Module C: Handmaid's Tale Flashcards
The Handmaid’s Tale when and type
1986 a speculative fiction
In their utopian exteriors, ‘Brave New World’ and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ both represent worlds that
give the initial pretence of offering security in response to increasing dangers.
Upon deeper examination, however, we realise that each author uses their novel as a warning to
“be careful what you wish for”, forcing us to consider the consequences of handing over our civil and political rights for a totalitarian society. In doing so, each composer elicits curiosity within the reader about politics and its influence on social order.
As a result, we feel strong empathy for Offred but also gain insight into her instability and the impact of political regimes on the individual.
Furthermore, this enables Atwood to symbolise the transientness of politics and that contrasting political ideas will always exist within society.
In contrast to Huxley’s omnipresent use of the third person, Atwood uses the first person to depict the state of Gilead through the eyes of Offred, explicitly conveying
the post-modernist notion that everything is a construct and that the possibilities of reinterpretations of issues and events are endless.
The Handmaid’s Tale’ translates the dystopia of ‘Brave New World’ and Huxley’s modernist visions into a postmodernist world,
in doing so providing us with new meaning from the world in which Huxley has created. (“It’s impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was… you can never be exact… there are too many crosscurrents, nuances.”).
Akin to Huxley, in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Atwood hyperbolises
details of Western society to portray a shocking totalitarian regime.
In contrast to ‘Brave New World’s ultramodern oligarchy, Atwood
depicts an oppressive theocracy which lives by extremely conservative values.
This is evident through the alliteration in Offred’s flashback to her previous life through the phrase
“We lived as usual by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”
Through Offred’s remorseful tone and
switching from the first person to the second person, Atwood depicts her concerns for her society in 1970’s North America as people become increasingly desensitised to horrific events portrayed by the media and lost interest in fighting for important political issues.
“We lived as usual by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”
Linguistic repression
only a few privileged individuals may read or write and Handmaid’s are restricted to a limited dialogue that prevents any meaningful conversation.
Only Commander’s are allowed to read the Bible, which Offred refers to in the hyperbolic metaphor
as “an incendiary device: who knows what we’d make of it, if we ever got our hands on it?”.
This linguistic repression is further stressed through the use of the first person,
which enables us to experience the claustrophobia that censorship has on an individual.
Both authors remind us that freedom of speech is essential in
achieving the political discourse required to protect our rights and freedoms in society.
In Huxley and Atwood’s representation of how people can influence and be influenced by politics,
we are forced to reconsider how our own actions, or lack there of, can enhance or limit our freedoms in society.
