The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

Rebelling against Confinement:
Even within Those Thought to be Closest If one thinks back into their past, they can remember many memories. Within those memories are specific instances when one was told that they could not do something. This might have been for various reasons, but the awareness produced when one hears denial is more than likely still true-to-life. For most a feeling of anger infuriation drives them to do what they were told that they could not do in an attempt to prove that person at fault or to prove they are not in control of one’s actions. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale deals with this exact concept by showing us a world where the government officials, or The Eyes, control every aspect of the community in the Republic

The government’s goal and reason for this use of power and control is to confine the people of Gilead, in order to form what the government believes to be a perfect society. This confining inadvertently ends up making the community and even those closest to The Eyes rebel. In The Handmaids Tail, Offred is a thirty three year old woman living in the Republic of Gilead. “Gilead [has] return[ed] to the Old Testament in a reaction against abortion, sterilization and what they consider to be dangerous kinds of freedom of the modern welfare state” (Sweets & Zeitlinger). The women of Gilead are now forced to play secondary parts to the men in the community, and wear specific colored dresses to represent the part that has been assigned to them. “In other words, the new rulers equate the value of something and someone solely with validity, usefulness, functionality, economic profit” (Sweets & Zeitlinger). Commanders are men who play the role of the head of the house and each one has a wife who wears blue and controls the other women in the household. Marthas wear the color green and are the maids of the households. Handmaids wear the color red and their sole purpose is to give birth to a child, through a ceremony with

“Many of [the] reactions [within the text] posit love as a force subverting Gilead’s power” (Miner). One cannot force someone to ignore their longings and pretend that they are not real. In the end it is these longings and these feelings of love and anger that drive the community into rebellious actions. The Commander longed for his loving relationship back with his wife, but when he could not have this, he allowed Offred to be alone with him, for her to read, for her to talk with him, for her to ask for things, and for him to take her out. He did these things in an attempt to create a relationship with Offred and to glimpse back into his past. Serena Joy falls so deeply into the presser and longing for Offred to give birth to a child for her that she goes against The Eyes and her own husband and asks of Offred to sleep with Nick. All of the Commanders break the rule to create for themselves a club of sorts, from their past, to be able to have somewhere to escape and fall into their lust for women and sex. These three distinct events were each created by a different set of feelings and a longing for something. The strict rules and regulations placed on all of the people in Gilead caused those feelings and longings that grew stronger each day until they could no longer be ignored. When The Eyes used their power to try and confine the people of Gilead to their new ways