Theme Of Authority In The Handmaid's Tale
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The authority in the book of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” has become a voice for the rights of women in history and today. It talks about the different dismaying events towards the Handmaids and the bad treatment of woman. The goal of the authority in this book is to destroy the morality of a person and to kill people who had sinned and disobey the law which is similar to Hannah Arendt’s Total Domination. The concentration camps in Total Domination stands as the Red Center and Gilead where Handmaids are slaves of the Aunts, the Commanders, the Wives and the government in using their ability to bear a child. According to the book that is called “A World of Ideas”, Arendt mentioned, “The camps are meant not only to exterminate people,
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This shows that they could not speak for their own and they do not have right to complain into whatever the people in the camp do to them. Furthermore, the purpose of this camp is to torture people emotionally and physically until they die. This setting is very identical to the event that had happened in the Red Center where Aunt Helena made Janine feel bad for being gang raped when she was 14 that was indicated in chapter 13. The narrator of the book says, “She looked disgusting: weak, squirmy, blotchy, pink, like a newborn mouse”, (Atwood 72). This is one of the example on how the Red Center attacks women emotionally. They are doing this horrible event to these women so that they will think that they deserve to be punished and for them to accept the punishment that God had put into them. It is one of the ways that they do to make a Handmaid stay and be faithful to the mission that was assigned to them. Moreover, in that line, the narrator compares the character to a mouse. An animal that is considered as a fearful creature because it serves as a food to other …show more content…
Janine seems to be very similar to it, she knows that if she says and tries to do something in opposition of what Aunt Helena says, she will be hurt emotionally and physically because of the Aunt’s weapon of making other girls point at her faults and the machines that they use to torture them. Lastly, the Aunts made the Handmaid transform from being a free woman into someone that they are not, a prisoner of being a babymaker. As said by Atwood in the book, “We are two-legged wombs, that’s all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices,” (136). The emphasis of “that’s all” suggests that the only function of living in this world is to bear a child for the people that they do not know. The narrator uses the word “two-legged wombs” because she knows that the most important thing that should be functioning in their body is their uterus for fertility and nothing else. They know that if they become infertile, they will be considered as a damaged woman and bring them to the Colonies where other women who does not have any use in the society are placed and killed. It is like a thing or a machine that people use, that when it gets broken, they dispose
This shows that they could not speak for their own and they do not have right to complain into whatever the people in the camp do to them. Furthermore, the purpose of this camp is to torture people emotionally and physically until they die. This setting is very identical to the event that had happened in the Red Center where Aunt Helena made Janine feel bad for being gang raped when she was 14 that was indicated in chapter 13. The narrator of the book says, “She looked disgusting: weak, squirmy, blotchy, pink, like a newborn mouse”, (Atwood 72). This is one of the example on how the Red Center attacks women emotionally. They are doing this horrible event to these women so that they will think that they deserve to be punished and for them to accept the punishment that God had put into them. It is one of the ways that they do to make a Handmaid stay and be faithful to the mission that was assigned to them. Moreover, in that line, the narrator compares the character to a mouse. An animal that is considered as a fearful creature because it serves as a food to other …show more content…
Janine seems to be very similar to it, she knows that if she says and tries to do something in opposition of what Aunt Helena says, she will be hurt emotionally and physically because of the Aunt’s weapon of making other girls point at her faults and the machines that they use to torture them. Lastly, the Aunts made the Handmaid transform from being a free woman into someone that they are not, a prisoner of being a babymaker. As said by Atwood in the book, “We are two-legged wombs, that’s all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices,” (136). The emphasis of “that’s all” suggests that the only function of living in this world is to bear a child for the people that they do not know. The narrator uses the word “two-legged wombs” because she knows that the most important thing that should be functioning in their body is their uterus for fertility and nothing else. They know that if they become infertile, they will be considered as a damaged woman and bring them to the Colonies where other women who does not have any use in the society are placed and killed. It is like a thing or a machine that people use, that when it gets broken, they dispose