How does Margret Atwood use language as a tool of oppression in the novel ‘the Handmaid’s Tale’?
Language is an extremely powerful factor in our culture and society. It can be a key into our community and as a form of communication to our peers and acquaintances. However in Margret Atwood’s novel ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ we see a society which has no equal communication, let alone any equality in gender or a consensus of democracy. Atwood has created an oppressed society which displays corporal and capital punishment as a norm to its citizens who are kept alike to prisoners in a concentration camp, yet there are no gas chambers and barbed wire gates, but high walls and categories not of choice but for exploitation. It is a patriarchal society which presents women in a state of subjugation who are socially controlled by either a woman in a higher status of by a man. In this essay I intend to explain how Atwood uses language as a tool of oppression in the novel.
Oppression can be explained in many ways. These can include systematic oppression, hierarchy oppression, internalized oppression and indirect oppression. The term oppression is primarily used to describe how a certain group is being subordinated by use of , , or societal . In Handmaid’s Tale we see the character Offred by which she is called, forced into a parallel life which she resents, the only way to hold on to her past life is through her husband Luke and their daughter, and her real name.
In chapter one the reader sees the first sign of an oppressed society when we discover that Offred and some other women are living in a gymnasium under the supervision of the Aunts, who monitor and control the women who become known as handmaids. In the first paragraph we see two words which could show some form of link to an oppressed society: ‘palimpsest’ is the first word which gives the impression that there is an eerie atmosphere which could also show how there is a dark under covering that something is not as it appears. This displays a contrast as before there are a few lines which state a more feminist society of rebellious freedom the women had when they were teenagers, ‘later in mini skirts, then pants, then in one earring, spiky green-streaked hair’, the use of language creates imagery of what our main character was like before the concept of control came into place and what she would like to relive. The second word is ‘forlorn’ which presents an emotion of sadness and isolation, which can link to the emotions of the handmaids and the oppression the Aunts create for them. ‘We could not talk’ and ‘they had electric cattle prods’ presents a sense of brutality and reality to their situation. The words ‘we could not talk’ show how little freedom they had left and it gives a sense of a boarding school environment as they are being controlled and are told what to do and think rather than them doing it for themselves. No choice is given in this society, only orders.
