The Republic of Gilead’s power comes from a violent control of its citizen’s actions. Gilead, replacing the Constitution with “the overweening patriarchal principles of Genesis,” uses force and intimidation to inspire people’s natural tendency of self-preservation and uses it to control them (Stimpson 764). They enforce compliance through fear and create a society of suspicion and anxiety. The government’s unadulterated control is evident in the atmosphere of Gilead. The people of Gilead are censored, their actions, emotions, and knowledge is not under their management. Nothing belongs to them anymore; they hold government-approved conversations, go on government sanctioned shopping trips, and are even told what they are supposed to believe. Gilead uses a sort of manipulative brainwashing to generate conformity. They use intimidation as their weapon of choice and defend their actions with the Bible. An ingenious strategy for verbal defense because anyone who dares to stand against them stands against the Bible and can branded a heretic. Gilead does not do these things to be unreasonable and unjust; they believe through a society built with a rigid, religious structure they can control sin and create a better world. However, they have rewritten the Bible and taken it so out of context to create this society they have doomed it from the start. They trapped their citizens in a world of pre-determined choices, which confines them within themselves. Gilead makes no direct threats to its people but it implies its threats through prominent displays of its power such as the “imposing display of security forces, the omnipresence of ‘the eye,’ public executions, the threat of banishment to the colonies,” and the bodies hung on hooks on t...
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...o make a real difference in the sure footing of Gilead. In this bleak fact is the real genius of Gilead. The Republic’s think tank planned its rise to power with impressive detail. They have, effectively, created a reality in which opposition is futile.
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986. Print.
Kingston, Paul. "The Joyless Republic of Gilead: Reflections of a Political Scientist on the Operatic Production of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale." (2006): n. pag. Rpt. in University of Toronto Quarterly. 3rd ed. Vol. 75. Toronto: University of Toronto, n.d. 833-34. Print.
Millman, China. Berkow, Jordan ed. "The Handmaid's Tale Glossary". GradeSaver, 22 August 2006 Web. 10 November 2013.
Stimpson, Catharine R. "Atwood Woman." The Nation 31 May 1986: n. pag. Rpt. in Books & The Arts. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 764-65. Print.
Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale is a story heavily influenced by the Bible and has many biblical themes that are used to prove Atwood’s belief in balance. The novel is set in the Republic of Gilead which was formerly the United States. The story is told through the perspective of a handmaid named Offred and begins when she is placed at her third assignment as a housemaid. Offred describes her society as a fundamentalist theocracy where the Christian God is seen as the divine Ruler over the Republic of Gilead. Atwood is often thought of as a feminist writer but through this novel her writing is not completely feminist nor patriarchal but something in the middle. Atwood is also someone who described herself as a “strict agnostic”
Forming everyday life in different ways. Majority of all power in Gilead has been passed to the men and
Thesis: In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood characterizes Handmaids, as women with expectations to obey the society’s hierarchy, as reproducers, symbolizing how inferior the Handmaid class is to others within Gilead; the class marginalization of Handmaids reveals the use of hierarchical control exerted to eliminate societal flaws among citizens.
Staels, Hilde. “Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale: Resistance Through Narrating.”Critical Insights (227-245) From English Studies 76.5 (1995): 455-464. Web. 10 Apr. 2014.
A new society is created by a group of people who strengthen and maintain their power by any means necessary including torture and death. Margaret Atwood's book, A Handmaid's Tale, can be compared to the morning after a bad fight within an abusive relationship. Being surrounded by rules that must be obeyed because of being afraid of the torture that will be received. There are no other choices because there is control over what is done, who you see and talk to, and has taken you far away from your family. You have no money or way out. The new republic of Gilead takes it laws to an even higher level because these laws are said to be of God and by disobeying them you are disobeying him. People are already likely to do anything for their God especially when they live in fear of punishment or death. The republic of Gilead is created and maintains its power structure through the use of religion, laws that isolate people from communication to one another and their families, and the fear of punishment for disobeying the law.
After reading the Handmaid's Tale, I felt that Societal Complacency was the most critical aspect to the success of the Gilead Society. The Republic of Gilead is a run by a strict Old Testament religious doctrine. This government does not tolerate anyone who does not conform, it is run mostly by fear. Fear of death or the wall or being sent to radioactive colonies. This new government is cruel towards women, it robbed them of their humanity under the guise of protecting them. This new republic has forced women to give up jobs, forbidden them from reading, they control or regulate sexual activity as well as reproduction and birth, they have also prohibited or limited speech between women and even renamed women so that it fits in with a more biblical society. The Governments goal is to turn women into dumb subservient slaves dependent on men. The Republic of Gilead is based on "traditional values" with the households being strictly patriarchal. The sexes are strictly divided in this book both men and women have strict protocol they must follow. Both men and women are separated by class and social status defined by the color they wear.
Many texts that were published from different authors have introduced topics that can be related in today’s society, but Margaret Atwood’s creation called, “The Handmaid’s Tale”, gives voice to the thoughts and revolves around the narrator Offred, a woman whose rights have been deprived due to political issues. However, the information shared by Offred to the reader to the text is not reliable for the reason that she only touches upon her own perspective. Through the text, Atwood depicted what the United States of America would be in the future based on the actions of humanity during 1980’s. The text is set up in an androcentric and totalitarian country called Gilead, where the government attempts to create a utopian society. Thus, in order to attain this society, the authorities generated their legislation from the teachings of the Holy Bible in an attempt to control humanity. The governing
The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel in which Atwood creates a world which seems absurd and near impossible. Women being kept in slavery only to create babies, cult like religious control over the population, and the deportation of an entire race, these things all seem like fiction. However Atwood's novel is closer to fact than fiction; all the events which take place in the story have a base in the real world as well as a historical precedent. Atwood establishes the world of Gilead on historical events as well as the social and political trends which were taking place during her life time in the 1980's. Atwood shows her audience through political and historical reference that Gilead was and is closer than most people realize.
The Handmaid’s Tale (Contemporary Classics). Journals Bertens, H. (2001) Literary Theory: The Basics, The Politics of Class: Marxism. Abingdon, Routledge. Sourced in AQA Critical Anthology LITB4/PM Issued September 2008.
Callaway, Alanna A., "Woman disunited ; Margaret Atwood's The handmaid's tale as a critique of feminism" (2008). Master's theses. Paper 3505. http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/3505
In Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaids Tale’, we hear a transcribed account of one womans posting ‘Offred’ in the Republic of Gilead. A society based around Biblical philosophies as a way to validate inhumane state practises. In a society of declining birth rates, fertile women are chosen to become Handmaids, walking incubators, whose role in life is to reproduce for barren wives of commanders. Older women, gay men, and barren Handmaids are sent to the colonies to clean toxic waste.
Neuman, Shirley. "'Just A Backlash': Margaret Atwood, Feminism, And "The Handmaid's Tale.." University Of Toronto Quarterly 75.3 (2006): 857-868. Academic Search Elite. Web. 24 Apr. 2014.
The Handmaid's Tale presents an extreme example of sexism and misogyny by featuring the complete objectification of women in the society of Gilead. Yet by also highlighting the mistreatment of women in the cultures that precede and follow the Gileadean era, Margaret Atwood is suggesting that sexism and misogyny are deeply embedded in any society and that serious and deliberate attention must be given to these forms of discrimination in order to eliminate them.
Unmistakably, fertility and motherhood are associated together, yet Gilead seems to detract them from each other, just like they dismember the bodies of all their citizens. The fact that they make women believe that they are ‘powerful’ because they are fertile is what keeps them from escaping from Gilead.
Miner, Madonne. ""Trust Me": Reading the Romance Plot in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale." Twentieth Century Literature (1991): 149.