AO4 Flashcards
George Orwell - 1984
How is ‘big brother is watching you’ similar to A Handmaid’s Tale?
In The Handmaid’s Tale the ‘Eye’ is a member of the secret police, in both dystopian worlds surveillance by the authorities is prevalent.
George Orwell - 1984
What do both novels warn about?
The dangers of propaganda and censorship, and Atwood pays attention to the abuses of language in Gilead (biblical neologisms), Orwell’s Newspeak reconstruct the way people think about the world
George Orwell - 1984
How is the protagonist opposite to Offred?
He is indoctrinated and comes to love his oppressor Big Brother, whereas Offred refuses and tells her narrative of resistance (Gilead and all of its citizens/leaders remember the prior capitalist era and its culture; this arguably prevents total indoctrination); but in 1984 the citizens have no recollection of the past
George Orwell - 1984
How do the films compare to the videos shown at the ‘Red Centre’?
1984 shows films to stir up anger, indoctrinate people and rewrite history, this is paralleled through the videos at the ‘Red Centre’
The Second Sex - Simone de Beauvoir
‘One is not born, but rather becomes a woman’ - how is this seen in A Handmaid’s Tale?
In Gilead gender is a process of socialisation from Gilead’s indoctrinations; Offred’s final words of Chapter 12 are ‘What I must present is a made thing, not something born’
A Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
How does the letter ‘A’ on the dress correlate to the clothes the Handmaid’s have to wear?
The Handmaid’s red dress code mirrors that of ‘The Scarlet Letter’s’ identification of women who are not pure, as Hester Prynne is forced to wear a red letter ‘A’ to identify her as an adulteress, in Puritan Boston.
Karl Marx
How does religion work in AHMT and what did Marx say?
He said that religion was ‘the opium of the people’, keeping the proletariat blind, in THMT religion is used as a means of controlling the masses
