The Disposable People In The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

The threat issued against The Howard University community is another evidence of the discrimination that exists in our community. The final statement "After all, it's not murder if they're black" supports the point that Claudia Rankine uses in her essay "The Condition of Black Life is One of Mourning" saying that Dead Blacks are a part of normal life here. In that essay, she provides several cases of dead blacks to support the argument that the lives of Black people do not matter for Whites. The recent threat against Howard University Community is another proof for black community of our reality; a reality where blacks are seen as an inferior class, as persons who should not have rights.Claudia Rankine states all these points to support her

He sees himself far beyond his peers, and continues to maintain this pace, believing himself to have mastered this passion, or to merely have the physical endowments for it. Before he has passed the sixth bend, however, his lack of form immediately shatters, he drags himself in exhaustion. Once he sees the crowd he passed overtake him and jog out of sight, only then has he realized the necessity of restraint, of sobriety, of symmetry, and, above all, of form.

In Gilead, women are treated like objects and all of their rights are taken away from them. They cannot vote, hold property or jobs, read, or do anything else that might cause them to become rebellious or independent, and undermine the men, or the state. Even the shops where the handmaids go to buy food do not have names on for them to read, just pictures. The only thing important about a woman now is her ovaries and her womb, as they are reduced to just their fertility.

This place disfigures the whole concept of everything Gilead has built, allowing the men in order, the Commanders, to abandon their duties for “a little excitement,” (Atwood 276) and letting the group of people there commit everything forbidden in Gilead, such as sexual freedom, including Gender Treachery, and even reading. The spoiled nature of this place displays the importance of the freedom of emotion. This demonstrates that since the society considers such a place that denatures all of its values to be necessary solely due to the unforeseeable nature of human emotion and its lengths, the society isn’t so perfect after all. There will always be a harbinger of chaos present in even the most structured societies. Similarly, Orwell’s 1984 also has a place of escape: the place where the Proles live; however in contrast to The Handmaid’s Tale, this society can’t do anything about it.

There is also the "threat of the colonies" which always has to be contended with by all mischievous people in Gilead. The colonies are contaminated areas containing nuclear waste from numerable nuclear disasters and oil spills during the eighties.

In Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale she explores the concept of a not-so-distant future where toxic chemicals and abuses to the body have left many men and women alike sterile. The main character, Offred, gives the reader a first person account about her submissive life as a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. A republic that was formed after a coup against the U.S. government. She and her fellow handmaids are fertile women that the commanders of Gilead ‘enslave’ to ensure their power and to repopulate their ‘society’. While the laws that govern the people of Gilead seem outlandish and oppressive, they are merely

The Gilead regime uses language, particularly Biblical language to solidify its power. Language has a strong influence in moulding how people think, and it is fully abused by the rulers of Gilead, for example, the phrase, ‘’give me children or else I die.’’ (pg. 99 ) gave the republic of Gilead the idea to use handmaids to bear children for barren wives. Bible readings and prayers before the ceremony, Is another example the regime justifies its actions and the role of the handmaid, to disguise what is actually taking place, which is the exploitation and abuse of women.

Gilead is viewed horribly for the way Handmaid's are treated by readers but what reader don't understand is that how the Handmaid's are treated is also how people are treated in real society. This quote not only reveals how important individuality is to people, and how without it people feel lost and alone but also that Gilead is not that different from the real

Within the totalitarian society created by Margaret Atwood in the Handmaid’s Tale, there are many people and regimes centred around and reliant on the manipulation of power. The laws that are in place in the republic of Gilead are designed and implemented so as to control and restrict the rights and freedom of its inhabitants.

First of all, Atwood illustrates how the women of Gilead are discriminated against by being enslaved and stripped of their basic right and any commodity. After the United States fell, The Republic of Gilead was created in response to the crisis caused by the decreasing birthrates, the state’s core foundation, with its strong religious scrutiny and rigid political system,

To dehumanize someone is to strip them of everything that makes them human, all their good qualities, all their basic rights, everything that can label them an individual. Similarly, in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the women in the Republic of Gilead are degraded in such a way that they are stripped of their previous selves. Women in Gilead are outfitted by their functions, forced to have sex and they, especially handmaids, are used as tools. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood utilizes motifs to further dehumanize the women of Gilead.

In the “Fall of the House of Usher” the unknown narrator goes to his friend’s house. His friend’s name is Roderick and he has a sister named Madeline. When he sees the house he realizes the atmosphere of the house is kinda depressing and dark; he notices one crack on the house. Roderick and Madeline are the only two Usher’s left; they seem to be the only hope for the “Usher’s” family name to continue. The narrator describes the house as “An atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn — a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.

Interestingly, Gilead does not have an equivalent term for men, there is no such thing as “Unman”. Perhaps this could be attributed to Gilead’s is a cult of mother worship in a time of uncontrollable productiveness? Like the Kingdom of God, the Republic of Gilead is both now and not yet. America has never forced fertile women to bear children for infertile ones, but Trump’s inappropriate antic presidency has given cover to the sort of blatant misogyny many thoughts consigned to the past. In this place, all women are being anticipated to aspire to motherhood as their greatest, indeed their only goal. So, the worst thing you can call a woman is not a woman, an Unwoman. Why is this, you tell a woman who not only do some certain feminists argue about how women have the superior value and how they build a superior society. What does this say about the value of men in Gilead? All these men were being expected to obey their ruler unquestioningly. Though they have greater access to knowledge the women, their freedom is severely limited. The government controls almost all the media only broadcasting religious and propaganda programs to have been news. Materials like books, magazines, CDs, etc.

The laws of Gilead dehumanizes women and takes away their rights as citizens to society. Gilead wasn’t always like that until the revolution overcame the town and took away women's rights. “In Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, women are totally under the control of male members of the patriarchal society; she describes a patriarchal society and reflects the political ideology in America of that time.” Women are downgraded without any authority and control by men. “Women are like birds that are kept in cages to stop them from flying. And the authorities make women believe that this society is very secure for them and they are protected in this way of living. They also make women believe that the new way is a better freedom and God will save them if they follow.” They are taking the laws made by Gilead and comparing

With these changes to society, members often felt bounded by Gilead and the ability to control one’s thoughts appears impossible, as Aunt Lydia tells Offred, “The Republic of Gilead, said Aunt Lydia, knows no bounds. Gilead is within you” (Atwood 23). It appears that Aunt Lydia believes that Gilead is an internal part of each individual and therefore, it is always helping to ‘shape’ one’s thoughts and actions. Gilead’s justification of why women don’t need an education is that since a woman’s purpose in society is to bear children and raise them, they no longer require an education to perform such duties. The male population of Gilead did not lose the same rights that the women lost, however, males still have restricted freedom and restricted access to materials (books, magazines, etc). The restrictions placed on women’s and men’s lives in Gilead appear to match a characteristic of a dystopia. Since men and women don’t receive the same education in Gilead due to the restrictions on freedom, it would be improper to consider Gilead a utopia.