Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Women’s Bodies as Political Instruments
Because Gilead was formed in response to the crisis caused by dramatically decreased birthrates, the state’s entire structure, with its religious trappings and rigid political hierarchy, is built around a single goal: control of reproduction. The state tackles the problem head-on by assuming complete control of women’s bodies through their political subjugation. Women cannot vote, hold property or jobs, read, or do anything else that might allow them to become subversive or independent and thereby undermine their husbands or the state.
Despite all of Gilead’s pro-women rhetoric, such subjugation creates a society in which women are treated as subhuman. They are reduced to their fertility, treated as nothing more than a set of ovaries and a womb. In one of the novel’s key scenes, Offred lies in the bath and reflects that, before Gilead, she considered her body an instrument of her desires; now, she is just a mound of flesh surrounding a womb that must be filled in order to make her useful. Gilead seeks to deprive women of their individuality in order to make them docile carriers of the next generation.

Language as a Tool of Power
Gilead creates an official vocabulary that ignores and warps reality in order to serve the needs of the new society’s elite. Having made it illegal for women to hold jobs, Gilead creates a system of titles. Whereas men are defined by their military rank, women are defined solely by their gender roles as Wives, Handmaids, or Marthas. Stripping them of permanent individual names strips them of their individuality, or tries to. Feminists and deformed babies are treated as subhuman, denoted by the terms “Unwomen” and “Unbabies.” Blacks and Jews are defined by biblical terms (“Children of Ham” and “Sons of Jacob,” respectively) that set them apart from the rest of society, making their persecution easier. There are prescribed greetings for personal encounters, and to fail to offer the correct greetings is to fall under suspicion of disloyalty. Specially created terms define the rituals of Gilead, such as “Prayvaganzas,” “Salvagings,” and “Particicutions.” Dystopian novels about the dangers of totalitarian society frequently explore the connection between a state’s repression of its subjects and its perversion of language (“Newspeak” in George Orwell’s 1984 is the most famous example), and The Handmaid’s Tale carries on this tradition. Gilead maintains its control over women’s bodies by maintaining control over names.

The Causes of Complacency
In a totalitarian state, Atwood suggests, people will endure oppression willingly as long as they receive some slight amount of power or freedom. Offred remembers her mother saying that it is “truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.” Offred’s complacency after she begins her relationship with Nick shows the truth of this insight. Her situation restricts her horribly compared to the freedom her former life allowed, but her relationship with Nick allows her to reclaim the tiniest fragment of her former existence. The physical affection and companionship become compensation that make the restrictions almost bearable. Offred seems suddenly so content that she does not say yes when Ofglen asks her to gather information about the Commander.
Women in general support Gilead’s existence by willingly participating in it, serving as agents of the totalitarian state. While a woman like Serena Joy has no power in the world of men, she exercises authority within her own household and seems to delight in her tyranny over Offred. She jealously guards what little power she has and wields it eagerly. In a similar way, the women known as Aunts, especially Aunt Lydia, act as willing agents of the Gileadean state. They indoctrinate other women into the ruling ideology, keep a close eye out for rebellion, and generally serve the same function for Gilead that the Jewish police did under Nazi rule.
Atwood’s message is bleak. At the same time as she condemns Offred, Serena Joy, the Aunts, and even Moira for their complacency, she suggests that even if those women mustered strength and stopped complying, they would likely fail to make a difference. In Gilead the tiny rebellions of resistances do not necessarily matter. In the end, Offred escapes because of luck rather than resistance.

Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Rape and Sexual Violence
Sexual violence, particularly against women, pervades The Handmaid’s Tale. The prevalence of rape and pornography in the pre-Gilead world justified to the founders their establishment of the new order. The Commander and the Aunts claim that women are better protected in Gilead, that they are treated with respect and kept safe from violence. Certainly, the official penalty for rape is terrible: in one scene, the Handmaids tear apart with their bare hands a supposed rapist (actually a member of the resistance). Yet, while Gilead claims to suppress sexual violence, it actually institutionalizes it, as we see at Jezebel’s, the club that provides the Commanders with a ready stable of prostitutes to service the male elite. Most important, sexual violence is apparent in the central institution of the novel, the Ceremony, which compels Handmaids to have sex with their Commanders.

Religious Terms Used for Political Purposes
Gilead is a theocracy—a government in which there is no separation between state and religion—and its official vocabulary incorporates religious terminology and biblical references. Domestic servants are called “Marthas” in reference to a domestic character in the New Testament; the local police are “Guardians of the Faith”; soldiers are “Angels”; and the Commanders are officially “Commanders of the Faithful.” All the stores have biblical names: Loaves and Fishes, All Flesh, Milk and Honey. Even the automobiles have biblical names like Behemoth, Whirlwind, and Chariot. Using religious terminology to describe people, ranks, and businesses whitewashes political skullduggery in pious language. It provides an ever-present reminder that the founders of Gilead insist they act on the authority of the Bible itself. Politics and religion sleep in the same bed in Gilead, where the slogan “God is a National Resource” predominates.
Similarities between Reactionary and Feminist Ideologies
Although The Handmaid’s Tale offers a specifically feminist critique of the reactionary attitudes toward women that hold sway in Gilead, Atwood occasionally draws similarities between the architects of Gilead and radical feminists such as Offred’s mother. Both groups claim to protect women from sexual violence, and both show themselves willing to restrict free speech in order to accomplish this goal. Offred recalls a scene in which her mother and other feminists burn porn magazines. Like the founders of Gilead, these feminists ban some expressions of sexuality. Gilead also uses the feminist rhetoric of female solidarity and “sisterhood” to its own advantage. These points of similarity imply the existence of a dark side of feminist rhetoric. Despite Atwood’s gentle criticism of the feminist left, her real target is the religious right.

Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Cambridge, Massachusetts
The center of Gilead’s power, where Offred lives, is never explicitly identified, but a number of clues mark it as the town of Cambridge. Cambridge, its neighboring city of Boston, and Massachusetts as a whole were centers for America’s first religious and intolerant society—the Puritan New England of the seventeenth century. Atwood reminds us of this history with the ancient Puritan church that Offred and Ofglen visit early in the
novel, which Gilead has turned into a museum. The choice of Cambridge as a setting symbolizes the direct link between the Puritans and their spiritual heirs in Gilead. Both groups dealt harshly with religious, sexual, or political deviation.

Harvard University
Gilead has transformed Harvard’s buildings into a detention center run by the Eyes, Gilead’s secret police. Bodies of executed dissidents hang from the Wall that runs around the college, and Salvagings (mass executions) take place in Harvard Yard, on the steps of the library. Harvard becomes a symbol of the inverted world that Gilead has created: a place that was founded to pursue knowledge and truth becomes a seat of oppression, torture, and the denial of every principle for which a university is supposed to stand.

The Handmaids’ Red Habits
The red color of the costumes worn by the Handmaids symbolizes fertility, which is the caste’s primary function. Red suggests the blood of the menstrual cycle and of childbirth. At the same time, however, red is also a traditional marker of sexual sin, hearkening back to the scarlet letter worn by the adulterous Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s tale of Puritan ideology. While the Handmaids’ reproductive role supposedly finds its justification in the Bible, in some sense they commit adultery by having sex with their Commanders, who are married men. The wives, who often call the Handmaids sluts, feel the pain of this sanctioned adultery. The Handmaids’ red garments, then, also symbolize the ambiguous sinfulness of the Handmaids’ position in Gilead.

A Palimpsest
A palimpsest is a document on which old writing has been scratched out, often leaving traces, and new writing put in its place; it can also be a document consisting of many layers of writing simply piled one on top of another. Offred describes the Red Center as a palimpsest, but the word actually symbolizes all of Gilead. The old world has been erased and replaced, but only partially, by a new order. Remnants of the pre-Gilead days continue to infuse the new world.

The Eyes
The Eyes of God are Gilead’s secret police. Both their name and their insignia, a winged eye, symbolize the eternal watchfulness of God and the totalitarian state. In Gilead’s theocracy, the eye of God and of the state are assumed to be one and the same.

handmaids tale notes

http://ibdpenglishlanglit.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/0/7/12073658/revision_pack_-_the_handmaids_tale.pdf

handmaids tale context

Context
Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, on November 18, 1939. She published her
first book of poetry in 1961 while attending the University of Toronto. She later received
degrees from both Radcliffe College and Harvard University, and pursued a career in
teaching at the university level. Her first novel, The Edible Woman, was published in 1969 to
wide acclaim. Atwood continued teaching as her literary career blossomed. She has lectured
widely and has served as a writer-in-residence at colleges ranging from the University of
Toronto to Macquarie University in Australia.
Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale in West Berlin and Alabama in the mid-1980s. The
novel, published in 1986, quickly became a best-seller. The Handmaid’s Tale falls squarely
within the twentieth-century tradition of anti-utopian, or ‘dystopian’ novels, exemplified by
classics like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984. Novels in this
genre present imagined worlds and societies that are not ideals, but instead are terrifying or
restrictive.
Atwood’s novel offers a strongly feminist vision of dystopia. She wrote it shortly after the
elections of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain,
during a period of conservative revival in the West partly fuelled by a strong, well-organized
movement of religious conservatives who criticized what they perceived as the excesses of
the ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1960s and 1970s. The growing power of this ‘religious right’
heightened feminist fears that the gains women had made in previous decades would be
reversed.
In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood explores the consequences of a reversal of women’s rights.
In the novel’s nightmare world of Gilead, a group of conservative religious extremists has
taken power and turned the sexual revolution on its head. Feminists argued for liberation
from traditional gender roles, but Gilead is a society founded on a “return to traditional
values” and gender roles, and on the subjugation of women by men.
What feminists considered the great triumphs of the 1970s – namely, widespread access to
contraception, the legalization of abortion, and the increasing political influence of female
voters – have all been undone. Women in Gilead are not only forbidden to vote, they are
forbidden to read or write. Atwood’s novel also paints a picture of a world undone by
pollution and infertility, reflecting 1980s fears about declining birthrates, the dangers of
nuclear power, and environmental degradation.
Some of the novel’s concerns seem dated today, and its implicit condemnation of the
political goals of America’s religious conservatives has been criticized as unfair and overly
paranoid. Nonetheless, The Handmaid’s Tale remains one of the most powerful recent
portrayals of a totalitarian society, and one of the few dystopian novels to examine in detail
the intersection of politics and sexuality. The novel’s exploration of the controversial politics
of reproduction seems likely to guarantee Atwood’s novel a readership well into the twentyfirst
century

handmaids tale character

https://getrevising.co.uk/revision-tests/the-handmaids-tale-character-analysis?game_type=flashcards

Compare the ways in which the writers of your two chosen texts show how science can create victims (44 marks)

NOT MY WORK!

Compare the ways in which the writers of your two chosen texts show how science can create victims (44 marks)

Both Mary Shelley and Margaret Atwood show how science can create victims when great power is abused by those in authority to others and ensure that through narrative voice, the reader is aware of it. Whereas Frankenstein holds three narrators to its title, The Handmaid’s Tale only has one, excluding Pieixoto in the Historical Notes. However, both give us an in depth and intimate perspective on how victims have been created through science. Furthermore, they both use various methods of character development to build a sense of familiarity with the reader to which they destroy when these characters become victims of science. This all aids the way the reader feels towards those with power. The periods that both novels were written in were times of significant change regarding scientific discovery, especially for Frankenstein. By showing science to have the ability to create victims it shares the message that morality is essential when one has great power and these novels are great examples of this.

One way that the writers show how science can create victims when power is abused is through narrative voice. In Frankenstein, Shelley makes use of what has been dubbed the ‘Russian Doll’ model: the creature’s narration is embedded between both Victor Frankenstein and Robert Walton’s narration. By doing this, Shelley is able to give a personal account of how the creature has been victimised by science as he retells his experience to Victor who “consent[s] to listen”. Before this, we only have Victor’s opinion on the ‘monster’, of which the constant use of negative nomenclatures, such as “wretch” and “demon” instil a hatred of the creature in the reader. However, when he is finally given a voice, the reader can understand that he starts life as an innocent being, just desperate for affection. He talks of the DeLacy family “whom [he] sincerely love[s], and of whose favour [he] has some hopes”, nonetheless, his unnatural form and terrifying appearance – brought about by Victor’s endeavour for scientific development – results in him being “struck…violently with a stick” and cast out. He becomes a victim because Victor abuses his power to create life in order to become a creator of which a “new species would bless”.

Conversely, in The Handmaid’s Tale, only one narrator dictates the story, until the Historical Notes, which is both a part of and separate from the story. Yet through this very intimate view on the oppressive regime of Gilead. The science of fertility is what the government abuses and in doing so creates many victims, especially the Handmaids. Without Offred’s narration, the reader would not be aware of anything that goes on in Gilead, including Janine’s childbirth experience. She is reduced to animalistic traits and is described as a disgusting woman that has a “smell, more animal.” Like in Frankenstein it rests on the shoulders of the narrators to relay the story, who tend to also be the victims. Whether it be from creature to Victor or from Offred directly to the reader, the stories they tell would otherwise remain unheard, as victims so often are – but by giving them a voice, it gives them power. Those who abuse power through science are not held accountable.

Both Shelley and Atwood use character development throughout their novels to show how science creates victims. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Moira is portrayed as a strong presence, a rebel who was a ‘fantasy’ to the other women. She was escaping from the Red Centre and determined not to be overcome by the regime, whilst the other Handmaids “were losing the taste for freedom.” However, when Offred visits Jezebel’s, a very different Moira is presented, weak and defeated, “she shrugs. It might be resignation.” This same gradual victimisation by science is shown in Frankenstein by the characters of Victor. At the beginning of the novel, he is excited by the thought of science and the potential to be a ‘creator’, though as the story goes on, he is reduced to a weak man who feels suicidal and “abhors society”. It relates to what critic Anne Mellor says regarding the relationship between science and nature. She says the nature is presented as female and science, the male and that when people, like Victor, commit transgression, science “penetrates” nature, commits a rape, and means that an abuse of power can lead to science creating victims, as a rapist creates a victim.

Both Shelley and Atwood were writing in a time of great change that concentrated on science. In Mary Shelley’s era, some natural philosophers were intrigued by the idea of galvanism, which Victor uses to create his monster, “I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing” however immediately after he creates the monster, he is horrified and in a way, creates a victim by science before the creature has had any life because of his “horrid” appearance. He hates the monster and says “a mummy again induced with animation could not be so hideous.” Thus the creature is destined to be an automatic outcast. In the 80s when Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale, technology was of increasing importance and thus resulted in a popular period of other dystopian and sci-fi novels being written such as ‘The Clockwork Orange’. In Atwood’s novel and others of that time, science and technology is shown to be an entity that creates victims. For example, Offred is tested for fertility using technology and this is all artificial in creating new life. They are like human test tubes; despite being set many years in the future. Furthermore, the use of computers means she loses control of all her money before the regime had a stronghold on the population, Luke owns her money and this makes her a victim. It conveys a sense of fear that people had for science, in that victims are created when power is abused in the hands of strong, influential governments.

Ultimately both novels aim to display the world as a place for great potential. Victor says he wants to use science to “dispel all illness” and the technology used in The Handmaid’s Tale has the potential to improve modern issues such as decreasing fertility rates. However, in the hands of Victor and Gilead, they use the power they have for selfish and twisted purposes that result in Offred’s best friend never being seen again and both Victor and his lifelong dream die at the end of the novel. Science creates victims and it is because humans often believe they are able to defeat what is natural, beat the system, yet it only results in pain and misery.

Explore the way the writer of your chosen text crafts the narrative in order to make the text relatable to the reader

sample essay --> NOT MY WORK!

In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood crafts the narrative in a certain way in order to make the text relatable to the reader. There is constant use of time shifts in the form of flashbacks in order to make aspects of the regime recognisable to the reader and therefore they can sympathise with the character of Offred. The voice is also presented by Atwood as an internal monologue allowing the reader to understand in great depth the emotions of the Handmaid which may echo feelings that they have experienced themselves. Atwood also uses metafiction in a way that, although at first may seem to make the novel appear unreliable, instead provides many different perspectives or outcomes. This not only explores how the regime of Gilead holds many secrets and that because of this, it is corrupt, but also opens up the narration to many different interpretations. Ultimately, it can be said that Atwood uses these innovative methods to ensure the novel is recognisable to all readers and her purpose is to ensure that the novel is not limited to a small audience because of its specific nature. The Handmaid’s Tale is undoubtedly a reminder to all to be free to fight for individuality.

The first way that Atwood uses narrative to make the novel relatable to the reader is through the use of time-shifts to take the reader back to the ‘time-before’, a very recognisable society to a contemporary reader and uses this to compare and contrast to the regime of Gilead.  In chapter 7, the difference in Gilead compared to ‘the time before’ is highlighted when Offred thinks back to her college days, when Moira would sit on “the edge of [her] bed, legs crossed, ankle on knee, in her purple overalls…the gold fingernail she wore to be eccentric…Let’s go for a beer”. This may remind readers, who have been to college, of the many happy memories they had when they could express themselves through clothes and were free to entertain and go out and allows them to put themselves in Offred’s position. It is essential that Atwood uses these flashbacks interwoven with the rest of the story because it highlights the difference in the Gilead years where “it must be hell”. The use of time shifts is effective when one considers that it has come about from the guessed order of tapes found by historians that the story was recorded on, which the reader finds out in the additional historical notes at the end of the novel. So whilst the narrative can make us feel closer to Offred, by not being in chronological order it affects the reader’s interpretation and they may feel more distant from her, as we understand that this may not be the order she wished her story to be told in and this is not wholly her voice. Even though, it allows the reader to appreciate how, in such a mundane and uneventful existence, memories start to surface and this could be relatable to how this can either give hope, which Offred has when thinking of Luke, or ruin the human spirit. Both occur to Offred, “Of all the dreams this is the worst”. By exploring such a relatable reality in many different ways, Atwood ensured the novel is recognisable to all readers and that they can relate with the multi-faceted character of Offred, no matter what their background.

A further means in which Atwood has used the narrative to make the novel relatable to the reader is how she has crafted the text to be a sort of dramatic monologue – aided by the use of first person narration. Through this, Offred tells us her deepest feelings, such as during the ceremony, “I wish it were true; then I could get better and this would go away”. The use of personal pronouns guides us to sympathise with Offred especially when paired with metafiction throughout the novel. Metafiction is used by Atwood to make the reader consider about the reliability of the narrator by using the power of storytelling. Metafictive novels allow the reader to experience a far more intimate perspective of the events in the book such as inviting the reader to develop their explorations surrounding how Offred feels towards the regime as she wishes “It’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending…I’ll pretend you can hear me. But it’s no good, because I know you can’t”. This allows us to infer that Offred wants people to know of her story but is unsure if that will ever happen. It echoes similarities of Anne Frank, who wrote a diary in Amsterdam when she was hiding from the Nazis. She told the whole truth because she never thought anyone would read it. It was her way of rebelling against an oppressive regime, as it is Offred and her tapes – giving a deeper sense of seeing personal qualities in these women. Atwood uses the metafictive, dramatic monologue voice to ensure the novel is recognisable to all readers. Especially when considering it similar to Anne Frank’s diary, we can understand The Handmaid’s Tale is undoubtedly a reminder to all to be free to fight for individuality.

In addition to the structure of the novel, throughout the novel we are given, by Atwood, scenarios in which Offred tells of more than one outcome. Sometimes it is because she doesn’t know, “The things I believe can’t all be true, though one of them must be” – giving the impression of oppression brought about by Gilead’s use of withholding information from the people from the country under its control. Although it may be because she cannot fully be truthful in order to protect herself, “It didn’t happen that way either…All I can hope for is a reconstruction”. The theme of hope is repeated throughout the novel helping the reader relate to Offred as they’re reminded of it constantly and hope for her sake that the regime will to cease to continue. We are reminded that characters who lose hope, like Moira, are overcome and defeated through anecdotes supplied by Offred’s knowledge throughout the narrative. By giving many different accounts of the events it means that readers can form their own opinions on which one is the most truthful and which one they relate to the most. Atwood has chosen to craft her narrative in this way to ensure that the novel reaches a wide audience and most likely welcomes the different interpretations of her novel that follow.

Throughout The Handmaid’s Tale, it is evident that Offred is a very well developed character. She is flawed, has mood swings and struggles though what seems to be an unbearable existence with great dignity. This is all thanks to the carefully crafted narrative which presents flecks of life whether it be emotions/events/buildings that modern readers recognised and relate to. Atwood only includes things that have already happened in the real world in her novel and by doing this she forces readers to realise problems within their own societies. The different interpretations within the book for readers are also evident because the novel has been restricted in many countries. This censoring of literature not only depicts how this complex text can be interpreted drastically differently across the globe but also seems to remind the reader that a life like Gilead is possible – a theme of threat which is presented across generic dystopia. The narrative is relatable to readers and whether it be a character or event that instils this, The Handmaid’s Tale is undoubtedly a reminder to be free to fight for individuality.