Margaret Atwood ″The Handmaid′s Tale″
The Handmaid’s Tale fits well into the genre of science fiction, which is a new social and caste system. Surveillance is essential when it comes to keeping the population in Gileadean docile. The Handmaid Tale, Atwood indirectly and effectively exposes the undemocratic and frightening traits in which our communities when she applies them to a fictional future where these factors have caused horrible consequences. As the story goes, a section of men has formed a new state, Gilead, a country where they ruthlessly control the population living there. As a result, the following essay studies and explains how the dictating power gains and significantly maintain power in a fictional community. After analysis, the essay argues, and last concludes that through surveilling a community and through restricting the community means of communication, dictatorship is adequately able to control people while keeping them docile.
When it comes to keeping the population in Gileadean docile, surveillance has a fundamental role to play. The original concept of this originated from Jeremy Bentham, who was a prominent philosopher in the 19th century. During this time, he created a concept known as Panopticon, which is still applied in use presently whenever people are studying surveillance. When bringing the idea in the application, Bentham got a plan in 1786 when he visited his brother in a workshop (Moradi, Maryam and Fatemeh AzizMohammadi 80). At this place, he noticed that the workers at the seminar were spread in a circle and a mangers office placed at the center of the ring where he could rule them from and continuously watched them from that area. His idea was to form a prison structure in ruling and them. The section was constructed with a watchtower a place where all people within the prison would be ordered from under strict and robust surveillance. The primary purpose of this form and method of construction was to make an internalized form watcher between the prisons (Moradi, Maryam, and Fatemeh AzizMohammadi 82). Even though sometimes nobody was watching them, they would always feel that someone was watching them. As a result, they would continuously not think of escaping from the prison cells, a factor which would keep them docile and hence deter them from doing bad things (Atwood 24). He had his preferences on how prisons should be made and how they should be run and operated as a whole. His opinion within the prisons was that prison sentences should be jail rather than being punishing.
People living in more celebrated democracies might find it hard to connect communities where different discriminatory aspects are part of each day’s life. The news programs and actions from such countries could seem to distance them geographically, culturally, and socially energetically. As highlighted by Margaret in The Handmaid’s Tale of 1986, Gilead is a state which from highlights has gone from a freedom-loving and democratic nation to a dictatorship nation where most of the persons living in that nation live in total fear from the actions done to them by the state rule. Subsequently, the story novel might bring a greater understanding concerning nations by showing what distinguishes them from the same communities. The fact is that the narrator within the book is a person without any sought of power, which is effectively experiencing the Gilead from the worst side and makes the original story more compelling. Many methods are used through a dictating regime within Gilead to keep the community in order and submissive effectively. The perpetual restrictions and surveillance of communication are the standard and apparent techniques that the current administration uses to keep the community docile effectively.
At one time, Margaret Atwood was asked by a Guardian Reporter on if The Handmaid Tale can be placed within the genre of science fiction. In her response to this question, she replied that she would instead put the novel as a speculative novel. She argued that “science fiction has spaceships and monster, speculative fiction which could happen… for me, fiction in science labels belongs to the books with different things in them, which we cannot yet do. Such going to a wormhole is a space for another universe. From this speculative fiction to many means a work that operates through means which have already hand like credit cards and DNA identification and that happen within planet earth”. From this talking, her purpose seems just to have been to effectively scare the readers and harshly ask them to effectively and then look at the globe and see where we’re are going to. Thus this is extremely applicable in the Novel The Handmaid’s Tale. “….it is always and subjectively set in in future of human beings suggesting that there is still time to reverse the trends which effectively concern the writer significantly. Within the community, dystopia is a hopeful genre within the community that deliberately scares people away for their good and does not, by any chance, exists in a vacuum. However, it shows the reader diverse frightening visions which might come from different events which he can see within the contemporary world” (Atwood 167).
The novel setting is not entirely, unlike the western community states. The novel story is geographically placed in Gilead. This is a biblical name, which means a hill of testimony or the mount of witness. It’s a new republic state located somewhere in the United States. Just as being a dystopia and what it means to be one, it takes people a few chapters to research. It gathers enough information and data to make one effectively understand the population and the entire regime (Moradi, Maryam, and Fatemeh AzizMohammadi 80).
Additionally, more information is needed to make readers gradually understand the method and process which made people in this state what happened and what it took them to reach where they are at this time. The novel story itself is set in a reasonably near future as it is suggested through the existence of the Atomic power plant problems, pollution, toxic wastes, and the mutant strain of syphilis, causing death and sterility to a more significant number of people or population within the state. However, the HandmaidHandmaid is one of the fertile females within the country of Gilead, where after going through enough training to one as one of Commander and will be used for reproduction. From this concept, her rights are almost closer to nothing, for she cannot at all be compared to a slave. It is not for her operating ovaries; she would be a worthless woman. In the state, if a Handmaid is by chance lucky to conceive and get a healthy kid, she is not allowed at all to keep the kid. As a result, the child is given to the wife and the Commander himself (Moradi, Maryam, and Fatemeh AzizMohammadi 80). If by any chance, she does not conceive, then she will face the same sick and older adults and persons of the dead and wrong religion as a homosexual and other people with law-breaking cases that risk being executed or escorted and send to colonies that are less or even more synonymous towards death.
As a result, surveillance is essential in states when it comes to keeping the society and population within the state docile. The idea as initiated by Bentham on Panopticon which might not have been renowned as it is given within the contemporary research and study field and if it has not been for the philosopher and some social theorist like Foucault. From this, he applied the concept to his study about punishment and discipline and its important and critical development during the last 200 years. As a philosopher, he sees and highlights the transparent community of Bentham as a correct community of power on which the whole discipline is constructed upon. He claims that the city is built and permeated through the cereal continuum from where the prison is the most significant and highest stage of surveillance, preferably not the only stage and level. The steps go through the prisoner probation over the parole of communities and security arrangements like the police but sill through schools, domestic life, and daily work activities (Atwood 300). The elevated and physical tower in the Panopticon is therefore turned towards an abstract concept powers connections between institutions and people within the community.
The primary outcome from the Panopticon is to effectively induce within the inmate a country of permanent and conscious visibility, which assures the correct and automatic power functioning. From this, the issue addressed here is thus not being seen actually but the greater conviction which a person is being seen at. The watcher on the tower is seen and perceived as being invisible, which equals to the understanding that the watcher in the tower is present in almost everywhere within the compound. In the state, the presence of the correct watcher is not even significant, just the presence of the right watcher (Atwood 19). Within the country, buildings are having been erected similar to those in the Bentham Panopticon towers. In this state, these are towers with well-armed guards, with great posts and floodlights which technically sweep the ground and the other borders all around the country of Gilead as indicated by the armed guards and the walls.
In states, physical surveillance of this type is very significant towards internalizing the watchers in their subjugated community or population. Additionally, physical inspection is well and carefully structured. To effectively keep the prison institutions tidy and clean, he thought that prisoners in different areas should be kept segregated and separated in different areas of operations where they should operate in and keep their services there. Within the community and the state of Gilead, persons are well isolated from family and friends, where they are placed in different social communities, each with social assignments to perform (Atwood 25). The population in Gilead is excellently structured, just like the feudal community within the medieval European society, which again lifts what the author Foucault understands and names as the carceral continuum. Within the city, the second-highest layer and stage are eyes, which are the well-fitting name of the male and training group.
Handmaids in the nation wear a long and red dress with long sleeves, for it is significant and not to tempt any person. With the Eyes towards attaining power within the community and knowing and seeing, Handmaids mostly experience is almost the opposite, which makes them be different towards why they put on hats with the blinkers towards the outdoors. The hierarchic form of the network keeps every person well involved within the commanders, for everyone has a place to report towards. Handmaids and other essential groups within the community exposed within the bottom are the groups that exist among people (Phoenix 206). From this, social surveillance actively contributes towards the fast and quality strengthening of the internal watcher. To effectively be categorized and is put into the group and is treated as per the plan in a dreaming and offensive manner. From this, another essential tool is directed towards females to suppress discouragement effectively, and their individuality towards independent thinking is the patriarchal grouping. Handmaids lack their names and that they are named after their Commander. From this, the patronymic gives means that the HandmaidHandmaid is of Fred, where married females are of reasonably high class and then referred to as wives, and girls are referred to as daughters. As stated, commanders are placed at the top of the power pyramid, but he has to make sure that the community population is kept docile. As a result, they have actively implemented the god Christian as their friend by employing him as the primary judge to their problems. The power that is founded within force alone might be considered a sufficient strength and not legitimate (Atwood 81). The Christian community within the state of Gilead took power from Gilead to buy energy. As a result, they were justifying their actions by referring to Christian beliefs. This makes them modify just the ordinary Christians to build to a more energetic state. From this, rulers have changed the passage of the bible and hence have been turned god towards and omnipresent and judge the power of favor through greater agenda.
The nation depends on the mass survey; in this manner, Gilead’s kin’s practices rely upon observation factors, along these lines the spot they are at. There is no computerized observation like the present world, no Facebook messages, no hacking, no reconnaissance cameras. In any case, there is physical observation. There are eyes, all over (Moradi, Maryam, and Fatemeh AzizMohammadi 72). Everybody can be utilized for surveillance as an ‘eye.’ There are the ones who are being viewed by those eyes, whom I will call the considered, and ones who control the sights and get the data from the eyes, whom I will call the watchers. At the point when you read this book, you criticize a world like this, a world with no security. We condemn this reconnaissance society, yet we live in one. We, people, had lived in a reconnaissance society ordinarily before as well. Also, with the ascent of the computerized world, we are now making progress to social observation orders all around. Other than numerous different admonitions about in English writing, Margaret Atwood cautioned us against social observation orders, doubt in the public eye, loss of protective measures, and opportunities once again utilizing themes like defiance, individual flexibilities, eyes, and night. There are three pieces in an observation society, the eyes, the viewed, and the watcher.
Eyes are necessarily the Aunts and the police in The Handmaid’s Tale. They are genuine devotees (Moradi, Maryam, and Fatemeh AzizMohammadi 80). Other than them, the eye theme that Atwood utilized is really for everybody’s eyes in the general public. To demonstrate that you perpetrated the wrongdoing, the wrongdoing to have sex with somebody instead of your officer, for example, “they need to get you in the demonstration, with two observers” (Atwood 61). Reconnaissance is finished by the individuals of Gilead. “‘The entryway is bolted, nobody will come in'” (Atwood 60), the specialist attempted to guarantee Offered that she is sheltered in a room without the eyes. What’s more, he was correct as well; no.
When researching discipline and punishment in prisons, it can be noticed that the core of the form of punishment is through misbehaving in where the inmates are kept and locked up in cells. Isolation is the concept of acting a moral nature. Just as Foucault puts quotes, “the whole paraspinal institution all cumulates to the cell and has been written on the walls of in black letters and God sees you” (Atwood 294). The type of isolation within the rooms is what Handmaids endure in most of their days. It might be the way towards life to many people, which might leave them alone with an internalized watcher making sure that they all stay on track with the commanders in the area, an aspect known as moral of nature. The future is always given and explained through a medium like television where the entire regime controls the nation. Just like what many dictators do in their areas, they are anxious to all make use of media to convince their citizens or the subjects who are well justified with their actions and can be trusted which is the reason as to why they manufacture news which makes them as kind, protective and just. The anchorman a person described as kindly and fatherly and who gazes to people from screen looking with tan, open eyes, and white hair coupled with white ingles around them just like everyone’s grandfather. What he is telling us that his level smile effectively implies for people’s goods. In many sections, everything will be okay soon; there will be peace to all, and people must trust this, and people must sleep like good children at all (Atwood 93).
In the tale, Atwood represses the Handmaids vent with their near hysteria within participation by tearing the traitor into different pieces. In the first stage, the Handmaids are instructed about the various horrible crimes which they have done and which have made them be convicted as criminals. Often, these lies and stories seem to be just lies about brutal rapes to enrage and excite the maids. The convict in The Handmaid’s Tale is by all accounts tranquilized (Atwood 280) and is, subsequently, ransacked of his vote based option to any extreme articulation, which may scrutinize the pioneers of Gilead. By letting the Handmaids execute the convict, the pioneers bait them into being associates in their wrongdoing. The disguised watcher, who shares the system’s plan, plays a job in supporting this conduct. At such times the conviction develops more grounded; this was the proper activity in such a case that it was not – you simply killed somebody. A yet more straightforward approach to facilitating one’s soul is to guarantee that the demonstration was done in self-preservation. A Handmaid who had wouldn’t take an interest would likely have been the following individual to be particicutioned. To close the conversation about the capacity of open executions, I will quote Foucault’s contention that “[it] has a juridico-political ability. It is formal by which an immediately harmed power is reconstituted “When they are furious enough, they are then given room to do whatever they need with the criminal who is pushing and beating them towards death. From this, the convicts have no chance of defending themselves either physically or verbally. Additionally, he explains why crowds are sued to gather around different scaffolds effectively.
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. Handmaid’sHandmaid’s tale. Vol. 301. Everyman’s Library Classics &, (2006):5-400.
Moradi, Maryam, and Fatemeh AzizMohammadi. “The Study of Ideology in The Handmaids’ Tale Based on Althusser’s view.” International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences 49 (2015): 75-82.
Phoenix, Aisha. “From Text to Screen: Erasing Racialized Difference in The Handmaid’s Tale.” Communication Culture & Critique 11.1 (2018): 206-208.