All throughout high school, I used to wonder how a book was chosen as part of a curriculum. My high school stressed Shakespeare, which is why over the past four years I have read seven Shakespeare plays (and counting). How did my school come to emphasize Shakespeare while my friend’s high school, a specialized public school only half an hour away from mine, made their students read Romeo and Juliet exclusively? That is a question I have yet to answer. Some of the books I studied in a high school classroom setting, however, were chosen for obvious reasons. My high school assigned every freshman to read Safe at Second by Scott Johnson, solely because the author was an English teacher at the school. I’d be shocked to find another SUNY Geneseo student who has read Safe at Second outside of pleasure reading. For the most part, though, the books I studied matched up with other schools. This is why I questioned how these anomaly books were chosen. Even then I didn’t question why.
At least I didn’t until I started taking AP English classes. For both AP English Language and Composition and AP English Literature and Composition, there are writing prompts on the exams where you must chose a book of “literary merit.” Naturally, my classmates and I questioned what constituted as a book of literary merit.
“So I can’t write about Safe at Second?” a student joked, as the teacher of our AP English Literature and Composition class was Scott Johnson. “But we studied it freshman year!”
He smirked and moved onto the next question, where a girl asked if she could write about Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Mr. Johnson said he didn’t see this book as meritorious.
“But I wrote about it last year,” the girl said, referring to our AP English Language and Composition exam. “I got a 5.”
Unless the girl was lying (and for the sake of this argument’s purpose, let’s say she wasn’t), if my teacher were the grader of her exam (which he very well could have; many of my high school’s teachers were asked to grade AP exams), it is safe to say that this girl probably wouldn’t have gotten a 5. But knowing that another teacher from another school said, “Yes, Gone with the Wind is meritorious; this girl wrote a convincing essay and deserves the 5” is mind-boggling to me. I am a girl that likes things set in stone. I don’t like the “maybe”. I like “yes” or “no”.
In Interdisciplinarity by Joe Moran, Moran writes, “Structuralist approaches tend to emphasize ‘intertextuality’, the notion that texts are formulated not through acts of originality by individual authors but through interaction and dialogue with other texts, and so they question the attempt within literary studies to regard certain kinds of authors or texts as more valuable or worthy of study than others” (76). After taking English 203: Reader and Text: Jean Toomer’s Cane and Intertextualities, I couldn’t possibly agree more with this statement. Before this class, I had never heard of intertextuality. I was just a reader who questioned how my school chose their books over others and how AP exam graders determined whether one book was more meritorious than the other. But now I can use intertextuality examples to back up my assertion that there should be no universal consensus that one book is more worthy of a classroom setting than others or that one book is more worthy of being written about than others. I read the Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood in a high school classroom setting for AP English Literature and Composition. Mr. Johnson said, “Any book we read in this class, you can write for the AP exam.” Therefore, the Handmaid’s Tale could be chosen for the AP exam. But would he consider Zulus by Percival Everett of literary merit? Based on a simple Google search on my part, much more comes up for the Handmaid’s Tale than it does for Zulus. If I were to type in “Zulus Percival Everett” in Amazon’s search engine, the first link that comes up is the book, where there is only one new book in stock today, November 11 at 1:09 PM. When I typed in “the Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood” on Amazon, there is no limit on stock and there are 1,455 customer reviewers as opposed to the 0 on Zulus to date. “No,” I’m sure my old English teacher would say (as many more would). “Don’t choose Zulus to write about when the other option is the Handmaid’s Tale. Zulus isn’t as meritorious.” But perhaps my English 203 Doctor would disagree. After all, Doctor McCoy made the decision to include Zulus in her curriculum as my high school made the decision to include the Handmaid’s Tale. So who is right? I want an answer, after all. I don’t like the idea that “maybe both are right” or “depends on the situation.” Through the intertextuality I found in both the Handmaid’s Tale and Zulus, I affirm the structuralist theory that neither is more exemplary than the other because both are in conversation with each other.
To emphasize the intertextuality in both books, one can start without even reading deeply into the text. Zulus starts and returns its plot to a nameless city. According to Theodore Theodore, a man trying to help protagonist Alice Achitophel escape the city when she is wanted by the police, “the city limits are tightly guarded” (Everett 38). Gilead’s secret police force, the Eyes, also keep the citizens of Gilead in line; when Offred tries to escape to Canada with her husband Luke and their daughter, she is caught and separated from the two by the Eyes. Alice does not know what to expect for life outside the city. When finally escaping she admits that she “never dreamed it would be like this outside the city” (Everett 63) and it is, in fact, worse than she imagined. Offred doesn’t know what to expect when Guardian Nick offers her a possible escape. Offred thinks, “Whether this is my end or a new beginning I have no way of knowing” (Atwood 295). Both women don’t have an option; they must accept the offer of escape from rebels because they are wanted by the police, Offred for going to a club named Jezebel’s and Alice for breaking her neighbor’s antenna. Very similar, indeed. The rebels in both books have a means of escaping through motor vehicles, too. The books differ in the problem of sterility. Though both have sterility as a motif, in Zulus all women but Alice are sterilized to end the human race; in the Handmaid’s Tale, Handmaids like Offred are given to upper-class couples to keep what were very low reproduction rates up. Offred and Alice are both women who have the ability to produce children, not as common in both books as it is in today’s day and age (nonexistent in Zulus). One book, trying to save the human race, another trying to end it. But the sterility in both books represents and comments on the past and current subjugation of women by men. While misogyny takes place in Zulus by only having women sterilized and not men, the Handmaid’s Tale takes away everything women have worked hard to get like contraception. Offred and Alice are two of many characters that have been unjustly punished by a dystopian society in the two books. They both, however, can bond over the fact that they have a daughter. Offred has not seen her daughter since she tried to escape to Canada. Alice’s daughter is stolen by the rebels. Both are mothers, looking for their daughters. Their daughter’s fathers are missing, too; Alice looses Kevin Peters twice, once when she enters the rebel camp and again when she reenters the city, just like how Offred hasn’t seen Luke since her attempted escape. The two female antagonists to the protagonists, Lucinda Knotes in Zulus and Serena Joy in the Handmaid’s Tale, have or know where these missing daughters are, too. The anger that fills these mothers over this is insatiable. Offred thinks, “Something chokes in my throat. The bitch, not to tell me, bring me news, any news at all. Not even to let on” (Atwood 206) when she finds out that Serena Joy says she can give Offred a picture of her daughter. Ironically, these two women are in relationships with characters Offred or Alice have thought about or been with sexually. The motif of archives comes up in the books, from the carving Offred sees that reads, “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum” or “Don’t let the bastards grind you down” to the walls Alice reads, including the phrase “MUTATO NOMINE” (Everett 212) meaning “the name having been changed”. Could Offred be trying to tell women like Alice that they shouldn’t let men like Theodore Theodore bring her down? Is Alice trying to tell Handmaids like Offred that they shouldn’t let the men change them, even their name? Offred isn’t even the protagonist’s true name. These dystopian novels have similarities left and right. But so what?
The so what comes when you look into the meaning behind these books, particularly the elimination of things that are taken advantage of in current day. In Zulus, Alice is given cheese, stale crackers, and egg substitute mix packages every week when living in the city, unwanted by the police. Rebels sell fruit and Alice is one of their buyers. She savors every bite of fruit. When Theodore Theodore offers Alice a peach, she realizes she can’t remember how a peach tastes. When she can eat the peach she actually starts to cry, though she is not sure why she cries. Alice thinks, “Was it that this peach, missing from her life until now, meant so much?” (Everett 36). The government, by taking something so seemingly insignificant away from people, has made it larger than life. This occurs in the Handmaid’s Tale. When Offred is finally able to read magazines and books again, Atwood describes reading like “if it were eating it would be the gluttony of the famished; if it were sex it would be a swift furtive stand-up in an alley somewhere” (184). Offred is hungry, just like Alice, only for what has been taken away from her: cigarettes, hand lotion, candy, Scrabble, her family. Taking something away only has short-term positive effects. In the end, people will rebel, whether it is loud and proud aggression such as when Alice “bought a bruised apple and ate while she walked, right out in front of everyone, eating contraband and it felt good” (Everett 232) or Offred having sex with Nick in secret, going against the rules because to her it is “the most incredible benevolence and luck” (Atwood 268). The government has created something more pleasurable than the thing itself; they have given people the ability to feel amazing by breaking rules. Once these protagonists have tasted rebellion, there’s no stopping.
The characters rebel. So what? Sometimes, rebelling doesn’t make them feel as good as the antecedent paragraph. Offred and Alice are aware that something must change; that music shouldn’t be lacking in this world, or that though men can “feel now” (Atwood 210) in regards to sex and marriage through the creation of the Republic of Gilead, this shouldn’t come at the cost of breaking eggs to make an omelette, or making things worse for women to make things better for men. The citizens create underground clubs to go against these rules. In Zulus, Geraldine Rigg brings Alice to a sort of music club. The place is filled with “new light, bright and colorful, and there were the sounds of people talking and laughing and shouting and even music” (Everett 197). There, Alice and Geraldine can eat greasy food like French fries, another contraband. Seems like the perfect form of aggressive rebellion, similarly to Jezebel’s in the Handmaid’s Tale. Offred is snuck into Jezebel’s by the Commander, a founder of the Republic of Gilead and the head of the household Offred works for. Jezebel’s is a place for men like the Commander to meet prostitutes in secret, going against the law some of them helped to create. The Commander dresses Offred in a glittering and theatrical costume to match the prostitutes’ costumes, who are dressed in bright, festive, skimpy clothes. The brightness of costumes matches the brightness of the music club in Zulus. There is a sense of cheerfulness to both places. The women are happy to break rules. While Alice gets to eat the contraband French fries, Offred receives a gin and tonic, something she hasn’t had for years. From the surface, this rebellion is ideal. The Commander explains it to Offred as giving into Nature’s plan. Men have to cheat; they have to have multiple women. Through Jezebel’s, men can have what they naturally want. But these clubs are not the way to go about rebelling. They are fake. The music club is “just the sounding of hollowed out brass and wood” (Everett 197). The music doesn’t have heart and soul to it; it isn’t telling a story like when Kevin Peters would play for Alice. What is rebellion if you aren’t regaining the very cause of rebelling in the first place? The Commander believes he is cheating the system, from bringing Offred to Jezebel’s (and most likely the Handmaid before Offred who hanged herself because of her relationship with the Commander) to bringing Offred up to a room away from his house to have sex outside of the monthly ceremony. But Offred realizes how plastic this truly is. “Fake it, I scream at myself inside my head. You must remember how. Let’s get this over with or you’ll be here all night,” Atwood writes (255) in regards to Offred having sex with the Commander. She must fake the pleasure of having sex. Alice must put on a smile for the music. But both protagonists realize it isn’t the true rebellion. People might think they’re cheating the government, but this isn’t the true reason they go to the clubs. Offred realizes it, saying, “But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning” (Atwood 215). Going to Jezebel’s isn’t just satisfying Nature, as the Commander claims. The clubs give the men and women something to look forward to, something to cling onto. Having that place, as lacking in rebellion as it may be, gives the characters purpose to their lives. They are acting (in both senses; they are faking a part and they are exerting energy), not sitting back and letting the chips fall. Just like how Alice wants to help move medical supplies to give meaning to her life, the people like Geraldine who go to the music club just want to have a purpose like every person in this planet. Because to give up purpose would be to give up, as Offred realizes.
In essence, Zulus by Percival Everett and the Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood are in conversation with each other through intertextuality. Zulus mimics many of the key parts of the Handmaid’s Tale, including literary devices such as setting, motifs, and themes. Because of their clear intertextuality, a Structuralist would say that one couldn’t be deemed as of more literary merit than the other. High schools and graders for any exam should not base their selection of books to be studied or their dealing of good grades based on the wavering idea that one book is more meritable than the other. Have students read seven Shakespeare plays because they fit into the course description, not because it is a Shakespeare play. If all the books of a sophomore class are bildungsromans like Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger or To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, than how does Julius Caesar fit? Though Zulus is not as well known as the Handmaid’s Tale, both are of equal literary merit standards because of intertextuality. If an AP grader were ever to have one essay on the Handmaid’s Tale and one on Zulus, it should be the writing that matters, not the name of the selected book.