Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Fracturing a Movement before it happens

Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale deals with a society where women are stripped of most of their rights and depending on which category you fit into, they can be completely stripped away. Some women are servants, some can be wives to Commanders or Angels, and some are handmaidens. Many of these groups do not get along with each other and anyone who rises up in this society in anyway is either killed or imprisoned.

I think it's interesting that the oppressing male class is separating women into classes who are really only identified by how useful they can be to the men of the society whether it be Commanders, Angels or otherwise. Anyone without real use (such as trying to start an uprising or going against the rules) are cast into imprisonment or killed. I think this makes for quite an interesting look at how this society could be overthrown or how someone could ever bring about change. Only certain people have access to weapons and the laws of the land benefit those people. There is infighting even between women as wives generally look down on the rest and even Marthas and Handmaidens don't get along well. I think it fractures any sort of way that a movement could take place for change.

Also it's been proven that the country has no respect for human rights and has no problem rooting out people for doing something wrong and using death to get rid of them. It would be interesting how an underground movement can function given the extreme police state exists in the society. It happens in countries now where human rights are disrespected but mainly because of the international incident it would raise as well as the fact that many times force is restrained not to bring attention to it. This society doesn't seem to have any problem with that which makes them more dangerous to any sort of movement going forward.

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