Develop an assertion about The Handmaid’s Tale that invokes a lens of Literary Criticism 
APCQ: Assertion, Passages of Support and Analysis, Connection and Question (2-3 pages)
DUE: Sunday 3/17
Directions: Develop an assertion about The Handmaid’s Tale that invokes a lens of Literary Criticism – your choice (Feminist, Psychoanalytic, Marxist, Structuralist etc.). I’m leaving this question very open-ended because I want you to write about whatever is most interesting and compelling to you.
Steps…
- Develop an assertion/thesis about the poem and utilizing the lens (this should be just a few sentences).
- Find passages/lines from the text that support your assertion and analyze how the passages/lines connect to your assertion, and explain these connections as specifically as you can (this should be the bulk of your assignment).
- Consider a connection to another text we’ve worked with this semester – a poem, a novel, a film etc. Explain why the connection is important to you, informative for you and illustrates something about your assertion or the text.
- Develop a question that generates discussion from the class about your poem/the assertion you’ve made about the poem. Make sure the question is grounded in the poem and answerable from knowledge of the poem.
*please see the APCQ rubric for specifics on how you will be evaluated for this assignment
Solution Preview
The poem depicts the image of people standing behind the fence and watching a woman as she struggles to attain her goal. This infers that women are outside in pain working on their problems by themselves with little or no help from men. Implicitly, other people stand by as they watch them suffer in agony and do nothing about it. Through this, even amid pain and suffering experienced by women, the world continues to thrive with no regard of them at all. This is how the new society feels towards all women.
(579 words)