Atwood portrays the language of resistance through the narrative of her main character Offred. Through out Offred’s narrative ‘image clusters’ of feminist themes of the human body and non-human nature are received by the reader. An example for non-human nature would be:
“ I sink down into my body as into a swamp fenland, where only I know the footing”
An example of the language used for the body is:
“Each twinge, each murmur of slight pain, ripples of sloughed-off matter, swellings and diminishing of tissue, the droolings of the flesh…”
Focus on hands, feet, blood, flowers, gardens and changing season’s shows us Offred’s resistance to the harsh regime of Gilead. The feminine imagery portrays the power of the human body in which Atwood celebrates the power of sexual desire and the power of nature, which can break Gilead’s repression. This is Ecriture feminine, the writing of the body, a feminist tool used in order to create the power of the female body. It was first picked up by French feminists and can be witnessed here in ‘The Handmaids Tale’.
“I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object the shape of a pear which is hard and more real than I am and glows red with its translucent wrapping.”
This passage is ecrtiture feminine as it celebrates the body with references to the womb ‘central’ and ‘pear’. In this novel, the womb is the focus of the body. Orwell conveys resistance through a relationship that develops between the main characters Winston and Julia. In this society, relationships are extremely unorthodox unless authorised by the regime. In Oceania the regime, like Gilead’s regime does not allow freedom of thought and speech, as this is the key to resistance. Winston purchases a journal and writes his personal thoughts about the brotherhood, an underground resistance group. Some critics say that this is a product of a Freudian concept. Freud believed that an individual’s actions come from their conscious and unconscious mind. Critics say O’Brien and the brother hood are part of Winston's unconscious mind that has developed from his desires to resist. I believe this as, Winston does believe the brother hood and O’Brien are a form of resistance. However, when Winston is captured we discover they are actually an imitation of one, created by Big Brother to entrap thought criminals like Winston.
In the two novels, the author’s style aids them to portray their dystopian views. Atwood’s style of writing is often very different to Orwell's. ‘The Handmaids Tale’ is first person narrative, it is a biased opinion from one persons point of view, this contrasts with the third person narrative in ‘1984’. Margaret Atwood’s novel contains a clipped, precise language as a listing effect, this form of language conveys he oppression of Gilead and suggests that Offred is detaching herself. This language is commonly seen in the daytime structure.
“Above on the white ceiling a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath and in the centre of it a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eyes has been taken out”
However, Atwood’s imagery develops in the night structure with extended metaphors giving semantic fields of the body, non-human nature and fertility their depth. Atwood also uses excessive modification with various similes like:
“Like smoke from the unseen fire, a line of fire just below the horizon, brushfire or a burning city”
This example contains a simile and is considerably more detailed.
In ‘1984’ George Orwell’s semantic fields are of poverty and sickness when Winston is conforming to the regime. Orwell’s style lacks in metaphorical language, which is a contrast to ‘The Handmaids Tale’ as even in the day structure there is metaphorical speech. However, Orwell does use some modification and metaphors in his novel an example of which is located here:
“Her face had turned a milky yellow colour against which her mouth stood out redder than ever”
A similarity between Orwell’s ‘1984’ and Atwood’s novel is when Winston conveys resistance to the regime by visiting the countryside with Julia. This means that in both novels nature is viewed as a means of escape. In the case of 1984 it is the nature discovered in the Golden Country.
In order to create a dystopian environment the author will give the novel a specific structure. ‘The Handmaids Tale’ contains a complex structure as it contains a fragmented story line. By this, I mean the novel switches between present day, the recent past and the distant past. The present day involves the regime and Offred’s thoughts about it. The recent past identifies her training to become a Handmaid with her old friend, Moira and the distant past is Offred’s memories of her husband and child and growing up with her mother. During this, Atwood employs flashbacks into the recent and distant past. This is important as it keeps the main characters memories alive and allows the dystopian to be easier to live in.
Atwood structures her novel into day and night times. This shows the balance between resistance and conformity. The night chapters are considerably smaller than the day chapters to accentuate the oppression of the environment. As I mentioned earlier, the day structure represents conformity to the regime and the night structure is escapism through thought equalling in resistance. Atwood places her novel into chapters and sections of relevant story developments. Another area she produced is the historical notes. These glance at another person’s point of view about the regime, this is a drastic change to the rest of the novel as before the reader only witnessed one person’s opinion of the society, this was by Offred. Using the historical notes you can view the novel with a different perspective on the regime, the speaker ‘Professor James Darcy Pieioxto’ is in some way supporting the Commander’s views.
“If we could identify the elusive ‘Commander’, we felt, at least some progress would have been made”
‘The Handmaids Tale’ is left unfinished in the eyes of the characters. We do not receive much detail but from the historical notes, we gather that Offred was rescued in the ‘black van’ that collected her at the end of the novel and that she then recorded her tale onto tape.
This structure is completely different in ‘1984’ as instead of sections Orwell opted for three parts. Each part contains a different focus then the other. Part one is based around a pessimistic tone of the poverty stricken city. The theme of totalitarianism is introduced as Orwell describes the bleak solitary regime of Big Brother. Orwell goes into great detail of the party and the Ministry of Truth where Winston’s occupation is based. The main character Winston is portrayed as isolated and depressed but he shows conformity in his daily routine.
“With the deep, unconscious sigh which not even the nearness of the telescreen could prevent him from uttering when his days work started.”
In part two Winston’s love for Julia develops and his partaking in the resistance against Big Brother increases. Winston explores new emotions of love, however, we sense their failure through capture, as other party members must notice the rebellion. Part three is Winston's punishment from his capture, where he receives a broken spirit. Both part two and three mimic each other through cause and effect as Winston’s party life develops. You can witness the change in the character by comparing the previous quotation with this example from part two, which has a cheerful tone.
“The relief of seeing her was so great that he could not resist staring directly at her for several seconds”
During Orwell’s structure there is no sense of time, where one day begins and ends, this is the opposite to ‘The Handmaids Tale’ because her sections are split into the structure of time but not the date.
One opinion of ‘The Handmaids Tale’ is that it is a feminist novel. Critics say the women in this novel are as in today’s society, “treated as property and not human beings”. I agree with that this novel contains many feminist concerns. However personally I have not had the experience of feminism like Atwood has, so I do not believe that the majority of women are treated badly in today’s society. When Orwell’s 1984 was first released some critics read it as a negative view of the Soviet Union, this lead communists to believe that Orwell had distorted the publics view the unions achievements. In my opinion, readers may have over reacted, although I believe that Orwell wanted to draw attention to the society around him and how it could develop if no one unattended the problem.
Each author’s background influenced their writings of their dystopia. Atwood, when constructing this novel was witnessing the world at a high point of radical feminism. Protests increased about abortions, the right to keep your maiden name after marriage and equal rights for women and men. All these activities had a great influence on Atwood and are portrayed through two characters. Offred’s friend Moira, a radical feminist and disliked males, blaming them for most of society’s past ills and Offred’s Mother. Offred has flashbacks of her mother’s feminist acts, her mother would gather with other feminists and burn pornography magazines.
“But there were some women burning books, that’s what she was really there for”
This portrays Atwood ‘s background on a high level as she has created characters based on radical feminists who were around at the time.
Another area that influenced Atwood was the Victorian era and how women were treated in it. The Victorian ways and Gilead are very similar. Women were confined to a domestic homelife and if they were to journey outside, would need to be accompanied by another person. This is witnessed in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. Offred is accompanied by another Handmaid when doing daily routines like shopping.
“We aren’t allowed to go there except in twos. This is supposed to be for our protection”
Also in the Victorian era, women had no rights and pregnancy was compulsory. This is just like the Handmaids role in Gilead, meaning Atwood has taken great influence from this. During the 1980’s when the Handmaid’s Tale was written there was an increase in small religious groups, especially in the USA. The Promise Keeper groups were common at that time. Members had a massive restoration of the biblical way of life. They were committed to God, purity and building strong families as seen in the regime of Gilead. A remaining factor of this regime is the reason it was introduced because of environmental factors obstructing reproduction. AIDS, still births and miscarriages were widespread, hence why Gilead was introduced. When Atwood wrote this the ozone layer was an immense worry. Atwood portrayed her influences to their extremes with her dystopian.
Orwell’s influences are completely different to Atwoods, because his novel was written nearly twenty years before Atwoods. In 1948 the Second World War had just ended leaving the promised improvement of a better lifestyle forgotten about. This brought about communists, socialist, poor housing and food rationing, forming a poverty stricken land. This can be seen in ‘1984’ as food quality is poor and only slightly improved by the addition of Victory products. ‘Victory’ produce gin, coffee and cigarettes along with others.They are second rate war products available in London and unfortunately it was the best you could receive being a party member.
“The lifts that never worked, the cold water, the gritty soap, the cigarettes that came to pieces, the food with its strange evil tastes.”
The largest influence can be witnessed to come from Joseph Stalin. He was based in Russia and introduced the ‘Five year plans’. The plans brought industry under state control, they decided what and how much would be produced and often unrealistic targets would be set. The first plan started in 1928 and the third finished in 1941 due to world war two. The similarity between this and the novel ‘1984’ is the conditions that Stalin’s workers had to suffer. As in ‘1984’ Stalin was often referred to by the positive euphanism of ‘Uncle Joe’ just like Orwell’s ‘Big Brother’. To the younger workers he was a protecting man, as an Uncle would be and they saw no harm in the way he treated his workers. However with the propaganda which bombarded the workers to work harder, such as labour camps, workers soon developed illness and failed to meet targets. Another similarity is that in Big Brother’s regime, disappearences were very common and unquestioned. Stalin often ordered the abolishment of workers. As seen here in ‘1984’, there is a deffinate link with Orwell’s influences and the story line.
“Syme had vanished. A morning came, and he was missing from work: a few thoughtless peopple commented on his absense”
Orwell was correct to an extent with his prediction of the future as a 20th century Stalin would be Saddem Hussein, because this man’s regime is similar to Oceania. His country Iraq suffered catastrophic declines in living standards causing mass poverty. This happened because the regime lent so much money it created high debt. However the borrowed money was used to finance activities such as gross corruption, invasion and human rights violations.
In conclusion, both novels share themes of totalitarianism, loss of identity and survelliance to an extreme. Language plays an important part in ‘The Handmaids Tale’ and ‘1984’, it is seen as a means of control within their regime. Both authors develop similar technics by the means of allusions, slogans, euphemisms and categorisation. However, they have very different outcomes as Atwood uses religious beliefs where as Orwell conveys war-approved language, also the nature in which it is used is different. The author’s narrative styles differ in context and basic structure. Orwell sticks with war outcomes of poverty and sickness in his semantic fields too. However Atwood uses non-human nature, the body and feritility, the opposite to Orwell. The novels do become similar when ‘1984’ is at the Golden Country as Orwell’s language developes metaphorically. Conformity is portrayed in the day structure of Atwood’s novel and part one of Orwell’s. Resistance increases for both the main characters in both novels, ‘The Handmaids Tale’ at night and ‘1984’ in parts two. The novels structures are different too, as ‘1984’ is in parts each representing a different story line development. ‘The Handmaids Tale’ is in sections containing passage of time unlike ‘1984’, which has no sense of time present in its structure. The author’s influences play a massive part on the dystopian environment. Orwell was influenced by war, poverty and regimes, which is highly reflected in his novel. Margaret Atwood reflects feminism into her novel as her background contains strong feminist movements and she even portrays this within the characters Offred’s mother and Moira.
The novels are very different in context of dystopian environments though they contain similarities. The authors have no similarities in the influences of their novels. This is what alters their views, the time difference that the novels were written in. However, language and structure has a great impact on the environment of the novels and the dystopian writing of the texts.
Word count: 3184
Bibliography
Yorke Notes: The Handmaids Tale
1984
Critical perspective on The Handmaids Tale:
Critical perspectives on 1984:
Class handouts.
The total word count for this essay is 3,184 words.
