The handmaid's tale : a pedagogical stylistic approach

Abstract

A recent development in the field of stylistics has been the interest in its pedagogical applications, as a tool to increase the awareness regarding linguistic application in literature, and thus to enable a point of entry into texts for students as a means of engendering interpretation. This dissertation sets out to show how this can be applied to the local setting, with particular focus at sixth form level, specifically in the preparation for the MATSEC Advanced level examination in English. The area specified being quite broad, only one section of the examination paper was focused on, that is Paper 2, which deals with prose texts. Moreover, in order for the analysis and subsequent application to be in-depth and comprehensively relevant, one novel was looked at within this study, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. The examination candidates' scripts were employed in order to identify gaps in the students' knowledge which needed addressing. The findings of the candidates' scripts' perusal indicated that areas which candidates felt challenged by were the novel's narrative structure, the point of view employed and the grammatical tenses used throughout the novel. These issues were especially pertinent vis-à-vis the epilogue of the novel, that is, the 'Historical Notes'. Such gaps having been identified, an in-depth analysis of stylistic features pertinent to the said gaps was carried out. The material from the analysis was subsequently employed to construct a pedagogical apparatus for the teaching of the novel to students in preparation for the examination. Therefore, it can be seen that the apparatus was designed with candidates' actual difficulties in mind, and is, therefore, felt to be applicable and relevant to the local context. A detailed rationale has also been included which outlines step by step the thought-process involved in the selection and design of each task.