07.23.2010
Eng 102/ Essay #3/ The Handmaid's Tale
The Handmaid's Tale
Every decision is crucial. Every decision predicts your future and well being. Decisions you don’t want to make are forced upon you with none of the outcomes you desire. Can we even fathom what it would be like to have these thoughts on your mind all hours of the day? We live in a free country where totalitarianism thought control does not exist. We live in an easy world. Our every day decisions consist of what to wear for the day, depending on the weather, or what to make for dinner. Some of us make more decisions than others, but none of us are making these decisions with life or death consequences in mind every single time. In The Handmaid’s Tale by Margret Atwood these are the types of decisions required every day. To sleep or not to sleep with your doctor, with death being a possible outcome on both sides of the spectrum; what would you do?
Totalitarianism thought control in this novel is shown in the women having no control, not even of their thoughts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism. The government has completely taken control of everything, and of all the women. They not only set down laws for them to follow but have all the females in custody and have even decided to sterilize all but one out of a hundred women. This novel also showed how the government corrupted them into believing that they way they were living was the morally correct way to live. They corrupted their mains and made them believe that they were doing this because they wanted to, not because they were being forced to.
One way that Gilead has this power over them was because of the way they treated them. They were called Handmaids because they did not want them to be called anything of worth or value. Upon looking up the definition of a Handmaid, it further backed up my thoughts on this. " 1. A woman attendant or servant, (FreeDictionary). http://www.thefreedictionary.com/handmaid. By calling them this, it degrades them and makes them feel they are of less worth. It is their method of corrupting or brainwashing them. Same with everyone else in the book that have just been given names that they are to call one another. This is also especially true in the calling of the babies as "unbabies". http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:unbaby&sa=X&ei=j71STM_HNYn0swPj7o3RBQ&ved=0CBIQkAE "the one-in-four child born deformed, 'with a pinhead or a snout like a dog's or two bodies, or a hole in its heart or no arms, or webbed hands and feet. ... " (Google). Below is an article online that informs us on the education of psychology on name-calling.
http://books.google.com/books?id=sILajOhJpOsC&pg=PT397&lpg=PT397&dq=psychology+calling+people+names&source=bl&ots=yE168T0rwf&sig=ZES13wETYG74fegSznWFyW2tezM&hl=en&ei=bh5STMblG8WcnAfmrcChAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CDAQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=true.
Wouldn't you like to know what Gilead was thinking? According to a group corner online... "You would be much more likely to say, "I have the word from God and this is the way we should run things." That probably would have more of a chance of working, and in fact there are a number of movements in the States saying just that, and getting lots of dollars and influence" (BooksAtRandom). I think we can all agree this is true, but the main focus should be on the people and their feelings, not what you can turn their thoughts into. This is what forces them to make such tough decisions day to day. People still believe that brain washing is going on everywhere, and still everyday. http://baheyeldin.com/politics/how-empires-brainwash-their-citizens-justifying-aggressive-foreign-policies.html.
Another method that fools these poor women is forcing them to make terrible decisions because the outcome to everything is torture or death. The decision that I referred previously, regarding sleeping with the doctor is in chapter eleven. This is when Offred goes to the doctor to find out whether or not she is pregnant. She is not pregnant and the doctor informs her that many of the Commanders are too old or sterile, and cannot get women pregnant. He tells her that the men that take the role of the Commanders are not tested in any way as the women are to find out if they can have children. Upon telling her this information, the doctor tells her that he would be happy to help, and that he can get her pregnant. He tells her that no one will find out. She is smart and declines his offer. This is a decision that was difficult to make. The reason this was such a tough decision is because if she does not get pregnant, there is a good chance that they will kill her, or send her back into the terrible living conditions that she was in before. At this point in to novel she does not have another plan in getting pregnant by anyone else.
After declining this offer by the doctor, she is offered another opportunity to get pregnant when Serena offers to take her to see Nick so that he may get her pregnant. She also knows that her husband is sterile, and what has happened to the handmaids in the past that were 'not able to get pregnant'. When she accepts this offer, it shows there is a big difference in the trust there. It is a very good thing that she did not say yes.
Before making this decision you would have to weigh the outcomes, and decide what would be less likely to end in your death. If Offred were to have slept with the doctor she would be hung if anyone found out. Because of this, the doctor was likely to be the one to let the secret out, due to the fact he could use it as blackmail at any point he desired if you ended up pregnant. On the other hand, the whole point is to fulfill your purpose; you must get pregnant and this could be your only way to do so. The doctor even told Offred that he had done this several times before. By not making the decision to sleep with the doctor, she was right in doing so. She did not know this at the time, but I imagine that the thought of this was just too much to bare.
A similar scenario that Offred was faced with in this novel was when Serena Joy offers to help her get pregnant with Nick, and for her own reasons, she decides to take this offer up. This was a risky decision to make because of her lack of trust in Serena. No one in her shoes would have trusted Serena, but it was obviously the best decision to say yes. This decision to say yes was probably mostly due to her interest in Nick. Still this opportunity can result in her heath no matter which decision she makes. If they catch her sleeping with Nick, she can get hung, and same if she cannot get pregnant. Since she does not know Nick that well at this point in the story, I think it was just that she was smart not to trust the doctor.
The reason her thoughts are not controlled as all the other girls, or not to that extent I should say is because she is smarter than that. She shows us this earlier in the story, and how she copes with all this as it comes to her. "I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off" (Atwood 39).
This is the smartest way to think. If she tells herself it is just a story, and that she is in control of it then it cannot effect her thought process. No story we tell that we know is not real will affect the way we think about things, although it would be difficult when the story s going on day after day. This is the whole purpose in it though. It is a little like when we watch movies and know it is not real, but we would still struggle reminding ourselves that it is not our real life if it was constant. The difference is that she is telling herself that she is in control. This is obviously not what Gilead wants these girls to think, but it is her way of rebellion against them. She will not sit back and be quiet like the other girls she sees, she will speak out loud, and tell her story.
I don't know how I would deal with all of this, or if I would be able to just tell myself it is a story. This was Offred's way of dealing with this though, and apparently it worked out in her favor. She made the right choices at the right time, and did not let Gilead corrupt her mind into what they wanted. She stood out, she was not brainwashed, and in the end, it paid off.
Work Cited
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale: A Novel. 1st Anchor Books ed. New York: Anchor, 1998. Print.
"Books@Random | The Handmaid's Tale: Readers' Group Companion." Random House - Bringing you the best in fiction, nonfiction, and children's books.. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 July 2010.
"handmaid." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. 2003. Houghton Mifflin Company 28 Jul. 2010 http://www.thefreedictionary.com/handmaid.
"define:unbaby - Google Search." Google. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 July 2010.
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