For my Senior Capstone I decided to create an informative Tik Tok page dedicated to teaching teens about the importance of having hobbies. The content on the page ranged from tutorials on different hobbies, examples of my experience participating in those hobbies, and how to make time for hobbies during school life. I chose this project after reflecting on my experiences during my junior year of school, and how hobbies helped get me out of a bad rut. During my junior year I struggled with finding the motivation to keep up with my responsibilities, and I found that after taking the time to participate in activities that made me happy I managed to pick myself back up and apply this new passion to my responsibilities. I felt that if I had had someone talk to me about finding a hobby that brought me joy earlier on in my high school career I would’ve had an easier time during my junior year, so I wanted to pass my knowledge along to anyone it might help.

This podcast includes Anouk, Milani, Gabby, Jazz, and Indi.

The Brief Recap of Oscar Wow is a podcast focused on the book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, which is about an overweight Domincan boy growing up in New Jersey with a large love for science fiction and fantasy novels and with falling in love. In this first episode, Milani opens up the conversation to a debate about who we believe could be narrating the book, to which Anouk follows up with the conversation of the order of perspective in the first two readings we have done. The theme of literal and figurative writing looms over our conversation as we try to make sense of the beginning of our book.

https://www.wevideo.com/view/3286981436

“His hand pauses. “I thought you might enjoy it for a change.” He knows that isn’t enough. “I guess it was a sort of experiment.” That isn’t enough either. “You said you wanted to know.” (254)

“Whatever there is to know,” I say; but that’s too flippant. “What’s going on.” (188)

This section of the reading frustrated me because the Commander used this outing as an opportunity to take advantage of Offred, even twisting her words to justify why he did what he did.

At the end of chapter 29, the Commander and Offred are talking about what happened to the last Handmaid that was in the house and the Commander tells her that Serena Joy had found out about their meetings at night, and that she had killed herself because of it. Offred sees how their meetings can be very dangerous for her, and she wonders if it would be best if she stopped coming to meet him. He believes she has been enjoying them and doesn’t see why they should stop. “You want my life to be bearable to me.” she says but means it as a question, to which he says, “Yes, I do. I would prefer it.” (187) This section of the book gives Offred and the reader the thought that the Commander wants to meet with her at night for her own benefit, that he hopes that their meetings are bringing some kind of value to her life. It makes the reader believe that he is on her side, when it is the complete opposite. After this interaction is where the quote from page 188 takes place, “Whatever there is to know,” I say; but that’s too flippant. “What’s going on.” The Commander later uses these words against Offred while taking advantage of her.

Even though at the start of their “relationship”, the Commander makes his intentions quiet clear when telling her he would like for her to kiss him “As if you meant it.”(140) This quote shows us what the Commander has wanted from Offred this whole time, but still I couldn’t help but feel hope for her when he told her he hoped for her life to be bearable for her. After the Commander has paraded Offred around Jezebel’s, he takes her upstairs to one of the old hotel rooms and takes advantage of her. He uses her want to know what was going on in the world to justify him taking her to Jezebel’s just to get what he wants. “His hand pauses. “I thought you might enjoy it for a change.” He knows that isn’t enough. “I guess it was a sort of experiment.” That isn’t enough either. “You said you wanted to know.” (254) He only says this to her after he sees that she is visibly upset with where she is, and notices that she isn’t as enthusiastic about having sex with him as he is. This part of the story made me feel disgusted towards the Commander, as it felt that he had done so well up until this point at masking his true intentions. To see his true intentions come to the surface again for the first time since their first meeting was frustrating and quite surprising. This whole situation also feeds into the theme of the abuse of women throughout the book, not just on the Commander’s part, but also on Serena Joy’s part, as she unknowingly sent Offred to go see Nick the same night she was forced to have sex with the Commander outside of a ceremony. While Serena was unaware of what had just happened between Offred and the Commander, she was still willing on her own part to exploit Offred for her own gain. Both the Commander and Serena Joy have put Offred’s life at risk for something that would only benefit themselves, and would most likely not get them into any trouble on their side.

It is also important to consider the fact that Offred could not stand up against Serena Joy of the Commander if she truly wanted to. He holds no power in a society built off of power and gender roles, if she were to speak up she would be risking her life. The Commander once asked her during one of their meetings what her true thoughts were on Gilead as a society, to which she responds with “There’s hardly any point in my thinking, is there? I say. What I think doesn’t matter.”(211) She has no room to speak up for her opinions and beliefs in Gilead, so she has no room to stand up for herself against Serena Joy and the Commander.

Playlist: hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have- but I have it by Lana Del Rey Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve by Taylor Swift Asking For It by Hole O Children by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Femme Fatale by The Velvet Underground, Nico

hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have- but I have it by Lana Del Rey I connected this song to The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood because the song talks about the desperation a woman has for hope in her life, even knowing that it’s not a logical thing to have in her life. “Smiling for miles in pink dresses and high heels on white yachts,” from Lana Del Ray’s song reminded me of when the Japanese tourists visited Gilead, and the way she felt about how they were dressed. Offred talks about how she remembered what it was like to not have to worry about how she was dressed, and envied the female tourists for their freedom to dress however they wished. We also see a part of her that was consumed by the ideals of Gilead, and how she judged those women for the recklessness in their apparel. As she and Ofglen see the tourist they are “Fascinated, but also repelled.” (28) Gilead’s ideals come into play as she now sees them as “Underdressed. It has taken so little time to change our minds about things like this.” (28)

Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve by Taylor Swift I connected this song to The Handmaid’s Tale because this song is about a past relationship that is highly regretted, calling him a “ghost” from her past. Offred often refers to her daughter as a ghost as a way to cope with the fact that she is no longer with her. She describes the way she thinks about her daughter as “this contradictory way of believing seems to me, right now, the only way I can believe anything. (106)” This quote reminds me of the lyrics “All I used to do was pray, Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve. If you’d never looked my way, I would’ve stayed on my knees, and I damn sure never would’ve danced with the devil.” This scene and these lyrics are comparable because it shows Offred’s way of believing her daughter was either safe or dead, and how she wishes she could’ve protected her.

Asking For It by Hole I connected this song to The Handmaid’s Tale because this song is about society’s norm of always placing the blame on women whenever they are the victim of something. There is quite a clear side by side similarity between this song and the book, the song’s chorus being “Was she asking for it? Was she asking nice? If she was asking for it, did she ask you twice?”, and in chapter 13 when Janine is testifying in the Red Center about how she was gang raped at fourteen and the Aunts made all the girls chant at her “Her fault. Her fault. Her fault.”(72) These lyrics and this scene in the book are comparable because they show how society is very quick to judge a woman for what she could have done to “deserve” her assault, and the deep rooted misogyny in these beliefs.

O Children by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds I connected this song to The Handmaid’s Tale because it reminded me of Offred’s description of the beginning of Gilead, and how she tried to leave the country with her family. The lyrics, “They are knocking now upon your door. They measure the room, they know the score.”, reminds me of the security checkpoints Gilead had in place at the borders of the country. The lyrics “We’re all weeping now, weeping because, there ain’t nothing we can do to protect you,” reminds of the scene in chapter 12 where Offred is having flashbacks of her daughter, and later describes how she sees her. “She fades. I can’t keep her here with me, she’s gone now. Maybe I do think of her as a ghost, the ghost of a dead girl, a little girl who died when she was five.”(64) These lyrics and this scene are comparable because it shows how Offred likes to think of her daughter as dead to help her cope with the fact that she doesn’t know where she is and she is unable to protect her.

Femme Fatale by The Velvet Underground, Nico I connected this song to The Handmaid’s Tale because this song is about the stereotype society has created for a “seductive woman” that will use her sexuality to “torment” men. The lyrics “It’s not hard to realize, just look into her false colored eyes. She builds you up to just put you down, what a clown.” reminded me of the scene in chapter 10 where Offed is recalling the way Aunt Lydia talked about the way women dressed during the summer. She describes them as “spectacles.” She says, “Oiling themselves like roast meat on a spit, and bare backs and shoulders, on the street, in public, and legs, not even stockings on them, no wonder these things used to happen.” These lyrics and this scene are comparable because it shows how society viewed women as objects, and everything they did was in effort to get attention or to gain sexual attraction from others.

Yo tengo una familia pequeña. Mi familia es muy divertida. Yo tengo un hermano. Tengo once tíos y doce primos. En mi casa, hay mi mamá, mi papá y mi hermano.

Mi mamá tiene el pelo largo y ondulado y negro. Ella tiene ojos cafés. Ella es baja y flaca. Ella es simpática. Ella es muy organizada y callada. Ella no es desordenada.

Mi papá es moreno. Él es calvo. Él tiene ojos cafés. Él es bajo y gordito. Él es divertido. Él es muy inteligente. Él no es organizado.

Yo tengo el pelo castaño largo y liso. Tengo ojos cafés. Soy baja y flaca. Soy divertida. Soy sincera. No soy ni desordenada ni callada.

Estoy hablando de mi papá. Nosotros tenemos ojos cafés. Nosotros somos bajos. Nosotros nos divertimos. Nosotros no somos altos. Él es viejo, soy joven. Él es muy desordenado, pero no soy muy desordenada.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1tR0NkCU_RSdOaJmyR5NvmVQ27gDfZhHEwmmuxqVZgtI/edit?usp=sharing