This humorous vignette from Margaret Atwood uses satire to not only highlight the frequent use of stereotypes in children’s stories, but also draw attention to the modern-day obsession with political correctness. A storyteller is humiliated into whittling his twenty-four-word opening sentence down to just one, and then changing it. This illustrates how, taken to extremes, almost anything one says has the potential to offend someone. Atwood’s message is that literature, the performing arts, news reporting and free speech as we know them would be impossible under such constraints. Themes: storytelling, stereotyping, political correctness, freedom of expression.
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