JC
Let’s spend today’s session thinking about exactly why we would love to live at Glastonbury Festival FOREVER AND EVER – and why we would rather never go to Gilead AT ALL, thank you very much!
- MUSIC FOCUS: Glastonbury Festival.
- ACTIVITY FOCUS: Explore the language used in a key passage from ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and sharpen your comparative skills while you’re at it!
ACTIVITY 1
Read the two extracts. The first describes a morning at Glastonbury Festival, the second a morning in Gilead.
Compare how the writers convey their different attitudes to the places being described.
Start by highlighting the quotes that will help you address the above task.
You can compare your own highlights with ours by looking underneath the picture of the two handmaids standing in the morning sun. Don’t scroll down to that model until you’ve given yourself time to think about the task.
Extract 1: Glastonbury Mornings (taken from JC’s ‘Glastonbury’)
The Glastonbury sun swallows the last of the night’s storm clouds. Slowly, but surely, the world floods back into view. The fields are densely populated, the kaleidoscope of tents unmoving in the breezeless morning. There are no walls between neighbours, no barriers between my world and everyone else’s. The sound of a door being unzipped breaks the silence and two men emerge from their temporary home. Escaping the sudden heat of the June morning, they collapse to the floor, intertwined in each other’s arms, and fall immediately back to sleep. The dandelion light is everywhere now. Murmurous, metamorphic, more people wake. We shed our sleeping bags, faces lifted to the sky, arms stretched high, bodies unfurling. We have come here for exactly this: for the blueness of the day, for the sound of the music being performed on big stages – music which speaks so loudly for us – and for the feeling that we are free.
Extract 2: Chapter 8 (taken from Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’)
The good weather holds. It’s almost like June, when we would get out our sundresses and our sandals and go for an ice cream cone. There are three new bodies on the Wall. One is a priest, still wearing the black cassock. That’s been put on him, for the trial, even though they gave up wearing those years ago, when the sect wars first began; cassocks made them too conspicuous. The two others have purple placards hung around their necks: Gender Treachery. Their bodies still wear the Guardian uniforms. Caught together, they must have been, but where? A barracks, a shower? It’s hard to say. The snowman with the red smile is gone. “We should go back,” I say to Ofglen. I’m always the one to say this. Sometimes I feel that if I didn’t say it, she would stay here forever. But is she mourning or gloating? I still can’t tell. Without a word she swivels, as if she’s voice-activated, as if she’s on little oiled wheels, as if she’s on top of a music box, I resent this grace of hers. I resent her meek head, bowed as if onto a heavy wind. But there is no wind. We leave the Wall, walk back the way we came, in the warm sun.
“It’s a beautiful May day,” Ofglen says. I feel rather than see her head turn towards me, waiting for a reply.
You can see the quotes we highlighted below. The different colours give you an idea of which quotes we would group together/explore in relation to each other. (Remember that your ideas may be different but also correct!!!).
Glastonbury Mornings
The Glastonbury sun swallows the last of the night’s storm clouds. Slowly, but surely, the world floods back into view. The fields are densely populated, the kaleidoscope of tents unmoving in the breezeless morning. There are no walls between neighbours, no barriers between my world and everyone else’s. The sound of a door being unzipped breaks the silence and two men emerge from their temporary home. Escaping the sudden heat of the June morning, they collapse to the floor, intertwined in each other’s arms, and fall immediately back to sleep. The dandelion light is everywhere now. Murmurous, metamorphic, more people wake. We shed our sleeping bags, faces lifted to the sky, arms stretched high, bodies unfurling. We have come here for exactly this: for the blueness of the day, for the sound of the music being performed on big stages – music which speaks so loudly for us – and for the feeling that we are free.
Chapter 8 (taken from Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’)
The good weather holds. It’s almost like June, when we would get out our sundresses and our sandals and go for an ice cream cone. There are
three new bodies on the Wall. One is a priest, still wearing the black cassock. That’s been put on him, for the trial, even though they gave up
wearing those years ago, when the sect wars first began; cassocks made them too conspicuous. The two others have purple placards hung around
their necks: Gender Treachery. Their bodies still wear the Guardian uniforms. Caught together, they must have been, but where? A barracks, a
shower? It’s hard to say. The snowman with the red smile is gone.
“We should go back,” I say to Ofglen. I’m always the one to say this. Sometimes I feel that if I didn’t say it, she would stay here forever. But is
she mourning or gloating? I still can’t tell.
Without a word she swivels, as if she’s voice-activated, as if she’s on little oiled wheels, as if she’s on top of a music box, I resent this grace of
hers. I resent her meek head, bowed as if onto a heavy wind. But there is no wind.
We leave the Wall, walk back the way we came, in the warm sun.
“It’s a beautiful May day,” Ofglen says. I feel rather than see her head turn towards me, waiting for a reply.
ACTIVITY 2
Write 2 paragraphs in response to the task:
Compare how the writers convey their different attitudes to the places being described.
You might focus your first paragraph on Glastonbury and your second on Gilead. Alternatively, you can write about both texts – simultaneously – in both paragraphs, linking your ideas to each text in turn before then moving onto another idea.
Finally, if you need another reminder of how much fun Glastonbury is…
Once you’re done, please do send your plans/paragraphs in! We want to publish the most exciting ideas!