A Study Guide for Margaret Atwood's "Rape Fantasies" (Short Stories for Students)
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A Study Guide for Margaret Atwood's "Rape Fantasies" (Short Stories for Students)
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Her character is developed richly and efficiently through the moments of humor that surround her absurd fantasies of rape; her voice and thought process is illustrated clearly through the transitions between serious concepts and silly ones; and it is these transitions that reveal the contradictions in her thinking that she is unable to recognize. In this instance, Estelle shows that she is quite capable of practicing her benevolent behavior in her rape fantasies, whether she realizes it or not. “…how could a fellow do that to a person he’s just had a long conversation with…?” she asks, not thinking once about the person to whom she’s speaking. She gives this person the benefit of the doubt, reveals many intimate details about herself, and gives this faceless person more credit and more candidness than the women at the bridge game. The way they’re going on about it in the magazines you’d think it was just invented, and not only that but it’s something terrific. Despite the name, "Rape Fantasies" is the funniest story in the collection, and one of the most interesting. Starting with a Cosmo-style magazine piece about how all women have rape fantasies once in a while, the ladies of the office pool compare theirs. Our snarky narrator spins increasingly hilarious and absurd variants, partly to amuse herself and partly to annoy her co-workers. My favorite is the one where a rapist with a cold comes into her window, only to find that she, too, has a cold. "I'b goig to rabe you," he says through stuffy nose. They lie in bed handing each other kleenex and watching the Late Show.
Estelle, during the course of these conversations, makes observations about the women, subtly revealing her method of focus and her sense of the important, telling less about the characters of the women and more about Estelle herself. These constant, critical, and often silly observations are the very thing that clearly draws the character of this narrator. Incluso quienes jamás irían a los lugares que ella describía, quienes no podrían permitírselo, no querían oír hablar de peligros, ni siquiera de incomodidades; era como si desearan creer que quedaba un lugar en el mundo donde todo iba bien, donde no ocurría nada desagradable. The story begins with the narrator, Estelle, commenting on the wide number of references to rape she’s seen in the popular culture recently, noting many magazine articles that seem to take a light and flippant tone towards the subject. She then describes a conversation she had at her lunch hour with four co-workers, Chrissy, Greta, Sondra, and Darlene.Margaret Atwood es maravillosa. Sus reflexiones y su modo de plasmarlas sobre el papel me impresionan. The themes of this story are the quotes that are displayed through the paper and the definition of rape, why it’s taking lightly and how is the issue getting solved. Estelle is, then, revealed best when the author simply allows her to speak. To have told the story in the third person would have removed the tone and wealth of information that hearing Estelle’s voice provides. The idea that the perfect woman, or the Virgin Mary, gave birth to a child while remaining a virgin presents woman with the same kind of paradoxical model as having rape fantasies, the similarity being that a woman can no more find a happy, exciting, pleasant rape than she can get pregnant and still be a virgin. As Estelle says, ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘those aren’t RAPE fantasies. I mean, you aren‘t getting RAPED, it ‘s just some guy you haven’t met formally who happens to be more attractive than Derek Cummins,… and you have a good time. Rape is when they’ve got a knife or something and you don’t want to’ (32). Her next story begins the same way as the first. This time she describes the rapist. She makes you believe that all rapists are lonely depressed guys who feel that their last resort in getting “some” is to rape a female. So being the kind hearted victim that she is she advised him that he got a makeover he wouldn’t have to go around raping everyone. All of Estelle’s stories end with her helping out the rapist or getting out of being raped. To me that is what a rape fantasy should be. It starts off as a unpleasant scenario but plays out to be a good ending. Fantasies are desires and wants no one wants to be raped and in a fantasy. In a rape fantasy the out come is that you don’t get raped.
In the story the women reveal to the readers more about themselves than the narrator, Estelle, tells us. Sus propios esfuerzos por seguir siendo humano, el trabajo inútil, el amor estéril, ¿qué ocurría cuando todo se agotaba?, ¿qué le sucedería a él? I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” Estelle says in the next-to-last paragraph, “except I think it helps you get to know a person, especially at first, hearing some of the things they think about.” Her entire nervous spiel, start to finish, now reminds us far too much of her fantasies. In the story’s last lines, Estelle says, returning to the subject of rape, “once you let them know you’re human… I don’t see how they could go ahead with it, right?” But, as before, there is no indication of how the man at the bar responds or whether he responds at all. Perhaps he is a danger to vulnerable Estelle, perhaps not, but the story’s comic tone now goes swirling down the drain of Estelle’s essential solitude. It appears that she has failed to make a human connection, and she has come no further in understanding the ugliness of rape: “I mean, I know it happens, but I just don’t understand it.” The predominant literary technique employed in “Rape Fantasies” is borrowed from the realm of poets and playwrights. Atwood employs a dramatic monologue, wherein one speaker relates information to an implied listener who does not participate in the action. Used successfully by such classic poets as Robert Browning and T. S. Eliot, the dramatic monologue tends to reveal facets of the speaker that she or he may assume are hidden. By describing others in a negative vein or by unconscious slips of the tongue, the protagonist lifts her mask and permits a view of her truest self.Though not dwelling on them doesn’t make them go away either, when you come to think of it (35). As Estelle dwells on the idea that one shouldn’t dwell on things, the humor and satire in the story become even more evident. The last few sentences of the story express much of the essence of the irony of the main character and the story in general: Like, 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? Incluso quienes jamás irían a los lugares que ella d
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