Linked through the Slog, I found this. I went in expecting to be quite offended, and was surprised by the wit with which Mr. Hitchens went through his argument. Does it being funny make it any less offensive? Does he have a point? Discuss.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/01/hitchens200701?curren...

Something I had been pondering in class, but didn't really get around to talking about was a comparison between the Bugs of Starship Troopers and the Gethenians. I was considering how we responded very differently, as did the protagonists, to the bugs and the Gethenians and what some of the factors are that go into that.

Although Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is often described as a work of feminist literature there are no heroic, or even admirable female characters. Instead, the cast of female characters serves as an inventory of all the ways a woman can fail in the context of oppression.

We've said a lot already about some pretty powerful issues that can't be ignored in this book. Here, I think I'd like to talk about something that isn't perhaps as critical to understanding the novel's implications for our own real, modern world, at first glance or otherwise. I'm interested in how the novel deal with empathy; as a human characteristic, as a potentially gendered characteristic, its sentimentalization (or lack thereof), and the ways that these understandings of empathy might inform society, dystopic or otherwise.

This is just an entry in response to some of the comments made in class today.