OIB exam - revisions and analysis
REVIEWS
BY NEPHELIE CHANTZIS
THE HANDMAID'S TALE
Margaret Atwood
Institutionalized rape, material functions attributed to women, death to homosexuals…In the Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood immerses us in a distanced, dystopian, nightmare setting. Or is it really distanced?
In the 1980s, the Cold War was in full swing. With Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in office declaring open confrontation to the “Evil Empire”, the increasing fear of communist subversion due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the arms race at its peak with the “Star Wars” nuclear bombing plan, uncertainty was sweeping in every corner. In West Berlin, a Canadian writer was working on her soon-to-be most famous novel, experiencing “the wariness, the feeling of being spied on, the silences, the changes of subject…” during her visits to countries behind the “Iron Curtain”. Decreasing birth rates were added on top of the feeling that democracy was threatened. In short, the world seemed more unstable than if aliens were about to bomb the Earth.
When one starts reading “The Handmaid’s Tale”, one is invaded by a feeling of unease. Everything seems surreal: the strict way with which handmaids have to communicate, the indoctrination that pushes women out of their humanity when screaming “Her fault!” to Janine referring to her gang rape, the constant surveillance of the “Eyes”. The reader feels Offred’s confinement in her room, with enclosed vision as symbolised by her wings, through the first person narrative and the present tense. The cloth restrictions, the horrifying Wall, the Ceremony, all seem to allude to a distant, impossible scenario that is opposed to “our” freedom. Third wave feminists were already fighting for intersectionalism in the 1980s and the Gilead’s Regime seems to be a return to the Middle Ages, with women seen as mere instruments for reproduction. Additionally, how could one imagine the possibility of removing Black people from their houses and relocating them, as “Children of Ham”, while 20 years had already passed since the civil rights movement? The first thing that one notices is the undeniable contrast with our liberal and progressive societies.
But then, Margaret Atwood slowly closes the gap between these two seemingly separate worlds. The novel is filled with details that have resonances in our actual societies. From the recurrent retrospections to Offred’s past life as a young girl with her friend Moira smoking “a cigarette”, to the allusions to Elvis Presley’s music, “I feel so lonely baby”, Offred bridges the two parallel time dimensions that she explores, past and future. Constant references to the Bible, a violent coup d’etat reminding those in Latin America or the Middle East, book burnings putting the traumas from World War Two back to the surface, no element of that totalitarian Republic is fictional: Atwood confesses, “if I was to create an imaginary garden, I wanted the toads in it to be real”. The initial feeling of confusion and bewilderment gradually dissipates, the setting seems no longer unfamiliar. The symbol of the palimpsest captures that growing awareness perfectly: the gymnasium has been turned into an indoctrination center, Harvard University has been erased in favour of the Commander’s house, a life in a democratic and multicultural country - with weaknesses nonetheless – has been replaced by a totalitarian regime. And below the new “text” of the palimpsest, the previous inscriptions of the parchment paper are still visible. By reminding us of the past that was erased, these “previous inscriptions” echo Atwood’s sentence that the “established order could disappear overnight”.
And the more these familiar elements increase in number, the more they seem like a warning to the reader…
A warning to the average people sitting in front of the TV, speaking with contempt for anyone who might be trying to close the world’s open wounds, thinking nothing like that could happen to them. Margaret Atwood, just like George Orwell did 40 years before her, tried to warn for the imminent threats to democracy through the “worse-case scenario”.
But the novelist goes beyond this, leaving space for interpretation at the end. Indeed, the ending re-questions everything the reader seems to know about the novel. Offred had already confessed that she “ tried to put some good things in as well. Flowers, for instance.” But when Dr. Piexioto casts doubt upon her entire testimony, confusion is an understandable reaction. So, what is Atwood trying to say? Why does she makes us distrust Offred?
I would argue that discrediting her narrator is not Atwood’s aim but her mean. By casting doubt upon Offred’s truthfulness, Dr. Pieixioto - the typical figure of the modern intellectual - diminishes the Gilead’s crimes, just like rape victims are often dismissed as attention-seekers. The Historical Notes therefore serve to suggest that even after the most horrible atrocities, the distrusting nature of some men will try to repress, suppress, eliminate these traumatic experiences: “it couldn’t have been that bad!”. Atwood warns: not only can this level of atrocities become “ordinary”, but crimes against humanity could also be repeated… history repeats itself if no significant change is carried out.
The Handmaids Tale
By VALENTINE and ROZET
The Handmaids Tale is a dystopian novel by the Canadian author Margaret Atwood. The book is set in New England, where Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian state that has replaced the United States of America. Under this new regime, women are assigned to various classes such as the Wives of the Commanders, the Marthas or the Handmaids that have to bear children for the Commanders and their Wives who have trouble conceiving. Offred describes the events of her daily life, a life where she is deprived of any kind of freedom, and often slips into flashbacks, allowing the reader to reconstruct the events of her life before the creation Gilead. We gradually learn that she was married to a man named Luke and that they had a daughter and eventually find out the reasons of the creation of the Republic of Gilead.
In her novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood describes some major contemporary themes through a dystopian world. She explores the position of women in society, both with regards to how their minds are viewed and how their bodies are perceived. In her world, women are not allowed to read, write or think, and their bodies are only used as tools of reproduction or to serve the men. While women today are far from the women the novel, it does allow us to reflect on their position in our society. She also presents how easy the rise of a totalitarian regime was with a complacent and apathic society that did not do much to stop it at its beginnings, which is an interesting perspective to apply to today’s world.
What mostly struck me about this novel is the realism, especially in the flashbacks. The characters seemed to live in a world similar to ours, with jobs, schools, relationships, equal rights between men and women etc. In the novel, the rise of the totalitarian regime was linked to the digitalisation of the economy, digitalisation which is happening in our world as well. Those small but strong links to our ‘real life’ made me feel anxious about how such a dystopia easily managed to settle in a world like ours, which only pushed me towards wanting to read more about it.Something else that caught my attention is the striking contrast between the people’s lives before and after the creation of Gilead. Atwood focuses a lot in opposing Offred’s thoughts and habits in the past and the present, which we can see for instance in the beginning of the book when she faces the Japanese tourists. She is “fascinated, but also repelled”, “they seemed undressed,” she comments. What strikes me the most about it, is how someone’s mentality and beliefs can change so fast and in such a radical way when their way of life is altered from one day to the another. What also struck me, is how refined the vocabulary used by Margaret Atwood is. The book is full of literary devices used by the author to enrich and refine the language she employs, and I believe that this plays a very important role on how the book is pleasant to read.
It is a novel that I would recommend without hesitation. The clear vocabulary, the beautifully written sentences and the contemporary language led me to genuinely enjoy reading this book. It has an interesting plot, well-developed characters with backstories and realistic emotions. This novel allows the reader to view the world and the society in which they live in in a different way while still finding the plot of the book interesting and entertaining. Offred’s daily life and lack of freedom led me to interrogate the position and role of women in our society and to question how far the restrictions imposed by this totalitarian regime apply to our world. The messages Atwood passes through her story regarding the position of women, religious extremism, totalitarianism to name a few are thereforethought-provoking and make me want to read the book again just to understand them better.