, or less of a woman. Saying that outright sounds sort of insane, or cliche, but those are real insecurities that I have felt. It doesn’t really matter how much I try to unlearn this way of thinking, it stays with me.

So now put yourself in Offred’s shoes– you are living in a world just like ours, where white men have more privilege than anyone else, and where your mother is protesting every other day to have basic human rights for women. Then suddenly, you are pushed into a world where you cannot own anything of your own, and all you really have is your body, and if it betrays you, you are ostracized and sent to basically be a slave in the Colonies. I would probably be pointing out my flaws too.

Leah and Rachel are two very prominent matriarchal figures in the bible. They are sisters and wives to Jacob, constantly competing for his attention. Jacob had a clear preference for Rachel, but God balanced this favoritism by making Leah fertile, and leaving Rachel barren.

The etymology of the names Rachel, Leah, and Jacob are relevant to their stories. Leah means “cow,” and some translations say that she has “soft eyes,” meaning the eye muscles never strain. “Cow eyes” describe a look of submission, or weakness. Rachel translates to “ewe,” or a baby lamb. I’ve heard women described as cows and baby lambs. Jacob, or Yaakov in Hebrew, has many different translations, but they all have a similar meaning: “deceiver,” or “he who supplants,” and “he who god protects.” Jacob tricked his blind father into thinking he was his twin Esau, and he got everything by being the supplant, the deceiver.

In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood paints Gilead as an oppressive regime based heavily on biblical and religious contexts. Leah and Rachel are mentioned multiple times in the story, and there is even a building called the Rachel and Leah center, where the Handmaids learn how to be good women, and be the best version of themselves as Handmaids.

Each Handmaid lives in a house with the Commander, and his Wife, along with a few others. Atwood focuses on one Handmaid, Offred, letting her narrate the story. Offred has complicated relationships with the Commander and his Wife, Serena Joy. The Commander is the only man living in the house, and because of that, he has a lot of power. Serena Joy is his wife but she cannot bear his children for him. Offred must be her “forced surrogate.” Sound familiar? Because of this dynamic, everyone in the house is a little bit jealous of each other. “In this house we all envy each other something” (47). This competition doesn’t result in any progress, and just pits women against each other. This is a direct reference to Rachel and Leah’s story. They are pitted against each other for the attention of the Commander.

Right before the Ceremony, the Commander is reading the bible, perhaps following the pre-ceremonial rituals. “Am I in God’s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? Behold my maid Bilhah. She shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her.” (88). This isn’t the first time we see this verse (Genesis 30:1-3). It is written on the second page of the book, before the story even begins. The full bible passage describes Rachel being unable to conceive with Jacob, so Leah must do that for her, with her. In the Ceremony, Offred lays in between Serena Joy’s legs while the Commander is having sex with her, a ritual clearly based on the biblical context.

The dynamic in the household is not the only reference to the religious context. Remember the etymology of each of the names? They play a large role in the characterization of each individual. Offred often talks negatively about her body in her narration. “I used to think of my body as an instrument…an implement of my will…There were limits, but my body was nevertheless lithe, single, solid, one with me. I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am…” (74). She feels like a cow, round and tough, and a subtly theme in her narration. Serena Joy is depicted by Offred as “Serena has begun to cry. I can hear her, behind my back. It isn’t the first time. She always does this, the night of the Ceremony” (90). Serena Joy, on the other hand, is depicted as a helpless woman who is fragile and struggles with pleasing her husband, like a baby lamb.

And don’t worry, the Commander lives up to his namesake as well. Offred’s relationship with the Commander changes when the Commander calls Offred into his room to play Scrabble numerous times, Offred finally feels like she has power over Serena Joy. She feels desired by the Commander for once. The Commander makes her feel special by gifting her a magazine during their second meeting. However, Offred soon discovers his motivations for the gift.

“‘But why show it to me?…”Who else could I show it to? He said, and there it was again, that sadness…‘How about your wife?’ He seemed to think about that. ‘No,’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t understand. Anyways she won’t talk to me much anymore. We don’t seem to have much in common, these days.’ So there it was, out in the open: his wife didn’t understand him. That’s what I was there for then… It was too banal to be true.” (158)

Even when he seems genuine in his acts, he is still using Offred and almost manipulating her, deceiving her like Jacob would.

Atwood draws the connection so strongly between the trios that it is impossible to ignore. And knowing the religious context can help us make predictions about each character, get to know who they really are, and what their motivations are towards each other. Why she chooses this specific story to interpolate can be interpreted in many ways. On the surface, she is pointing out how messed up the stories in the bible are, and makes an argument against using it as law, or as a belief system. On a deeper level she is showing how society manipulates women into comparing themselves with others, into constantly trying to one-up each other, when we should be standing together. Both arguments lead to questioning society and how we treat each other, Atwood uses these multifaceted characters to propel her writing forward.

Sources:

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/leah-bible https://blissandfire.com/Inspirational/jacob-the-supplanter-holder-of-the-heel-bliss-fire-network-weekly-digest-february-9-2010#:~:text=EXPLORATION,means%20HE%20WHOM%20GOD%20PROTECTS. https://www.thebump.com/b/yaakov-baby-name https://www.yeshiva.co/ask/190 https://www.sheknows.com/baby-names/name/yaakov/ https://painintheenglish.com/case/626