This Resource is for students Studying ‘The Dark Knight’ as a Personal Text Response for Year 11 VCE Curriculum AOS1 Reading & Exploring Texts

Prompt:  “It’s what you do that defines you”. (quote Batman) In the film ‘The Dark Knight’, is Bruce Wayne a moral philosopher?

Define words = moral = ethical/good/honest/decent

philosopher = truth seeker / seeker of justice

Analytical Essay Structure Using TEEL+ Personal Response =

1. Introduction = Context / Main Contention / Main points / Message of Director / Personal View
2. Body Paragraph 1 = Topic Sentence / 1^st main point / evidence / explanation / personal view & values / link back to topic & message of Director
3. Body Paragraph 2 = Topic Sentence / 2^nd main point / evidence / explanation / personal view & values / link back to topic & message of Director
4. Body Paragraph 3 = Topic Sentence / 3^rd main point / evidence / explanation / personal view & values / link back to topic & message of Director
5. Conclusion = Briefly restate Main Contention / Personal view & values / Message of Director

Introduction / Main Contention / Message of Director / Personal Response

Director Christopher Nolan explores a number of moral and ethical questions in his film ‘The Dark Knight’ that highlight the humanity and fallibility of the ‘superhero’ myth ‘Batman’ placing his actions under scrutiny. At critical moments in the film, and as a result of his humanity, Batman must choose between two negative outcomes, that places his moral belief system under pressure. When Batman makes decisions, he must discard some values in favour of others, and in the process, he reveals his personal moral code that ‘it’s not what you do that defines you’. His approach to crime also places the superhero’s morality in the hands of his enemies, leading Batman to make troubling decisions as he attempts to stop the villains. I consider the film shows that Bruce Wayne is a moral philosopher because what differentiates him from the villains of Gotham is through his belief in the city’s potential for good, a belief which all of his enemies have abandoned.

Body Paragraph 1 = Background / Who or what causes problems

Focus on = background to Bruce Wayne & Batman’s life / Batman does not have superhuman powers like Superman / he is really only a man / leading a double life takes commitment / cardinal rule never to kill his enemies / the film asks what is the cost of human life? / When is it acceptable to compromise principles in society in order to survive a clear and present danger? / are people basically good or evil? / is it worth being good? / personal response – the film reflects the moral complexity of our own society

Body Paragraph 2 = Response / how do individuals or groups respond to problems

Focus on = moral and ethical choices / save the life of his love Rachel or crime fighting DA Harvey Dent / Batman has to choose and eventually loses both Rachel and Dent as a result of his limitations / Gotham City is in a moral and physical crisis / Rachel says ‘this city is rotting’ /the Joker attempts to dismantle and destroy societal moral codes / Batman must decide whether to save the Joker as he falls off the building’s edge / Batman could justify the Joker’s death as self-defence / yet he chooses to save the falling villain at the last moment – personal response – Batman faces the Joker’s biggest test – he does not kill him – he chooses not break his one rule never kill his enemy

Body Paragraph 3 = Consequences / Legacy for society and individuals

Focus on = does the end justify the means? / Should Batman lie in order to sacrifice himself for Dent’s reputation? / Batman is the hero Gotham deserves he is not the hero they need / sometimes truth isn’t good enough, sometimes people deserve more / Batman must face the consequences of his actions as the result of his humanity / personal response – in this way believes in the potential of Gotham’s citizens, he refuses to abandon them to crime and despair and hopes for a brighter future for Gotham

All Resources created by englishtutorlessons.com.au Online Tutoring using Zoom for Mainstream English Students in the Victorian VCE Curriculum

This Resource is for students Studying ‘The Dark Knight’ for Year 11 VCE Curriculum AOS1 Reading & Exploring Texts

Introduction

‘The Dark Knight’ is not a simplistic tale of good and evil. Batman is good, yes, The Joker is evil, yes. However, Batman poses a more complex puzzle than usual: The citizens of Gotham City are in an uproar, calling him a vigilante and blaming him for the deaths of policemen and others. Significantly, the Joker is more than a villain. He is a Mephistopheles [an evil spirit who has sold his soul] whose actions are fiendishly designed to pose moral dilemmas for his enemies.

The plot involves the Joker’s attempts to humiliate the forces for good and expose Batman’ secret identity, showing him to be a poser and a fraud. He includes James Gordon and Harvey Dent on his target list. He contrives cruel tricks to play with the fact that Bruce Wayne once loved, and Harvey Dent now loves, Assistant D.A. Rachel Dawes. His tricks are crueller than he realizes, because the Joker does not know Batman’s identity. The Joker’s ghoulish appearance with a cackling laugh is driven by the belief humanity is inherently evil and any attempts at maintaining order or morality is a ‘bad joke’. Again, he underestimates Batman’s role as a symbol of justice and protector of Gotham City. Both sides are forced to make quick-witted decisions in order to stop the opposing vigilante from doing his desired work.

Good Versus Evil

‘The Dark Knight’focuses on the moral and ethical battles faced by the central characters, and the compromises they make to defeat the Joker under extraordinary circumstances. The Joker forces impossible ethical decisions on each character to test the limits of their morality. The Batman represents order to the Joker’s chaos and is brought to his own limit but avoids completely compromising himself. Harvey Dent represents goodness and hope; he is the city’s ‘white knight’ who is ‘pure’ of intent and can operate within the law. Dent is motivated to do good because he identifies himself as good, not through trauma like the Batman, and has faith in the legal system.

While the Joker corrupted Harvey Dent ‘the white knight’, Batman is willing to take the blame for the murders that Dent committed as ‘Two-Face’ so Gotham City will stay peaceful. Gordon tells his son Jimmy that although Dent was ‘the hero that Gotham needed’, ‘Batman is the hero that Gotham deserves’. In the end, Batman is still ‘a silent guardian, a watchful protector, a dark night’.

The Dark Knight Literary Elements

Director

Christopher Nolan

Leading Actors

Christian Bale and Heath Ledger

Supporting Actors/Actresses

Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman and Aaron Eckhart

Genre

Superhero, Action, Thriller

Date of Release

July 18th, 2008

Producer

Emma Thomas, Charles Roven, and Christopher Nolan

Setting and Context

Gotham City, present day, after the events of Batman Begins

Tone and Mood

Dark, thrilling, brooding, philosophical.

Protagonist and Antagonist

Batman vs. The Joker

Major Conflict

Batman is trying to clean up Gotham while also fighting with the supervillain and agent of chaos, the Joker. He is also conflicted about whether to give up the identity of Batman and pursue a normal life.

Climax

Batman catching the Joker and then Batman killing Two-Face.

Foreshadowing

Joker foreshadows many of the evil things he will do with odd asides. Harvey Dent’s corruption is foreshadowed by his observation that heroes either die young or live to see themselves turn into villains.

Understatement

At the start of the film, the power and influence of the Joker is constantly understated.

Allusions

Allusions to philosophy and to the comic books on which the film is based.

Paradox

The Joker is insane and chaotic, but also always two steps ahead, and thus, extremely methodical

Summary of the Plot

The criminals of Gotham City are running scared, because Batman is keeping the good citizens of Gotham safe. The film opens with a gang of men wearing clown masks breaking into the bank where the mob keeps much of their money. The mastermind of the heist is someone named the Joker. At the end of the heist, Joker arrives and puts a grenade in the mouth of the bank manager.

Unaware of the Joker’s presence in their city, Batman and the new DA, Harvey Dent, are working alongside Lieutenant Gordon to put the last of the mob’s money-laundering enterprises out of business once and for all. They believe they have definitively stopped the laundering and crime in the city—until the Joker shows up to sow chaos. Joker assassinates a judge, plants a bomb in a hospital and blows it up, and starts knocking off innocent people in Gotham one by one until Batman reveals his identity.

Batman is determined to fight back against the Joker. For a while, it seems as though he is maintaining the upper hand, until his best friend Rachel, who also happens to be Harvey Dent’s girlfriend, is killed in the crossfire. When half of Harvey Dent’s face gets burned in an explosion, the Joker brings him over to the dark side, encouraging him to seek vengeance for Rachel’s death. Harvey adopts a new name, Two-Face, and Batman finds himself with two madmen to contend with as the destruction of Gotham looms large.

The Joker has clearly been planning his takeover of Gotham for quite some time, and seems to be at least two steps ahead of Batman at every turn. After releasing a threat to the entire city of Gotham, he commandeers two ferries and fills one with citizens and one with convicted criminals. He also fills both ferries with explosives. He gives each boat a master detonator that will explode the other ferry. If nobody detonates the other boat by midnight, he says, he will blow up both boats. Batman is eventually able to subdue the evil clown and none of the passengers on the ferries are harmed.

Harvey is still on the Joker’s side, something that Batman did not realize in his haste to take down the Joker himself. While Batman has been confronting Joker, Gordon learns that his family has been taken hostage by Two-Face. When Gordon goes to save them, Two-Face knocks Gordon to the ground, then grabs his little boy, Jimmy, planning on flipping a coin to decide the boy’s fate by chance. Suddenly, Batman arrives and orders him to stop, telling him that he is blaming the wrong people for Rachel’s death. Two-Face then flips the coin for Batman. It lands dirty side up, so he shoots him. He flips it for himself. It lands clean side up. Then he resumes with his original plan and flips it for little Jimmy. In the definitive moment, Batman gets up and tackles Two-Face, knocking him over a ledge.

Batman bemoans the fact that the Joker still won because he corrupted Harvey Dent, split up their alliance for good, and destroyed one of the best people in Gotham. If the people of Gotham ever discovered the wrongs that Two-Face has done, Gotham’s future will be compromised. Thus, Batman decides to take the blame for the murders that Dent committed as Two-Face, so that the Joker can’t win and the city will stay peaceful.

Gordon is seen destroying the Bat symbol above the MCU building and then begins to chase Batman, who runs. Gordon tells his son that although Dent was the hero that Gotham needed, Batman is the hero that Gotham deserves. A manhunt is issued for Batman and he speeds away in his Batpod. Gordon declares, “He’s a silent guardian. A watchful protector. A Dark Knight.”

Themes
Justice versus corruption	Bearing the burden as sacrificial hero	Loss of love
Chaos & destruction	Human nature is essentially good	Chance
Terrorism & escalation	Morality & ethics	Good versus evil

Symbols & Motifs
Social experiments	Makeup	Two-Face
Joker card	Batman	Harvey as ‘the white knight’ symbol of good

Irony
Bruce is Batman	Harvey says he is Batman	Rachel’s death
Joker’s scars

Imagery
Burning money	Joker himself	Two-Face
The Dark Knight

All Resources created by englishtutorlessons.com.au Online Tutoring using Zoom for Mainstream English Students in the Victorian VCE Curriculum

This Resource is for students Studying ‘The Dark Knight’ as a Personal Text Response for Year 11 VCE Curriculum AOS1 Reading & Exploring Texts

Questions to ask about how the text resonates with student’s own memories and life experiences:

• What aspects of your own experiences reflect the experiences of the characters in the text?
• Have you experienced any major life events that reflect key moments in the plot?
• What are your values and ideas about the world, and how do they compare with those presented in the text?
• Can you draw parallels with your own observations of the world as represented in the text?
• Can you compare the cultural, social, and historical values embedded in the text and compare these with your own values?

Connections to The Dark Knight

• The Dark Knight creates a chaotic tale of struggling with human limits against terror – taps into fear of global terror – terrorists rely on fear to maintain their power
• When Batman stands in the burning rubble – there are horrific parallels to images of ‘ground zero’ after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the twin towers in New York & the War on Terror
• The Joker is a fantasy version of a terrorist, he has no clear political ideology but he wants to impart chaos, destruction, and fear on Gotham City
• Batman is part of a fantasy story – a costumed crime fighter –he can be considered on a deeper level as an authority figure who needs to maintain control over various evil groups such as real-world terrorists and terrorism groups
• Harvey Dent was a hero ‘white knight’ but turns into a revenge bent criminal ‘Two-Face’ – the film shows how seemingly normal good people can turn into terrorists if given the right motive
• Batman is in a morally uncertain middle ground when he ponders his failure against the Joker – he questions how far must he go in order to defeat such overwhelming forces of evil
• The Joker killing Rachel Dawes and scarring Harvey Dent leads Batman down a morally questionable path – how does Batman reconcile his own humanity with his impulse for violent retribution against the Joker?
• Is phone surveillance of Gotham City by techno expert Lucius Fox a real-life security concern? – it gives Batman power to listen in on every conversation in Gotham
• The film questions the morals of people like Batman who has chosen to cross all ethical lines – is Batman morally compromised, a vigilante rather than good guy fighting evil?
• If extraordinary circumstances are needed to control terrorists – what part of ourselves do we lose when we choose to take immoral steps to stop the villains?
• Christopher Nolan’s film provides critical questions about fear of terrorism and also what governments do regarding threats – is war the answer against terrorists?

All Resources created by englishtutorlessons.com.au Online Tutoring using Zoom for Mainstream English Students in the Victorian VCE Curriculum

This Resource is ‘A Brief Synopsis’ only for Mainstream English Year 11 Students studying ‘The Penelopiad’ by Margaret Atwood: AOS1 Reading & Exploring Texts and AOS2 Crafting Texts Year 11 in the 2023 VCE Curriculum

Historical Context

While ‘The Penelopiad’ is a postmodern, feminist short novel (novella) it is a work of narrative fiction with a story and plot, characters and settings and offers insight into human relationships as well as exploring moral, social and political issues.  The most significant element in Atwood’s narrative is that she retells Homer’s myth of the Odyssey enabling various interpretations and questions to what led to the hanging of the Maids and what was Penelope really up to?  By leaving Homer’s myth of Greece in 700 BCE open to reinterpretation, Atwood suggests that there is not one single undisputed truth in the interpretation.  Atwood addresses social and cultural issues of Ancient Greece within the framework of Homer’s myth but she assigns new emphasis to female protagonists like Penelope who have to fight for self and survival in a society ruled by men. 

Style

‘The Penelopiad’ is told by Penelope adopting 1^st person narrative, from the Underworld, called Hades in Ancient Greek mythology, where she has been for several thousand years.  Shown through Penelope’s eyes, Atwood creates a form of conversational dramatic monologue during which Penelope tells her side of the story as she waits the 20 years for Odysseus to return from the Trojan Wars.  She presents a kind of tell-all tale of her recount of events that she will “spin a thread of my own” (p.4) addressing 21^st century readers in a more modern narrative style that is often colloquial.  Penelope uses blunt and straightforward language reclaiming her humanity and rejecting Homer’s account of her.  The tone is often ironic and humorous and is at odds with the patriarchal epic poems of Ancient Greek mythology.  She urges women “Don’t follow my example, I want to scream in your ears” (p.2).  At times Penelope uses quite extreme slang when describing Helen of Troy calling her a “septic bitch” (p.131) in order to reinforce the view of Helen as the main cause of all Penelope’s problems.  Through the use of everyday vernacular, Atwood mocks the lofty language of the Odyssey and claims the right for alternative voices to be heard.

Feminist Literature

‘The Penelopiad’ can be considered feminist literature of the 21^st century as Atwood takes women from the Odyssey and puts them into a new framework where the narrator Penelope and other female voices, once suppressed by Homer, become the voices heard.  Penelope is a capable modern woman, simultaneously trying to cover all roles while Odysseus is away.  She clearly does more than weeping and weaving.  She raises Telemachus as a single mother, manages Odysseus’ estates and negotiates the politics of the household and the onslaught from the Suitors.  Atwood shows Penelope resisting patriarchal dominance and oppression starting from when her father tries to drown her, until we meet her looking back on her life from the Underworld.  We see the focus on the way Penelope creates and extends her role of patient wife and mother to the other roles she defines.  The text addresses the feminist ideology which asks that “women be free to define themselves, instead of having their identity defined for them”.

Message of Author – Why did Margaret Atwood write The Penelopiad?

As Atwood admits, Penelope has been “in general somewhat neglected for the very simple reason that in the Odyssey she does weaving, waiting, sleeping and crying to show how much she cares that Odysseus isn’t there, how beleaguered she feels, and how lost and alone and unhappy she is.”  Certainly, Atwood could have written about murderous Clytemnestra or scandalous Helen, but she decided to take Penelope, a mythical, dutiful doormat and make her fly.  But Atwood conceded that there was much more to Penelope and she wanted to question Homer’s version of her.  For Atwood, such ancient myths can still tell us living truths. 

Atwood said that Penelope “Had a whole lifetime of keeping her mouth shut.  Now that she’s dead, she doesn’t have to do that anymore, because nothing is at stake.  It’s like those tell-all’s that people do at the end of their lives.”  Atwood also makes her put-upon heroine a shrewd estate manager and stand-in ruler, running the dirt-poor “goat-strewn rock” of Ithaca while the big boys play away from home.  “If you come to think of it, she must have been doing a lot more than she’s shown as doing in the Odyssey, because there’s nobody else in charge of the outfit.  She must have been a much more active, practical person than she’s shown as being.”  Nobody’s fool, Atwood’s Penelope sees through the returning Odysseus’s disguises and shares a flair for fibs and ruses with her errant husband. “There are two ways of fending things off if you don’t want them to happen,” Atwood explains. “One is by force – which is not available to her. The other is by guile.  So, she has to use guile.  And that is also Odysseus’s big stock-in-trade. When in doubt, lie – but lie well.”

Interview of Margaret Atwood by Boyd Tonkin “Margaret Atwood: A personal odyssey and how she rewrote Homer”. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/margaret-atwood-a-personal-odyssey-and-how-she-rewrote-homer-322675.html

The 12 Maids Perspective & Importance

Atwood intersperses Penelope’s narrative with performances from the 12 hanged maids, in 11 of the 24 chapters, who together form ‘The Chorus Line’ to comment on the action and give background from their perspective.  The maids perform in a variety of genres such as songs, recitations, dance, an idyll, a sea shanty, ballad, love story, mock heroic drama, an envoi, an anthropological lecture and a farce of a trial of Odysseus.  The narratives of the maids are also accompanied by stage directions to increase the sense of dramatic performance.  The maids lament the double standards throughout their chorus breaks, constantly reminding the reader or audience of the tragedy that happened.

The importance of the maid’s narrative is to address the treatment of marginalised women in a patriarchal society and Atwood’s need to give powerless women a voice not heard in the history of society or Greek mythology.  The maids continue to demand answers ‘Why did you murder us?’ (p. 193) and Atwood gives them the final word in the novella with a short poem, ‘Envoi’, where they again state ‘it was not fair’ (p. 195).  Atwood emphasises the injustice of silencing and marginalising women and suggests that women will keep on calling out about it.

Themes & Key Concepts – Consider these Ideas for Connections with your Personal Response or Crafting Texts Response

• Truth and Lies

Penelope’s story uncovers lies and innuendos as she takes the unchallenged position of narrator to tell the “plain truth” (p.139) so that deception is attributed by her only from Odysseus.  She says she knew Odysseus was “tricky” (p.2) but it seems that both Penelope and Odysseus use lies and deception to cleverly achieve their aims.  Penelope’s revelation of herself as an equal liar to Odysseus casts into doubt her insistence that she has nothing to do with the hanging of the Maids and does not know about it until it is too late.  It brings into question other matters like her true relationship with the Suitors and her activities when Odysseus is away.  Also, as the Maids call out insults to Odysseus concerning their treatment and their pledge to follow him wherever he goes, they taunt him about their murder, clearly referring to him as a careful, clever liar.  They make reference to Odysseus being a “grandson of thieves and liars” (p.191) because of the story involving the boar hunting with his grandfather, Autolycus.  The questions posed by this probable deceit are suggested by Penelope in the chapter of “The Scar” (p.47).  It appears that the clever lies told by both Penelope and Odysseus are used to manipulate others, to get what they want or just simply to survive.

• Personal Challenge

Penelope starts her tale by retelling a story from her childhood.  She is thrown into the sea by her father, but is saved by a flock of purple-striped ducks.  Clearly this episode and its retelling has a profound impact on Penelope and leaves her with the personal challenge of dealing with her reserved personality and learning to manage her innate mistrust of others.  So, unlike her cousin Helen of Troy, who is confident and superficial, Penelope’s personality is more inward-focused.  This could also account for why she has to much trouble fitting in to palace life in Ithaca and resorts to her own abilities to “learn from scratch” (p.87).  Even though Penelope is only 15 when she is married to Odysseus, she is willing to start a new life with Odysseus so she can put her past life as princess of Sparta and her dysfunctional family life behind her.  Yet her personal challenges are broad and wide-reaching in Ithaca when Odysseus is away for so many years, she must rely on her own determination to succeed against the odds.  Despite much weeping and weaving she finds the strength to handle court politics and running the estates belonging to Odysseus.  In her personal challenges she applies her mother’s advice “If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it” (p.43).

• Power

Penelope struggles with a lack of power, firstly as a child in Sparta, then when she is won in a marriage contest by Odysseus and later in Ithaca with Eurycleia and Anticlea.  There are fatal consequences when the powerful exert their power and we see two sides to Penelope, the powerful and the powerless.  The Maid’s lack of power is evident in the novella and they express this in “Kiddie Mourn, A Lament by the Maids” (pp.13-15).  Later they seek justice for the injustices they have faced, including their early and unnatural death by putting their case before a modern court.  However, even in that setting they lack the power for a resolution that will see Odysseus face his crimes. 

In ‘The Penelopiad’, physical power is embodied in Odysseus who is the self-proclaimed superhuman who had defeated the Trojans and established his political power in battle.  More importantly is that power is explicitly in the hands of men in Greece who consolidate and legitimise power physically, politically and economically over women.  Odysseus is free to kill Penelope for infidelity and to slaughter the Suitors and the Maids.  Likewise, Icarius is at liberty to drown his infant daughter or act in a drunken and insulting manner at Penelope’s wedding because “He was king” (p.41). 

‘The Penelopiad’ explores ways in which male power affects different groups of women as a result of class discrimination.  For instance, although Penelope is traded “like a package of meat” (p.39) between her father and her husband, as a noblewoman she still has far more power than her Maids.  The Maids are Odysseus’ property to the point that he is considered to have acted “within his rights” in hanging them.  In fact, their rape is judged as a crime against them as they had sex without his permission (p.151). 

Penelope’s “tale-telling” (p.4) is an attempt to seize some power by contradicting the traditional myth that depicts her as the stereotypical faithful wife.  Similarly, the Maids demand the right to tell their own version of events and thus achieve a measure of the power that was denied to their sex and class.

• Responsibility

A key theme is responsibility; especially how Odysseus sees his responsibility in the tale, as Penelope does not give him the right of reply to accusations made against him.  Although Atwood indirectly refers to the puzzle concerning what leads to the hanging of the Maids in The Odyssey, in her retelling of the tale she states clearly that the story “doesn’t hold water” (p.xv).  She suggests that whoever is directly responsible might be important in her story with its new emphases.  Atwood indicates that Penelope is “haunted” (p.xv) by the death of the hanged Maids and we are told of her great affection for them.  On the surface it appears that the responsibility lies with Odysseus however, it is clearly much more complicated.  Atwood leaves doubt in the mind of the reader despite the fact that the Maids hold fast in their accusation against Odysseus for their murder.  Perhaps Penelope’s responsibility is to put a stop to being “A stick used to beat other women with” (p.2) as she wanted to set the record straight.  Yet Penelope pleads ignorance about the killing of the Maids.  Nevertheless, responsibility weighs on Penelope in outward statements and inner thoughts, which allows readers to raise questions of who is really responsible for the Maids killings.

• Identity

‘The Penelopiad’ explores notions of identity and the ways in which it is tied to physical appearance, self-perception and the expectations of others.  Physical appearance with Helen’s beauty sets the standard of physical perfection by which other women (such as Penelope) judge themselves (p.35).  The text suggests that beauty can grant women power; in Helen’s case, agelessness as well, invests her with enormous power over men.  Beauty is also linked with youth and the capacity to bear children (especially sons) to ensure the continuation of patriarchal power. 

A sense of self can also be shaped by other’s perceptions and expectations leading people to question who they are.  This is clear as Penelope fails to meet her mother in law’s expectations of a suitable wife for Odysseus (p.62) and the idea he might be “thinking about Helen” (p.64) increases her insecurity.  Odysseus cheats if the odds are against him in order to substantiate his heroic status (p.31), he exaggerates stories of his heroism, yet his public identity as a hero is consolidated by his plausible stories that inevitably become “true” (p.2).

• Gender Roles

The text explores ideas about being a woman with socially constructed notions of femininity and gender and also highlights the complexities of womanhood in a 21^st century post-feminist context.  The good mother characteristics of a nurturing, gentle and protective quality with feminine sensibility is shown in Penelope when she gives birth to Telemachus as she is “glad” to have produced a son, gratified that Odysseus is “pleased” with her (p.64) and feels fulfilled by her maternal role.  Penelope’s observation that “a mother’s life is sacred” (p.111) reveals the high value society places on nurturing motherhood and the high expectations placed upon mothers. 

Yet toxic mothers in law with their reputed hostility to daughters in law is shown by Anticleia who Penelope described as a “prune-mouthed” woman (p.60) who wrinkles up “like drying mud” (p.85).  Atwood exploits these stereotypes for the comic or dramatic purpose in the text but Penelope challenges her role by showing the importance of spinning a threat of one’s own (p.4). 

Being a wife in Ancient Greece in a patriarchal society meant being a possession like Penelope being handed over like “a package of meat” (p.39) in a bargain struck between powerful men.  Penelope is the essence of submissiveness and obedience and only after her death she warns other women that following her example will subjugate and silence them.

• Storytelling & the Power of Narrative

‘The Penelopiad’ demonstrates the power of storytelling and the liberating power of taking ownership of one’s own story.  Penelope’s spinning of her own “thread” (p.4) disputes Homer’s idealised version of her in the Odyssey so that she is able to complicate the accepted one-dimensional image of her as a dutiful wife and emphasise to the reader her considerable intelligence and resilience.  Rewriting of the Odyssey is empowering for Penelope as she can finally negate the many stories about her that she would “prefer not to hear” (p.3).  Her authorial control frees her from the burden of being a legend (pp.143-5) and allows her to warn other women not to follow the example she set of keeping her “mouth shut” (p.3).

All Resources created by englishtutorlessons.com.au Online Tutoring using Zoom for Mainstream English Students in the Victorian Curriculum

This Resource is for students in Year 11 studying’Minfields & Miniskirts’ & ‘Wilfred Owen War Poems’ in the Victorian VCE Curriculum

Structure of the Play/ Plot / Set / Music / Title Symbols / Motifs

Begins with the sounds in the distance of military drums on an Anzac Day march in 1980’s, where the women meet, and ends to the sound of the military band at an Anzac Day march at the end of the play.  The marches celebration of returned soldiers is a time of mixed emotions of joy and sadness for the characters.  Significantly, the play comes full circle at the end with the return to the march and the return of the women to Australia which has brought them a new level of understanding about their experiences in Vietnam.  The link to the song at the end of the play is Joni Mitchell’s ‘The Circle Game’ as all the women sing together of their lives going ‘round and round’ after their ‘life altering experience’ in Vietnam.

The play is organised into 11 scenes.  While each scene has a particular theme that joins the stories of the 5 women together, each of the women’s stories has a quality that makes it distinct from the other character’s stories.  The plot is carried by the 5 characters, so that plot and character are very closely related.  While there is no direct interaction between the characters on stage or any dialogues between them, we do see them join in singing 1960’s songs together, for example, Scene 2 ‘Off to War’ Sandy, Eve, Kathy & Ruth sing together ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’.

O’Connell has drafted the script in such a way as to imply clear links and shifts in perspective between the characters, so that different points of view are cast on the same events.  He has also set the monologues within a theatrical choreography of the stage space, to add a sense of realism to the scenes, which otherwise consist solely of the 5 spoken monologues.  The play agglomerates the anecdotes of each of the women into a group narrative that typifies the particular scene in which it occurs.  The effect of this grouping is to bring the women’s stories together, even as they have their key points of difference.

The set of the play is a mash up of ancient Vietnamese, colonial French style and modern American capitalism ‘Coca Cola’ street furniture and the physical environment of Vietnam.  The opening set includes a silk stage curtain with a bleached-out handwritten message celebrating the Australian women who went to Vietnam.  The audience also hear music from famous Vietnam War era films allowing them to be drawn into the world of Vietnam.  Even though the women had different backgrounds, as much as their experiences, they have one thing in common, which is explored poignantly in the final sentence: ‘Vietnam transformed their lives and haunted their memories’.

The title of the play is an illusion to 2 deeper thematic concerns that rule life – sex and death.  The ‘miniskirts’ are a symbol of liberated female sexuality and ‘minefields’ are a symbol of maiming, disfigurement and death.  These 2 elements were in evidence during the Vietnam War.  The young soldiers were in their 20’s and sexually virile but many came back with their bodies and minds broken and shattered or in body bags as 521 Australians died.  All women return from Vietnam profoundly changed by their experiences.  Helicopters form a dominant motif that are heard constantly hovering in the background of the play to remind the audience of the women’s memories of the war.

Characters

Margaret             The Vet’s wife – the first to speak in the play and she is both the outsider of the group of 5, and the one who comes closest to experiencing the violence of the Vietnam War directly in her own home. Her husband James brings back the Vietnam War with him, in fact he is still fighting the war as he steps through the front door and continues fighting the war until the day he commits suicide by gassing himself to death in the car.  Margaret represents many thousands of wives who had to nurse their veteran husbands who returned from seeing action in Vietnam with profound psychological disturbances.

Sandy                    The entertainer – Sandy’s motivation for going to Vietnam is to exploit the captive audience she will find there, as she entertains the troops as one of the Velveteens.  She is attracted by the glitz and glamour of being a show-girl, strutting up on stage in her pink feathers, and performing in front of hordes of GI’s and so we recognise early on in the play that Sandy enjoys being the centre of attention.  Her life in Vietnam is a step-up from performing on stage ‘in my miniskirt’ in some unheard of ‘suburban club’ and her socio-economic background propels her towards Vietnam as her options and possibilities for success in Australia are severely limited.

Kathy                    The nurse – Kathy comes out of a military family and volunteering for service in Vietnam is a natural thing for her to do, war service is in her DNA.  Her father is a man of some influence and she is able to communicate back to him the kinds of conditions she is experiencing on the front-line hospital and field work, and the appalling lack of equipment.  She is proud to be serving, but she also becomes disillusioned fairly quickly or has a reality check realising the supposed enemy soldiers are no better or no worse than her own side and resolves to treat everyone equally.

Eve                         The volunteer – Eve heralds from a devoutly Christian family and feels it her mission to volunteer herself to those suffering in the war.  She leaves with her parents’ blessing but throughout proves to be a perceptive observer of both other people and herself.  She realises fairly soon that in her experience ‘It was hard to believe in my God in Vietnam’ and understands the moment she comes in to land, upon seeing an old man ploughing his paddy field as an aerial battle was raging around him, that the Vietnam War could never be won.  This perception of the nature of things was lost on the politicians and military men conducting the war.

Ruth                      The journalist – Ruth comes to Vietnam as a dare by a fellow journalist but the urge behind her decision is motivated also by her desire for excitement and adventure beyond editing the women’s pages of the local tabloid.  We realise that Ruth is in some ways equally exploitative of the new situation, as she tries to get ‘an in’ with the locals and uses her overt physical features to get herself invited to parties.  While in Vietnam the injuries and deaths that surround her do not move her beyond wearing the Star of David that her Green Beret soldier husband-to-be wore before his death.  While she admits the Vietnam War made her feel ‘alive’ she does not gain any deeper perception about herself as a result.

Themes

Social content of the Vietnam War                          

Freedom to kill at random / no conscience

Counter culture of 1960’s drugs                                

Freedom to exploit or harm others

Psychological effects of war                                       

PTSD / psychotic effect of war

Women exploited / rape / no moral power          

Language & power / feelings

Noble ideal vs corrupted ideal of war                     

South East Asia reality of Communist domino effect

Plot Outline

Scene 1: Prologue                           The opening scene is set at an Anzac Day march and the 5 women give us a snippet of the stories that are about to be told in the main body (scenes 3-10) of the play.

Scene 2: Off to War                        The women give the background to their decision to leave Australia for Vietnam and their personal motivations – Sandy for glamour, Kathy to carry on a family tradition of helping out in times of war, Ruth to embark on a new step in her career as a journalist, and Eve through a general sense of dissatisfaction with expectancies of her getting married and settling down.  For Margaret, it is her husband who goes ‘off to war’.

Scene 3: Hello Vietnam                The 4 women describe the unreal world that greets them upon their arrival in Vietnam – human body parts being eaten by dogs, grenade-lobbing acid-tripping GIs and jealous prostitutes in Saigon.

Scene 4: A Workaday War           The bizarreness of everyday life during the Vietnam War is expressed in each of the women’s stories.  Margaret describes the return of her husband as ‘a ghost’.

Scene 5: Children                            This scene contains stories that involve children and tell us a universal truth, that if truth is the first victim of war, then ordinary people including children run a close second.  The stories emphasise Eve’s perception as she arrives in Vietnam in the Prologue – that the war could never be won.

Scene 6: Human Beings                 The title of the scene refers to the story Ruth tells of being unable to report on the Vietnamese as human beings, and the scene shows the enormous human cost of the war, as ordinary civilians are executed on mere suspicion of being involved with the Viet Cong.  A story of hope ends the scene as Kathy tells of a baby’s birth in a field, a new life amongst so much senseless death.

Scene 7: RandR – Romance & Rape         While many of the women did find genuine romance in Vietnam, these dalliances were often tinged with danger.  Meanwhile, back in Australia, Margaret’s husband is even more dangerous and psychologically deranged, and rapes her.  At the end of the scene the women are introduced and sing as “The Velveteens”.

Scene 8: War Does Become Normal        The weirdness and strangeness of the Vietnam War begins to become normalised.  Many of the women tell bizarre stories with surreal and sometimes disturbing juxtapositions.  A dying GI hallucinates his wife onto Eve, Ruth witnesses a rudimentary electro-interrogation, and Sandy gets a thrill out of firing an M16 off the back of a jeep.  The scene ends with the music of Bing Crosby, singing “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas”.

Scene 9: Goodnight Saigon                          The women describe their hasty evacuation following the fall of Saigon, and the end of their experiences.  Margaret’s husband commits suicide, Sandy’s entertainment dreams end in the story of 6 GI’s raping her girlfriend in a hut.

Scene 10: Aftermath                      Returning to Australia makes the women realise the extent to which their experiences in Vietnam have affected them.  Their reactions are either of frustration and boredom, or a continuation of their responses in Vietnam.  Ruth harangues a film theatre audience for laughing in MASH, Sandy dives into the gutter when she hears some Hare Krishnas, Kathy will only date Vietnam Vets, while Eve’s health has been affected by the chemicals.

Scene 11: Epilogue                          The play returns to the Anzac Day march, and the women reiterate the profound effect that their Vietnam experience has had on them.  They end all singing together with the lyrics of a Joni Mitchell song “The Circle Game”, symbolising the return of the plot to its starting point and the experiences of the women in Vietnam that are life altering and will never be forgotten.

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