The Handmaid's Tale Blog!!!

The All-Seeing Eye? I Think Not.

We’ve reached the end of Dystopian Rd. Our last novel before jumping into the Sea of Poetry is Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. In an alternate timeline perhaps taking place now, society in America has become a complete theocracy, technological advances have pretty much come to a standstill, women are categorized into a caste system, with the handmaids job being to get pregnant by an assigned Commander in a ritual involving the Commander, his handmaid, his wife, and absolutely no passion or love. Taking constant surveillance over all of the citizens of Gilead (the society), are the Eyes. More specifically the Eyes of God. When one looks at the Eyes, they have a sense of familiarity. These guys are the basic, black van driving, sunglass wearing, black suited secret agents we’ve become so accustomed to. This similarity is ironic in itself. Gilead is a society based on the Bible. It builds itself up as a high morals, holy structure, when really, its leaders want the same thing was all leaders want, control and power. It brings to light that, although Gilead’s society is based off of scripture, it is purely human, and has the same selfish and greedy wants of every human. An obvious notion about the Eyes of God are their omniscience. Just as God sees all and knows all, so do the Eyes (or so is their objective). It’s funny how they try to copy the powers of God, but like in all attempts of the kind, wind up in utter failure, with traitors and double agents amidst them. Another interesting point is where the Eyes base of operations is. Gilead has taken Harvard University and transformed it into a super stronghold of the Eyes. Now this is just incredibly ironic. Take Harvard University: Ivy League school; America’s first school of higher learning; bastion of thought, intelligence, and free will. These latter qualities can be attributed to all schools, but the fact that the one chosen for the Eyes is Harvard strikes especially hard at lovers of the intellectual. At universities, free will is incredibly vital to the philosophy of most residents. These schools teach their students that no one is in control of their lives, and to discover the secrets and mysteries of the universe through science. Then, take a look at how the Eyes run things. Oppression, censorship, fear ruling. You couldn’t get any more opposite, hence the extreme irony of the situation.

We have to live in the gaps!

The quote I’d like to point out is not my favorite, but rather, is the one that most stuck out to me. On page 56-57, Chapter 10,
“There were stories in the newspapers… but they were about other women, and the men who did such things were other men. None of them were the men we knew. The newspaper stories were like dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others… they had a dimension that was not the dimension of our lives.
We were the people who were not in the papers…We lived in the blank white spaces…We lived in the gaps between the stories.”
When I say it stuck out to me the most, it’s because it made me think the most, my interpretation of it making me somewhat mad. The paragraph gives me the sense of criticism. At the end of the paragraph, repeats the idea three times that we live in the spaces. Because of this certainty, combined with the definite that Offred “is not happy” with the situation the world is in, it seems pretty clear that this passage is being critical. Atwood seems to be criticizing the nature of present day humans to pass off the horrible things in the news to live their lives. Sure, it’s not a good quality, and leaves us somewhat ignorant, but that’s what makes it so incredibly vital to our existence. We cannot live our lives, bawling and obsessing over every death that occurs. We can use these stories to inspire us to make a difference, but if we get hung up on these things, we cannot live our lives. (start rant) This is the nature of human, to forget (well, not technically forget, but fade away). Our memories fade away from us throughout our lives. If it were not so, we would perhaps go mad with such vibrant images of our cribs and the rest of our entire lives playing constantly in front of our eyes. When one loses a loved one, it is a horrible experience that they may never get over. They may cry over it every day. However, eventually, their memory of the loved one begins to fade. No matter how much one holds on, it at least begins to fade. If we can just hold on to memories of our dearly beloved, how can we possibly be able to deeply care and remember every murder victim displayed on the news? (end rant). Another way Atwood made this paragraph stand out is the same way she did for all the other notable passages. She separates from the rest of the book into a separate paragraph, spaced away from the rest. This lets us know that it is still relevant, it is still Offred thinking, but the idea(s) she is trying to convey transcends the pages of words.

I can relate (because I'm sensitive)

So, of the books we’ve read so far (besides Fahrenheit), The Handmaid’s Tale would have to be my favorite. I really like alternate history situations. This book, which is an alternate history/futuristic dystopia is even more prominent to me because it takes place in the country I live in. Books like this create such an eerie atmosphere when one thinks of their familiar surroundings being used for completely different, possibly dark purposes. I also think I favored this book because I could relate to the character (compared to the others) and (because of the language used) understand exactly what was going on in the story. Yes, Offred is a girl, and many of her girl views and instincts went unnoticed to me, but in the sense of a human: trapped, without control, searching for clues and a way out; in a situation most uncomfortable in awkward; forced to do unwanted things; and just wanting to make sense of this MADNESS, I think anyone can relate. In terms of language, the fact that Anthem and We were written by Russian authors lessened our understanding, and the fact that Atwood is modern and Canadian, we can relate more to how she writes and conveys the emotions of her characters.

We (I) Blog!!!

A Hairy Situation

Yet again continuing our journey through the dark and frightening land of dystopias, this time our reading takes us to Onestate, in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We. In the society of Onestate, privacy does not exist. The buildings are constructed of glass cubes, stacked one on top of the other. The streets are lined with devices to hear every conversation. Every member of Onestate has a shaved head, in an attempt to create a shapeless blob of indifferent human bodies. In this regimented decree, however, a small flaw exists in the hairiness of our protagonist, D-503(henceforth D)’s hands. D has known all along that something was different with him. He was always taller than everyone else, and had these huge, ape-hands. Even I-330 (resistance member and our hero’s “woman”) notices them and makes a peculiar comment involving D having a special blood. These hands are what sets him apart, but it is not until later that he learns that this is a good thing. Adding to this hairy confusion, D soon learns that a whole “town” with hundreds of hairy people live right outside the walls of Onestate. In one sense, the hair seems to represent rebellion. It is different than what Onestate wants, so any hairy person is an enemy of Onestate. This case is strengthened by the fact that D hates his hands. He is a conformed member of the society (for now), and he knows how wrong and unnatural they are. They are the link between him and the people outside of the city, who live free from the tyranny of Onestate, the representation of rebellion becoming freedom. In this sense, one could also discern that the hair represents enlightenment. D is different than the others in more ways than just his hands. He has the ability to think higher and more critically, and this innate knowledge is represented by his difference (his hairy hands). The ones outside the city know that what it is doing is wrong. This is their enlightenment, which will eventually become D’s. This hairiness can also be looked at as primal man reaching through to D. Onestate is violating what makes man man. By giving D these hands, the primal man within him is trying to tell him how wrong this society is, and coincidentally, through those same hands, all of D’s rebellious acts are committed. Perhaps if D never had hairy hands, he would have lived his life as another faceless, hairless blob of Onestate.

Mayday!

D is obsess with I-330. She is all he can think about. One quote in the novel seem to sum up how he feel about this (and everything else going on) quite nicely.
“What is the matter with me? I’ve lost the rudder. The motor is roaring for all it’s worth, the aero is trembling and racing along, but there’s no rudder--and I don’t know where it’s headed: downward to crash into the earth any second, or upward… to the sun, to fire…”
The absence of the rudder is clearly D feeling as if he is not in control of his life. Be it I, O, R, or any other letter of the alphabet, everyone else seems to be directing what he is doing, and his mind is in shambles (which accounts for the difficulty in reading). Not only is he not in control, but he doesn’t even know where he’s going. He doesn’t know what the goals of I are, how O really feels, or anything else. I could simply be tricking him into crashing his plane to his death. Bringing this point up, he has a pretty good idea of where this whole situation is leading him. Either crashing into the earth, or burning in the sun. Both of these happen to result in death. Is it a coincidence then that later on, D does find himself falling down into the Earth, into I’s secret base, claiming that when he started falling he died?

Um, what just happened?

I enjoyed the story of We. I would have enjoyed it more if I knew what was going on. I understand that the author wanted us to feel like D was feeling, confused, shambled, dazed. The way he went about doing this makes me consider the book with a somewhat poetic aspect to it. So with the poetic aspect, we get the emotion that D is feeling, but we don’t know why he’s feeling that way. I also liked the cliffhanger ending, the idea that, although D had been neutralized, the Green Wall had fallen. Onestate is teetering, and it’s up to the reader to decide what happens. But that’s just me, who likes cliffhangers. Another thing that made this book a little harder to swallow was it directly following the such a short and easy to read book as Anthem. An aspect of the book I liked was the glass of Onestate. The pure clarity, total lack of privacy, and indestructibility of it represent Onestate at its highest level. It was an interesting book, and I hope to get a better insight when I reread it.

Anthem Blog!!!

What stinks? Oh, it's this society!

The first book we read this year was Anthem by Ayn Rand. Continuing the dystopian theme set with Fahrenheit 451, Anthem takes us into the far future where technology has degraded and society has transformed. Instead of finding an advanced, space-faring, intelligent people, we come across something rather shocking. Horses, candles, and other horrors of pre-industrial times. This society is based off of the collectivism of "Communist" Russia, and we can see how the people use "we" instead of "I". With this collective business going on, one of the most important themes is the power of the individual, and the limits of a group (with the main collective idea being represented by the Council of Scholars). The regressed technology and how it got to that point, however, is also vital to the story. When one sees the feebleness and lack of progress of the Council, they see what has caused this regression, and thus see the main flaw of the whole society. The Council doesn't know how to handle things. They are afraid of each other and can't make a decision. They took many years to bring something as simple as the candle into the general public. However, Equality, working alone, discovers the light bulb in a matter of weeks. Humans cannot work together as one in such a broad sense as this. We are hardwired for conflict, and just like physics in general, if there is not conflict, no individual movement against another, nothing would happen. Progress and advances are made when a group is in conflict, when it has goals that need to be met. When a group has no goals and simply wishes to survive, there is no need for advancement, and a regression may be in order to keep the ideals of philosophies of the society alive. The boring, blending in of cultures and personalities, removes any new, creative ideas. The council's utter fear of the light bulb for it's creation by an individual shows the ignorance and dimwittedness only possible from years of this societal stagnation.

Too many happiness quotes

Personally, I had a little trouble picking a favorite quote from the book. The quote I chose comes from the end of the book, which to me seems to be a succession of inspirational paragraphs celebrating the human individual. While these fit with the theme of the story, they seem incredibly rushed, and I get the sense that the author tried to squeeze as many of her philosophies that she could into the last few pages, uncaring how they fit into the story. While they don’t all fit into the story, the quote I chose was “I know not if this earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is but a speck of dust lost in eternity. I know not and I care not. For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth.” This stood out to me for some reason. I guess it’s the pure certainty that happiness is all that matters. This quote of Equality’s is another of his ramblings on how great individuality is, and although they speak the truth, the repetition is tiresome. The idea present in the quote is different than would be expected of thinkers of Rand’s time. Equality doesn’t care about the secrets of the universe, be they mystical or scientific. All he cares about is personal happiness. This is a clear slap in the face to the “communist” society Rand knew so well. To Equality, the hardships and pains of life do not matter, for they cannot compare to the potential happiness that each individual has. The only contrasting idea I have is that for Equality to have this happiness, he needs other people. He emphasizes the power of self, but one self cannot exist on its own, let alone enjoy its existence.

My Theory of Relativity

I liked this novel because I could relate it to topics facing us today. Should the government run our lives? Does it really know the best for us? I think everyone should read this novel for two reasons. For one, it's short. It gets to the point and is easy to understand. Also, in this day and age, more and more people are giving up and simply looking for handouts or guidance. They are losing their sense of individual power, and are becoming more and more convinced that they shouldn't work for what they have. This mindset can only lead to a dystopia. Once the government starts giving things, it can start taking them away, until they are in complete control. This book shows the flaws of this perspective and emphasizes a strong, individual attitude.