“Come now, he says, pressing a little with his hands. I’m interested in your opinion. You’re intelligent enough, you must have an opinion.
About what? I say.
What we’ve done, he says. How things have worked out.
I hold myself very still. I try to empty my mind. I think about the sky, at night, when there’s no moon. I have no opinion, I say.
He sighs, relaxes his hands, but leaves them on my shoulders. He knows what I think alright.
You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, is what he says. We thought we could do better.
Better? I say, in a small voice. How can he think this is better?
Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some.”
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood, p222
The respect shown towards each other at the end was brilliant. Forehead against forehead. Sportsmanship at it’s finest. Nikita Tszyu…
The “Handmaids” costume makes its appearance regularly as a protest against conservative values and repression. Ironically but inevitably the repression now in full swing in America (and recently here in the shape of Covid mandates/fines/police violence) comes from the left.
I put up this comment on Wolfie’s David Lean thread but it’s probably not out of place here.
Bar Beach Swimmer says:
October 13, 2022 at 9:57 pm
Wolfie, I just watched that scene from Dr Zhivago.
Hearing Tom Courtney say: “The private life is dead,” summarises perfectly our own time and the “wrong think” that is now claimed of any adherence to a personal religious belief – see Andrew Thorburn.
When I was at school we were taken to the cinema to see Nicholas and Alexandra. It’s high time that Dr Zhivago is shown to high school students as a foil to, and understanding of, the growing secular totalitarianism all around us
You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.
– George Orwell
“You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs…”
Nor without beating.
So to make our omelette, the beating(s) will continue…
@ BBS:
“It’s high time that Dr Zhivago is shown to high school students as a foil to, and understanding of, the growing secular totalitarianism all around us.”
And THAT is precisely why it will NEVER be shown.
Even in the unlikely event that it were shown, part of the problem with screening that movie is the almost total lack of “background” likely possessed by a modern, youthful” audience.
Those who encountered the book / movie at the time of release, would likely have more than an inkling of the over-arching events portrayed therein.
Not now!
First, they steal your language.
Then they steal your past.
Then they steal your property and remaining liberty.
Then, your life is “worthless” and you become a “useless eater, so your life is taken, because they can.
The real history of the world.
You can’t unscramble eggs either.
yes, Bruce, I’m making a wrong assumption there. The assumption that the students of today know something of 20th century history. When they don’t even know the history of Australia.
Plimer has pointed out the problem with basing policy on ideology rather than fact.
That eyeball scraper is looking pretty good right now. How TF could anyone read that tripe?
The left of politics demands inclusion, tolerence and equality for those who “deserve it” and revenge and spite on those who don’t.
They have no empathy with anyone they disagree with
In the USA, the Democrats are intolerent of non-Democrats.
Will they end up in camps eventually?
Sure, why not!
This is the sort of writing that gets one shortlisted for the Booker?
Roger – at least it wasn’t the Nobel.
Nobel Literature Winner Is a Woke Leftist (12 Oct)
But of course.