A2 English mock typed up and graded.

A2 English Mock.    Result:   A - 38/40

Between the three texts it is evident that the manipulation of love, violence and power has all been explored to a great degree. Much like in ‘The Tempest’ by Shakespeare, the ‘’nature-nurture’’ of individuals cannot be wholeheartedly determined. For that reason, critics must evaluate and compare texts before aligning them to either ‘’nature’’ or ‘’nurture’’.

Particularly through the manipulation of structure within ‘The Winter’s Tale’ the audience is aware that the plot revolves around the form of a ‘’tale’’ which is historically known as a story told by women and usually contains a moral centre, much like Camillo and Offred. These ‘’tales’’ can be comfortably dated back to Geoffrey Chaucer and his ‘Canterbury Tales’. However, the structure of ‘The Winter’s Tale’ lingers precariously upon the intertwining of violence and time whereupon the introduction of time itself in Act IV can be seen as a metaphorical barrier to Leontes’ jealousy and so, prevents the animosity from seeping into Bohemia and ultimately containing Leontes’ ‘’diseased opinion’’. From the clear structural juxtaposition between Bohemia and Sicilia, the audience almost adopts a somnambulatory approach to characterising the individuals once we are aware of what court they derive from. Thus on this basis, it could be said that the manipulation of structure particularly in Act I, a 19^th century Victorian audience perhaps would have adopted an empathic understanding of Leontes’ on the grounds that their prudish façade merely masked their own dark and violence inclinations in the light of infidelity.

However, unlike ‘The Winter’s Tale’, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ does not have a clear sanctuary for the reader like Bohemia is for the audience. This structural void alludes to the idea that there cannot be a sanctuary in the presence of such animosity. According to the critic Charlotte Newman, Attwood manipulates ‘’reality and history’’ through Offred’s narrative voice and so, time is not a mere linear perspective throughout the novel and once again opposes the structure of ‘The Winter’s Tale’. Here it is perhaps more accurate to say that the only sanctuary available is that of Offred’s stream of consciousness, where it is easier to render her situation a ‘’business transaction’’ as opposed to a ‘’reality’’. Much like Khaled Hosseini’s ‘The Kite Runner’ where Amir uses fond memories to numb his pain of the fight, Offred similarly manipulates the structure of her thoughts where in this case the spoken word has power over the written word in the light of the ‘’old days’’. Thus, the structure creates a poignant message to power, much like Shakespeare on the grounds that in both circumstances power is evoked, and the process of re-establishing democracy from the debris…