The Handmaid's Tale and the real world.
The Handmaid's tale seems to be a whole bunch of event in the real world all wrapped into one with a little sugar on top.
1. The Handmaid's Tale and the Holocaust. Well, sort of. They do make the handmaids wear certain clothing as the Jews wore the stars, but then again...the Polish did not wear clothes pertaining to their ethnic background.
2. French Revolution. Dude, guillotine?!?! That says it all. WHACK! Chop off head, leave on spike, allow whole town to see. Maybe in the book, they went a little easy on the details of death, but they did leave the bodies hanging on The Wall.
3. Salem Witch Trials. Holding women down with rocks and seeing if they sink in water without the use of their hands and feet? Well, witch or not, she's gone. Man, those public executions suck. Poor women at the end of the book who were hung. Oh, and that one guy. He was with that group Ofleng was in. Poor him, he was stomped on by a bunch of women.
Man...author made some serious connections with her book and the real world.
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I thought Atwood succeeded in creating a society that was very elaborate and completely evil. The "particicutions" made the handmaid's get involved with the execution by making them touch the rope to show consent. The system turns all the women against each other and the any amount of hate the women conjure up is directed at people who are trying to help them like the man who was stomped to death(he was with the resistance movement).
ReplyDeleteWhile reading this part, I thought about what would happen, if all the women just stood up and started rebelling. They would be very successful, with them united, some may die but the oppressors can't kill all of them because they need them for reproduction. This courage would encourage others to do the same in other areas. There is power in numbers but because the oppressors are successful in turning the women against each other, this doesn't happen.