![]() Just as there’s no sense in this passage that the maid Bilhah’s own body or feelings matter, so too is there a lack of protection for the protagonist in Atwood’s novel, or women like her. This short excerpt from Genesis is the basis for Atwood’s entire societal issue, which is the use of women basically as breeding machines. Margaret Atwood quotes from the Bible in her dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale. (from The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood) Example #6Īnd when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.Īnd Jacob’s anger was kindled against Rachel and he said, Am I in God’s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb?Īnd she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her. The quote from Juan Ramón Jiménez is a brilliantly succinct way of presenting the rebellious nature that Guy embodies. While the protagonist of the novel, Guy Montag, originally is part of a society that discourages reading and enforces the burning of books, he later changes his views. Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 contains this epigraph example that encourages going against the rules. If they give you ruled paper, write the other way. Just as with the difficult journey the Magi took, the protagonist in Achebe’s novel travels from Nigeria to England, and when he returns to Nigeria he finds himself no longer at ease when he returns back to his home country. Eliot, whose poem mirrors the post-colonial condition that Achebe explores at length in his novel. (from No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe)Ĭhinua Achebe includes a pertinent example of epigraph in his novel No Longer at Ease. With an alien people clutching their gods. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,īut no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, While not all lawyers might maintain a childlike empathy with the world, Atticus works hard to be fair and impart this fairness in his daughter, the narrator. Harper Lee’s famous novel To Kill a Mockingbird includes the important perspectives of both Atticus Finch, a lawyer, and his children. (from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee) In this case, the epigraph suggests that a man must wear nice things (and be of a high class) to impress a woman. It still serves the purpose that others epigraphs do, which is to highlight a theme of the novel to come. ![]() Fitzgerald is somewhat light-hearted, therefore, in this use of epigraph. The epigraph example in The Great Gatsby is one that F. Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!” - Thomas Parke D’Invilliers She uses a quote from John Milton’s Paradise Lost in which a human speaks to his maker (i.e., God) the comparison here is that in Shelley’s novel man himself ill-advisedly becomes the maker. ![]() Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in the early nineteenth century when examples of epigraphs were quite ubiquitous. Examples of Epigraph in Literature Example #1įrom darkness to promote me? - Paradise Lost, X, 743-45 Epigraphs remain relatively popular today, though, as authors find ways to present the main theme or their works in brief through the words of other writers. The tradition of the epigraph was ubiquitous for a time some authors began to create fake quotes to use as epigraphs partly to demonstrate their frustration with the literary canon. This was concurrent with authors’ optimistic and sometimes presumptuous desires to show how their own new works of literature fit into the canon. When reading surged in popularity as a pastime, authors found it necessary to provide a small excerpt from some work in the canon to give readers a small anchor to the literary tradition. Before this time, people who read literature had generally read all of the canon.
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