Rape Fantasies

Curtis 587012050
Sally 586202051
Claire 587202644

-Margaret Atwood won 2000 National Booker Prize by writing （The Blind
Assassin） 《盲眼刺客》
 1 Literary Style
2 Characters
3 Analysis
4 Reference Books
Literary Style-Curtis

1. Dramatic Monologue

 2. Setting
-Time
-Locale
-Point of View
3. Summary
1.Dramatic Monologue
 A poem in which a single speaker
who is not the poet utters the entire
poem at a critical moment. The
speaker has a listener within the
poem, but we too are his/her
listener, and we learn about the
speaker's character from what the
speaker says. In fact, the speaker
may reveal unintentionally certain
aspects of his/her character.
2. Setting
1.time:Friday night
-before yesterday….(p.383)
2.locale: a bar in Toronto
-it’s only Toronto (p.384)
-the waiters all know me…. (p.389)
3.point of view: first person(narrator)
Characters: 6 characters (including the silent
listener)
-Estelle spoke, “it’s different for a guy.”(p.387)
-“you”= Estelle’s listener
“what magazine you open,…”(p.383)
“I hope you don’t mind me holding …” (p.387)
3.Summary
At a bar in Friday night, there
are 8 rape fantasies presents in
the short fiction which are told by
Estelle to a stranger who intends
to rape her. Also, Estelle talks
about not only her personal rape
fantasies, but also her
friends’.
Characters-Sally
 1.Narrator – Estelle
 2.You – a guy who tries to pick
Estelle up in a bar
 3.Co-workers – Chrissy
Sondra
Darlene
Greta
Personality-1
 Estelle is curious about other people.
Paragraph 9: She’s the oldest, she’s
forty-one though you would not know it
and neither does she, but I looked it up
in the employee’s file. Paragraph 12:
She’s divorce, I read that in the file too,
she never talks about it. It must been
years ago anyway.
Personality-2
 Estelle is far away from home. She is lonely. She
needs friends very much. She is very kind to all of
her fancied rapist. Such as in paragraph 26: and I
say to him, “You’re intending to rape me, right?”
and he nods, so I open my purse to get the plastic
lemon, and I can’t find it! My purse is full of all
this junk, Kleenex and cigarettes and my change
purse and my lipstick and my driver’s license, you
know the kind of stuff; so I ask him to hold out his
hands, like this, and I pile all this junk into them
and down at the bottom there’s the plastic lemon,
and I can’t get the top off. So I hand it to him and
he’s very obliging, he twists the top off and hands
it back to me, and I squirt him in the eyes.”
Personality-3
 Estelle is outraged about men who raped
women they knew. Paragraph 41: But maybe
it’s different for a guy. Last paragraph: How
could a fellow do that to a person he’s just
had a long conversation with, once you let
them know you’re human, you have a life too,
I don’t see how they could go ahead with it,
right? I mean, I know it happens but I just
don’t understand it, that’s the part I really
don’t understand.
Personality-4
 Estelle thinks that men have more
freedom to meet people. Paragraph
35: I’m telling you, I was really
lonely when I first came here; I
thought it was going to be such a
big adventure and all, but it’s a lot
harder to meet people in a city. But
I guess it’s different for a guy.
Personality-5
 Paragraph 5: “Rape fantasies,” Chrissy said.
 “For Chrissake, I’m eating an egg sandwich,” I
said, “and I bid one club and Darlene passed.”
 Estelle is not interested in the topic. She seems
not popular in the group; for her jokes dose not make
the others laugh. Paragraph 23: “Anyway you might
get bubbles up your nose,” I said, “from the deep
breathing,” and I swear all four of them looked at me
like I was in bad taste.
 Estelle doest not think that going out at night is
such a bad idea. Check the settings in her fantasies,
but Darlene doesn’t think so. Paragraph 9: “I don’t
think you should go out alone at night,” Darlene said,”
you put yourself in a position,”
Personality-6

 I think that there are two reasons

that Estelle keeps a long
conversation with a stranger at the
bar. First, she wants to make
friends with him. Secondly, she
hopes that the man will not rape her.
Personality-7
 Chrissy arouses the topic. She seems
interested in it and her fancy is very romantic.
Her thoughts probably are effected by
magazines, Hollywood movies and TV
dramas. Paragraph 5: “Rape fantasies,”
Chrissy said. She’s a receptionist and she
looks like one; she’s pretty but cool as a
cucumber, like she’s been painted all over
with nail polish, if you know what I mean.
Varnished. “It says here all women have rape
fantasies.” Paragraph 11: “Well, do you?”
Chrissy said. She was obviously trying to tell
us about hers abut she wasn’t about to go
first, she’s cautious, that one.
Personality-8
 Sondra seems not clever. She didn’t know
how to cooperate with her bridge partner.
Paragraph 7: “You mean like some guy
jumping you in an alley or something,”
Sondra said. She was eating her lunch, we
all eat our lunches during the game, and she
bit into a piece of that celery she always
brings and started to chew away on it with
this thoughtful expression in her eyes.
Paragraph 25: Sondra was miffed too, by this
time she’d finished her celery and she wanted
to tell about hers, but she hadn’t got in fast
enough. Paragraph 31: Sondra never did get
a chance to tell about her rape fantasy.
Personality-9
 Darlene is forty-one years old. She is
divorced, but she never talks about it.
She does not think a girl should go out
alone at night and rape fancy is good.
She protects herself strongly.
Paragraph 21: “Don’t you scream or
anything?” said Darlene. She’d come
back with her cup of coffee, she was
getting really interested. “ I’d scream
like bloody murder.”
Personality-10

 Greta must have

experienced something
really terrible in Detroit. She
seems quite rational and
logical. See paragraph 13.
Analysis-Claire
 1. Eight Fantasies
– Greta’s
– Chrissy’s
– Estelle’s (6 fantasies)

 2. Difference and Similarity

Between Estelle’s Fantasies And
Her Friends’
1. Eight Fantasies
1. Greta’s Fantasy(p.384)
-”Just likeTarzan.”

2. Chrissy’s Fantasy(p.385)
-”bathtub”,”bubbles”

3. Estelle’s Fantasies(6 fantasies)

1) ”plastic lemon”(p.385)
2) ”Mr. Clean”(p.386)
3) “dermatologist”(p.386)
4)”St. Anne”(p.387)
5) “a Kung-Fu expert’(p.388)
6) “leukemia”(p.388)
2. Difference and Similarity Between Estelle’s Fantasies
and Her Friends’

Estelle’s Greta and Darlene’s

Fantasies Chrissy’s response
Fantasies
Difference Reality Romance Reality
Similarity Desire for Desire for Desire for
Friendship Love Safety
-lonely (p.387) (p.385) -women’s
-kinship attitudes(p.384)
(victim and
criminal)
4. Reference Book
 Atwood, Margaret.“Rape Fantasies,”in Barnet, Sylvan. Morton,
Berman. & Burto, William. ed. An Introduction to Literature (11th
edi.). Harper Collins, 1997:334-341.
 Atwood, Margaret. Good Bones and Simple Murders. Toronto:
Coach House Press, 1992.
 Derrida, Jacques.“Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of
Human Sciences.”In Macksey and Donato (1970): 247-65.
 Friedman, Thomas B. & Hengen, Shannon. ed. Approaches to
Teaching Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Other Works. New
York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1996.
 Hengen, Shannon. Margaret Atwood's Power. Toronto, ON:
Second Story Press,1993.
 Howell, Coral Ann. Modern Novelists: Margaret Atwood. New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1996.
 Keith, W. J. Canadian Literature in English. London, New York:
Longman, 1985.
 McCombs, Judith. Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood. Boston,
Mass.: G. K. Hall & Co., 1988.
 謝瑤玲東吳大學英文系副教授, 『瑪格麗特‧艾伍德之〈強暴幻想〉
與〈女體〉的教學意含』
 The End
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