Freedom Flashcards
“There is more than one kind of freedom,
said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and Freedom from.”
“Now you are being given freedom from.
Don’t underrate it.”
AO3 lack of freedom
USSR regimes had severe restrictions of individual liberty and freedom of speech.
AO5 Isaiah Berlin 1969 “Two Concepts of Liberty”
“freedom from” is “negative freedom”- freedom from external influences and “positive freedom” os “freedom to”- have the ability to exercise their free will
AO5 Bloom on Moira
“Offred’s best friend from college, her confidant, and her hero, unafraid of the consequences of speaking and acting against Gilead”
AO2- We see Moira through Offred’s eyes
through flashbacks, she is presented with a free spirited personality
“Purple overalls, one dangle earring,
the gold fingernail she wore to be eccentric”
POODETGFSWTBE AO2
typical colour imagery purple- wealth and royalty gold- excessive of wealth
Moira’s refusal to accept “freedom from” philosophy
Evidenced by her escape attempts, alluding to the exercise of her free will and thus her positive freedom
“I try not to think too much
thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last”
ITNTTTMTCHYCAIITL AO2
the regime goes so far to trample on the desire to think
“it isn’t the running away they’re afraid of… it’s those other escapes
the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge”
IITRATAOITOETOYCOYGACE AO2
even taking away freedom to take ones own life as Offred describes the shattered glass. Yet the regimes believe this is a new freedom, to be protected from vices that lead to the declined birth rate
“Starring at the magazine, as he dangled it before me like fish bait
I wanted it…They suggested rejuvenation…This is what he was holding, without knowing it”
taking advantage of the positive freedoms
that the commander gives her, she exerts her free will
indulge in the temporary
suspension of censorship
“A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere
as long as it stays inside the maze”
We play two games. Larynx, I spell. Valance. Quince. Zygote.
I hold the glossy counters with their smooth edges, finger the letters. The feeling is voluptuous. This is freedom, an eyeblink of it”
WPTGLISVQZIHTGC AO2
She uses the word freedom, as if to say that for an instance she is uncontrolled. In other words, for the moment, she controls language, language does not control her.
Feuer AO5 Freedom
“the choice-between happiness without freedom or freedom without happiness-is presented […] by Atwood’s Aunt Lydia, trainer of handmaids and explicator of the regime’s rationale for its oppression”
