Atonement's Context: Dunkirk Evacuation

One of the most shocking parts of the novel/movie is when they show the Dunkirk Evacuation. What's this? You may be asking yourself, so I'll put a brief summary of what was this action. 
It was 1940, in the middle of the Second World War, and Winston Churchill was in charge of the British troops. He decided to retire the military forces from the small town of Dunkirk, France, because the German army cut off the British, French and Belgian troops. 
Here is a video for you to learn more about the Dunkirk Evacuation. 

Atonement

"Atonement" is a novel by Ian McEwan, that has been transformed to a movie a couple of years ago. It tells the story of Briony, a thirteen years old smaller daughter of the Tallis family. He saw a moment of flirtation between her sister Cecilia and Robbie, the servant's son, which she think is a rape. She accuses him, making her sister Cecilia to be unable to maintain their relationship. It's a pretty sad story, in which afterwards Briony tries to make an atonement for her accusations.
Now, I'll answer some questions about the plot, so you can understand it better.

1. What sort of social and cultural setting does the Tallis House create? What emotions and impulses are being acted upon or repressed by its inhabitants?

They live in a huge, old style house, that gives us the idea of the richness the family has; the power, honour and tradition. And this is why their pride doesn't allow their daughter, Cecilia, to have a relationship with the servant's son, Robbie. 

2. A passion for order, a lively imagination, and a desire for attention seem to be Briony's strongest traits. In what ways is she still a child? Is her narcissism - her inability to see things from any point of view but her own - unusual in a thirteen-year-old?

She is almost in all senses a child. The attitude she has got of not accepting that she may be wrong and just believing her own part of the story, makes her a child. It probably is her narcissism, apart from other features of her personality, that makes for her impossible to stop believing in her point of view and focusing the problem from other perspectives.

3. Why does Briony stick to her "version of the story" with such unwavering commitment? Does she act entirely in error in a situation she is not old enough to understand, or does she act, in part, on an impulse of malice, revenge, or self-importance?

Because she is childish in many aspects. It's probably a mix between what she saw and thinks to have watched about Robbie and Cecilia, something that she doesn't understand; and also the fact that she feels jealous and alone. "Why should her sister be in love and have a couple and she didn't?" Was probably what she asked herself. 

4. As she grows older, Briony develops the empathy to realise what she has done to Cecilia and Robbie. How and why do you think she does this?

As everyone else, when you grow you get more mature. And this is what happened to Briony, but with the only fact that she also felt very guilty for not letting her sister to be happy with Robbie. Therefore, she wanted to do something for Cecilia, as she couldn't have a relationship with her lover: and what Briony did, was to write a book, in which she made them have the happy ending they deserved. That's why I love literature, because it's a magic world in which everything is possible.

Debate...

Last Friday 29th of September was our last debate in the ESU Debate Tournament. We lost against Santiago College in the first round of playoffs. It was a tough debate, in which we had to defend that "security supercedes freedom". We defined the terms as "in extreme situations", but the word "extreme" didn't favoured us at all, so the other team objected it and told us that it would be impossible for them to defend their position if we defined the terms like that. And it is our job to present a case that is possible for the other team. 

We said that in typical days they are not antagonic, therefore neither security nor freedom should supercede the other one. Our examples were seatbelts, helmets, wars, earthquakes, crime: in all of them, you "freely" choose to put your security above your freedom. You are free to go to the streets in the wars, but it's not safe, so you don't do it, giving your security more importance than your freedom. 

In what I didn't agree with the judge, was that she believed when the other team said about our examples, thay they were "exceptions", because then what is "common"? Life is based on those "exceptions"...It's not an exception a war or an earthquake, and as we said before, in the "common" life, they are not antagonic, therefore no one of them should supercede the other. 

But we got eliminated, and will not have another debate until next year, when I hope we have a better performance and, hopefully, win for our school!

Holidays

I haven't post in this blog for about 3 weeks, but now I am back with much more energy! Everyone needs a rest, and that's what I've been doing. But now that I'm back, I'll continue posting about literature analysis and answering as many questions as possible about the novels I'll study, so every single person understands the texts just as me, and of course, people can comment with their own perspectives.

Jane Austen and women's emancipation

This questions are based on the same novel I wrote in the past entry: "Pride and Prejudice". In this post, I'll answer some questions about the context of production of the book.

1. What degrees of emancipation and/or conservative reinforcement of 18th-Century family values does Elizabeth Bennet's marriage to Mr. Darcy support?
She was quite liberal, and this was demonstrated in her pride and way of living life as a free woman, something inconceivable in those times.

2. What attitudes to marriage does 'Pride and Prejudice' convey? What other options did Elizabeth Bennet have?
Throughout all history, women had to marry, otherwise they wouldn't survive. As this is a novel that wants to change the society's prejudices about women, it focuses on demonstrating a love story with a happy ending, with the only difference to other romantic stories being a more feminist way of thinking.

3. How does the introduction made by Vivien Jones affect your reading and approach to the novel?
It helps us with the context of production and tells us what the book is about, but without mentioning the end or something like that. It's quite common that, when you ask about a book to somebody, he or she tells you the end, but I don't really think this is appropiate, because you slay all the intentions of the reader to continue with its labor.



4. How could the social circumstances and contexts of 'Pride and Prejudice' apply to different cultures and contexts today?
As I said in the last post, I personally think that these topics are inherent to humans. Therefore, even if hundreds of years passed from the moment this book was written till today, I think that these kind of themes will never be let aside. 

Pride and Prejudice

This is a novel written by Jane Austen, a British author. This book was made a movie in 2005, but the important thing is that many movies were based on the story of Ms. Elizabeth Bennet and her feminist way of thinking. The text was written in 1813, but the emancipation of the women embodied through the lines of the text was quite after that year. We could say that Austen was a pioneer in this topic. To analyse better the idea of the book, I'll put some videos and answer some questions below.




1. Why do you think "Pride and Prejudice" continues to be a referent for modern tales? 
Because the themes 'pride' and 'prejudice' are almost inherent to human; therefore, they are somehow related to many novels and movies. The book's theme is one of the bases of society.

2. What do you think is the effect that these different authors (film directors, producers, modern writers) want to achieve in today's audiences?

The common purpose is to change prejudices. Or it also might be to teach people how to recognize pride and how to live with it without bad consequences to other people. Some films try to achieve this goal in a romantic way, while others try to do it in a funny one; but all of them have probably one of these two purposes. 

3. If you had to choose one of the previous versions to analyse, which would be the one and why?

Bridget Jones' Diary, because it's quite funny and I would like to see how does it focuses in reaching its objective in a modern era. It might be like Molière's theatre, trying to change society through laughter.

Debate!

This week we went to Villa María Academy to participate in debate. In this occasion, we had to be prepared to face Nido de Águilas and The Grange. In my case, I participated in the debate against Nido, with Mr. Elgueta and Mr. Pavón. The motion was "This house believes that the Olympic Games have lost their focus", and for that we were against the motion, so we based our defense on the Olympics in many ideas, one of them being that the focus was and still is the athletes friendly competition. Sadly, we lost; but if I can rescue something of it, was that we didn't lose because of the arguments. It was just because of a misunderstanding in our job of opposition team. But that's something we can improve quite quickly, hopefully faster than the next debate. 

The other debate, with Mr. Jeria, Mr. Park and Mr. Elgueta, was about "International organisations are not as powerful as intended", and that was a prepared debate, against The Grange. They focused mainly on the mission statements of many international organisations, and that no organisation fulfilled their objective. This was really a close debate, but the judges told us that we focused the motion so that the other team couldn't discuss it. They recommended us to think about the presentation of the motion, and that it should be debatable for both sides. 




The next debate will be in a couple of weeks more, so I hope we can win and be in the finals!