Analysis of The Narrative Technique in Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' and Michele Roberts 'Flesh and Blood'.
ABSTRACT
Penulis memilih untuk membahas novel karya Margaret Atwood yang berjudul The Handmaid’s Tale dan Flesh and Blood karya Michele Roberts karena kedua novel tesebut mempunyai teknik narasi yang menarik. Kedua novel ini sama-sama bercerita tentang perempuan namun teknik penceritaan yang digunakan dalam kedua novel tersebut tidaklah sama. Tokoh perempuan dalam The Handmaid’s Tale dilihat dari sudut narator yang menceritakan tentang apa yang dia lihat dan rasakan, sementara Flesh and Blood menampilkan banyak tokoh perempuan dengan sudut pandang yang beragam.
The Handmaid’s Tale bercerita tentang seorang perempuan yang diajarkan untuk patuh pada peraturan yang mengharuskan dia menjadi rahim bagi perempuan-perempuan keluarga kaya yang tidak dapat mengandung. Cerita ini dibuat memakai sudut pandang si pemberi rahim yang adalah perempuan dari golongan menengah ke bawah dan kurang punya pengetahuan yang cukup.
Flesh and Blood menceritakan tentang banyak kisah dari perempuan. Setiap bab menceritakan tentang tokoh yang berbeda dengan permasalahan yang berbeda pula. Namun, jika dipisahkan maka tema dari novel ini adalah hubungan perempuan dengan perempuan dan hubungan perempuan dengan laki-laki. Meskipun banyak narator yang bercerita dalam setiap bab,namun penulis menduga bahwa narator utama dalam novel adalah Fred, tokoh pertama yang bercerita dan membawa penulis masuk ke dalam cerita yang selanjutnya.
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Universitas Kristen Maranatha Setelah menganalisis kedua novel tersebut, penulis mengambil kesimpulan bahwa semakin menarik teknik narasi yang digunakan, semakin tertarik pula pembaca untuk menelaah novel tersebut secara lebih mendalam. Penggunaan teknik narasi yang unik menghasilkan efek yang berbeda dalam diri para pembaca.
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Universitas Kristen Maranatha
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE………i
TABLE OF CONTENTS………...ii
ABSTRACT………...iii
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION Background of the Study……….1
Statement of the Problem……….2
Purpose of the Study………2
Methods of Research………2
Organization of the Thesis………...3
CHAPTER TWO: NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE: THE THEORY………..4
CHAPTER THREE: ANALYSIS OF NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE IN MARGARET ATWOOD’S THE HANDMAID’S TALE……….9
CHAPTER FOUR: ANALYSIS OF NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE IN MICHELE ROBERTS’ FLESH AND BLOOD………20
CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION………...32
BIBLIOGRAPHY……….36
APPENDICES: Synopsis of The Handmaid’s Tale………..37
Synopsis of Flesh and Blood………...38
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37
APPENDICES
SYNOPSIS OF THE HANDMAID’S TALE
The Handmaid's Tale is set in the Republic of Gilead. Conservative Christians take control of the United States and establish a dictatorship. Most women in Gilead are infertile. The few fertile women are taken to camps and trained to be handmaidens for the upper-class people. No women in the Republic are permitted to be openly sexual; sex is for reproduction only.
The novel focuses on one handmaid, Offred (she is given the name of the man whose children she is expected to bear--she is of Fred). Offred is in the service of the General and his wife, Serena Joy. Serena Joy hates the fact that she is unable to bear children and hates Offred for taking her husband’s seed. Offred does not become pregnant, but she does develop an unexpected relationship with the General. One night he dresses her in a cocktail dress and takes her to an illegal nightclub.
Serena Joy, desperate for having children, finally arranges for Offred to sleep with the chauffeur. The two are happy together; she thinks she is pregnant. Soon after, Serena Joy finds the cocktail dress the General gave to Offred. She knows her husband is to blame, but accuses Offred anyway and sends for the police to take her away to certain death. When the van arrives to take Offred
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away, it is not driven by the police. Instead, it is driven by the rebels and she is carried to safety.
SYNOPSIS OF FLESH AND BLOOD
The story begins with Fred as the narrator. She is a woman who claims to have killed her mother. She goes to a shop where she tells a story about another woman. Then the story moves to another narrator named Freddy. Freddy is Fred as a young girl. She talks about her school life at the convent school, her first menstruation, her crush and her family.
After that, the story moves to Felicite, a young woman who has her first sex with her fiancé’s friend, George. The story shifts again to another narrator, Eugenie, a girl who is willing to marry a sadistic man in order not to be brought back to her boarding-school.
The story continues to Federigo who talks about his sister, Bona. Then there is Rosa, who can see angel and Cherubina, an angel herself. Then the story appears to be stopped by the existence of Anon as the next chapter. This chapter is only filled with a poem. After that the story is like a rewind to finish the unclear story, first to Cherubina, who talks about the scholars and the whores, Rosa and Federigo. But then there is Marie-Jeanne, who happens to be Eugenie’s mother. After that there is Georgina, a chapter that is made as if it is a play or a film and then there is Louise, the mother of Fred. Then the story ends with Frederica.
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39 BIOGRAPHY OF MARGARET ATWOOD
Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Canada, the second of three children. Her father was a forest entomologist. Part of her early years Atwood spent part in the bush of northern Quebec, where her father undertook research.
In 1946 Atwood' s family moved to Toronto. She was eleven before she attended full-time school. Atwood graduated from Leaside High School in 1959. She then studied at the University of Toronto. She won a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, and became a graduate student at Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, receiving her M.A. in 1962.
BIOGAPHY OF MICHELE ROBERTS
Novelist and poet Michele Roberts was born in Hertfordshire, England, on 20 May 1949 to a French Catholic mother and an English Protestant father. She was educated at a convent school before studying at Somerville College, Oxford, and University College, London. She worked as a librarian for the British Council in Bangkok (1973-4) and was Poetry Editor for Spare Rib (1974) and City Limits magazine (1981-3). She is the author of ten novels, including a tale of Victorian spirituality; Flesh and Blood. Michele Roberts was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999. She lives in London and in Mayenne, France. She was awarded the Chevalier de l' Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France) in 2000.
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
A novel is “the most widely practised and most widely read form of literature in the world today”. (Murphy, 1972: 21). Novel provides more information and details than other literary genres. Therefore, novels are easier to understand and analysed than the other genres.
I choose to analyse novels by Margaret Atwood and Michele Roberts. Margaret Atwood is a “Canadian poet, novelist, and critic, noted for her feminism. Atwood's work mostly talks about women. (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/atwood.htm)
Michele Roberts was French English. “She was involved in socialist and feminist politics. She wrote fiction, non-fiction and poems. (http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5135)
The novels that I am going to analyse are The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and Flesh and Blood by Michele Roberts because the two novels use unusual narrative technique.
Narrative technique refers to various ways of telling a story used by a writer in order to create effects that he wants the readers to feel (Eastman, 1965).
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Richard Eastman says in his A Guide to the Novel (1965) that narrative technique is divided into four elements and they are point of view, time and tempo, style and distance.
I am writing this thesis as an appreciation towards the two novelists’ great effort in creating such complicated yet interesting pieces of writing.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
I will focus on the process of study to gain comprehension of these problems:
1. What kind of narrative technique is used by the authors in The Handmaid’s Tale and Flesh and Blood?
2. What is the effect of the narrative technique used for the readers?
THE PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
This particular study is performed with the purpose as follows:
1. To analyse the kind of narrative technique used by the authors in The Handmaid’s Tale and Flesh and Blood.
2. To analyse the effect of the narrative technique used for the readers.
METHOD OF RESEARCH
I will make this thesis to analyse the narrative technique used in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Roberts’ Flesh and Blood.
I do the library research and perform this particular method of research, which includes reading and comprehensing the two novels and other references, in
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order to create an objective atmosphere of research and analysis in the process of study.
ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS
The presentation of the thesis will be divided into parts. The thesis begins with The Preface and the Abstract. Chapter I contains The Background of the Study, The Statement of the Problem, The Purpose of the Study, The Method of Research, and The Organization of the Thesis. Chapter II contains the theory of narrative technique. Chapter III contains the analysis of the narrative technique in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.Chapter IV contains the analysis of the narrative
techinque in Roberts’ Flesh and Blood. The last chapter, Chapter V, contains the
conclusion and the comparative study from the analysis of the narrative technique
in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Roberts’ Flesh and Blood. The
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CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION
Having analyzed the narrative technique used in The Handmaid’s Tale and Flesh and Blood, I will draw a conclusion based on my analysis. Though both novels tell about women issues, there are some differences between them. The Handmaid’s Tale, whose narrator is only one person, Offred, gives unclear story. The limitation in knowledge that Offred has makes the story seem hard to understand. Even so, the story is still presentable. The use of first-person point of view makes the story seen only through Offred’s perspective as she sees the world around her. Offred is the narrator used by Atwood to present the women issue of freedom and equality.
Flesh and Blood is presented using the first-person point of view as well as the third-person point of view. However, the multiple characters make the story hard to understand. The use of first-person point of view and third-person point of view divide the story into two different themes, mother-daughter relationship and man-woman relationship which include sex. What is interesting is that one of the narrators is a man, “Federigo” which represents minor male voice in Robert’s women world.
The Handmaid’s Tale splits its time sequence into two big parts, the past and the present time. There are distinctive characters that mark the time sequence,
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Luke indicates Offred’s past experience and the Commander shows her present time. The tempo is overall slow. Since “Gilead” is a made-up country, Atwood needs to put many details to explain the rules and environment of the country. This detail is the one that makes the story go slowly in tempo.
Flesh and Blood shares a different time sequence. Not only is it marked by distinctive characters, but also each chapter stands on its own. The multiple characters make it hard for the readers to really link story one by one as they read the novel. Roberts makes her story go in a slow tempo. There are many details given in the novel about the environment to make the readers able to imagine the situation inside the story.
When it comes to the style, The Handmaid’s Tale has a very unique style. Atwood’s dictions are very Biblical. She uses Biblical terms and allusions in her story. Therefore, these Biblical allusions and dictions are manipulated in the story. The dictions are not used in the conventional way. In fact, Atwood manipulates the meanings. By using these dictions, Atwood wants to show that in real life, oppressions happen to women without us realizing it and sometimes through religion. This is what Atwood tries to show to her readers, especially to her female ones. Moreover, Atwood is trying to criticize the misinterpretation of Christian principles which can create a certain form of brainwashing.
Flesh and Blood presents the story in a form of stories within stories. “Anon”, made in a form a poetry, acts as the mirror for each story told before it. After “Anon”, the stories of each character reach their endings. The style that Roberts uses in her novel is very unique. There are varieties of writing format that
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Roberts presents in her novel; a poem, a film script as well as the usual writing structure of a novel.
Now, I want to talk about distance. Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is somehow not made for the readers to feel sympathetic towards the characters especially towards Offred. However, the readers can only give sympathy towards Offred because at the same time, the readers would be able to see that Offred’s mind perception is wrong. This disturbs the closeness that the readers might have had towards Offred because of her pitiful life. The readers will know that Offred has been brainwashed by the society of Gilead and this makes the readers not being drown by the story but realize the wrong perception the characters have especially Offred.
Atwood makes her novel’s r elationship with the readers a far-distance one. She means to make the story as a form of her awareness over the issue she sees in the society. As a feminist, she highlighted women issues in her story.
At a glance, Flesh and Blood seems to have close distance with the readers because it uses first-person point of view and there are many details about the environment in the novel. However, apparently this close distance is destroyed by the fact that there are too many characters with not enough details given about them inside the novel. This is what makes the readers unable to feel close with the characters. Moreover, there are two points of view use in the novel, first-person and third-person point of view. While the ones using third-person point of view talk about man-woman relationship, the more complicated one occurs in the use of first-person point of view. The use of “I” is not only to one narrator but to multiple narrators. Moreover, they are not all women. There is a male voice inside
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the story even though he does not tell a story about himself but about his sister. Another matter that makes the first-person point of view discussion complicated is the use of “We” instead of “I” as to indicate the first -person point of view. The other destroyers to close distance that the readers have towards the novel are the unclear time sequence and the wrong mind patterns that the characters have. These are what make the readers have far distance with the novel.
Therefore, just like in Atwood’s, the readers can only f eel sympathetic to the characters in the story. The readers will not feel too close since the characters’ mind patterns are wrong.
Finally, after analyzing the two novels, I would like to make a conclusion that each book has its own unique way of using narrative technique, which makes the novels interesting pieces of reading.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
ReferencesEastman, Richard M. A Guide to the Novel. San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1965.
Murphy, M. J.. Understanding Unseens. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1972.
King James Version. The Holy Bible. New York: American Bible Society, 1611.
Internet websites
http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-med-db/webdocs/webdescrips/atwood157-des-.html - 12 June 2005
http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth 109 – 12 June 2005
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/atwood.htm - 12 June 2005
http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5135 - 12 June 2005
Primary texts
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. New York: Anchor Books. 1998
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order to create an objective atmosphere of research and analysis in the process of study.
ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS
The presentation of the thesis will be divided into parts. The thesis begins with The Preface and the Abstract. Chapter I contains The Background of the Study, The Statement of the Problem, The Purpose of the Study, The Method of Research, and The Organization of the Thesis. Chapter II contains the theory of narrative technique. Chapter III contains the analysis of the narrative technique in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.Chapter IV contains the analysis of the narrative techinque in Roberts’ Flesh and Blood. The last chapter, Chapter V, contains the conclusion and the comparative study from the analysis of the narrative technique in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Roberts’ Flesh and Blood. The Bibliography and The Appendices will end the thesis.
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CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION
Having analyzed the narrative technique used in The Handmaid’s Tale and Flesh and Blood, I will draw a conclusion based on my analysis. Though both novels tell about women issues, there are some differences between them. The Handmaid’s Tale, whose narrator is only one person, Offred, gives unclear story. The limitation in knowledge that Offred has makes the story seem hard to understand. Even so, the story is still presentable. The use of first-person point of view makes the story seen only through Offred’s perspective as she sees the world around her. Offred is the narrator used by Atwood to present the women issue of freedom and equality.
Flesh and Blood is presented using the first-person point of view as well as the third-person point of view. However, the multiple characters make the story hard to understand. The use of first-person point of view and third-person point of view divide the story into two different themes, mother-daughter relationship and man-woman relationship which include sex. What is interesting is that one of the narrators is a man, “Federigo” which represents minor male voice in Robert’s women world.
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Luke indicates Offred’s past experience and the Commander shows her present time. The tempo is overall slow. Since “Gilead” is a made-up country, Atwood needs to put many details to explain the rules and environment of the country. This detail is the one that makes the story go slowly in tempo.
Flesh and Blood shares a different time sequence. Not only is it marked by distinctive characters, but also each chapter stands on its own. The multiple characters make it hard for the readers to really link story one by one as they read the novel. Roberts makes her story go in a slow tempo. There are many details given in the novel about the environment to make the readers able to imagine the situation inside the story.
When it comes to the style, The Handmaid’s Tale has a very unique style. Atwood’s dictions are very Biblical. She uses Biblical terms and allusions in her story. Therefore, these Biblical allusions and dictions are manipulated in the story. The dictions are not used in the conventional way. In fact, Atwood manipulates the meanings. By using these dictions, Atwood wants to show that in real life, oppressions happen to women without us realizing it and sometimes through religion. This is what Atwood tries to show to her readers, especially to her female ones. Moreover, Atwood is trying to criticize the misinterpretation of Christian principles which can create a certain form of brainwashing.
Flesh and Blood presents the story in a form of stories within stories. “Anon”, made in a form a poetry, acts as the mirror for each story told before it. After “Anon”, the stories of each character reach their endings. The style that Roberts uses in her novel is very unique. There are varieties of writing format that
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Roberts presents in her novel; a poem, a film script as well as the usual writing structure of a novel.
Now, I want to talk about distance. Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is somehow not made for the readers to feel sympathetic towards the characters especially towards Offred. However, the readers can only give sympathy towards Offred because at the same time, the readers would be able to see that Offred’s mind perception is wrong. This disturbs the closeness that the readers might have had towards Offred because of her pitiful life. The readers will know that Offred has been brainwashed by the society of Gilead and this makes the readers not being drown by the story but realize the wrong perception the characters have especially Offred.
Atwood makes her novel’s r elationship with the readers a far-distance one. She means to make the story as a form of her awareness over the issue she sees in the society. As a feminist, she highlighted women issues in her story.
At a glance, Flesh and Blood seems to have close distance with the readers because it uses first-person point of view and there are many details about the environment in the novel. However, apparently this close distance is destroyed by the fact that there are too many characters with not enough details given about them inside the novel. This is what makes the readers unable to feel close with the characters. Moreover, there are two points of view use in the novel, first-person and third-person point of view. While the ones using third-person point of view talk about man-woman relationship, the more complicated one occurs in the use of first-person point of view. The use of “I” is not only to one narrator but to
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the story even though he does not tell a story about himself but about his sister. Another matter that makes the first-person point of view discussion complicated is the use of “We” instead of “I” as to indicate the first -person point of view. The other destroyers to close distance that the readers have towards the novel are the unclear time sequence and the wrong mind patterns that the characters have. These are what make the readers have far distance with the novel.
Therefore, just like in Atwood’s, the readers can only f eel sympathetic to the characters in the story. The readers will not feel too close since the characters’ mind patterns are wrong.
Finally, after analyzing the two novels, I would like to make a conclusion that each book has its own unique way of using narrative technique, which makes the novels interesting pieces of reading.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
References
Eastman, Richard M. A Guide to the Novel. San Francisco: Chandler
Publishing Company, 1965.
Murphy, M. J.. Understanding Unseens. London: George Allen &
Unwin Ltd., 1972.
King James Version. The Holy Bible. New York: American Bible
Society, 1611.
Internet websites
http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-med-db/webdocs/webdescrips/atwood157-des-.html - 12 June 2005
http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth 109 – 12 June
2005
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/atwood.htm - 12 June 2005
http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5135 - 12
June 2005
Primary texts
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. New York: Anchor Books.
1998