Tutor MUST have books: Giorgio Agamben’s “Infancy and History,” AND Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”

TASK & ESSAY STRUCTURE:

Write a 4-page SINGLE SPACED essay in MLA format. Essay should end at the very bottom of page 4. Single spaced. NO PLAGIARISM. The essay should be proofread, spell-checked, page numbered, and in size 12 Times New Roman font. QUOTES must be used from BOTH texts below, and must be cited properly.

Compose an essay that presents a critical assessment of specific ways that you see aspect of the “apocalyptic mode” being applied in these TWO texts:

TEXT 1 = philosophical framework of Giorgio Agamben “Infancy and History”, specifically where he discusses “ritual time and play time”

TEXT 2 = Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”

The assignment asks you to show how one or more of the insights presented in the book “Infancy and History” helps open up a way of grasping how the book engages and develops or challenges the theoretical framework of the book “A Handmaid’s Tale”. The purpose of this assignment is to challenge you to pick a specific critical perspective and then show the texts enlarge your understanding of how the apocalyptic mode survives in literary environments as a means of interrogating problems or hopes or fears you see being addressed in the texts.

Quotes about ritual time and play time can be found on pages: 77, 80, 82, 85, 88, and more.

Agamben’s “Ritual time” is shown in The Handmaid’s Tale over and over again in the many ritualistic patterns the handmaid’s are forced to do. (example: The Ceremony…a highly ritualized sexual act that high-ranking men (such as Commanders), their Wives and Handmaids undergo to conceive children)

Agamben’s “Play time” is shown in The Handmaid’s Tale when Commander Waterford invites Offred to his office late at nights to play cards when it’s against the rules, or when he took her to Jezebel, etc.

This is a course based on the “History and Theories of Apocalypse,” so please make sure to include an apocalyptic viewpoint when analyzing and writing about the texts. The book The Handmaid’s Tale is overall very apocalyptic. It is essentially an entirely foreign concept that completely changed life for everyone involved. There is a sense of interruption from the “outside,” or something thats foreign. It is important to understand that apocalypse here means more than just the death of something, but the rebirth of something else, in this case, death to the world and life they all knew, and rebirth meaning Gilead.

Please let me know if you have any questions.