“The Handmaid’s Tale as a Re-Visioning of 1984” Précis

The literary criticism “The Handmaid’s Tale as a Re-Visioning of 1984” by Jocelyn Harris, depicts how Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a modification to Orwell’s 1984. Many themes within the two novels are compatible. The idea of a totalitarian (A dictatorship; a political system based on absolute power of a single party or dictator) civilization alienated into hierarchy, is expresses constantly throughout both novels. In The Handmaid’s Tale, the Republic of Gilead was created after a fearfully intended terrorist attack was staged against the President of the U.S. Afterwards, a rebellion took place which overthrew the U.S government and eradicated the Constitution; a new government was fashioned under the rule of a military monocracy. The Republic of Gilead is governed according to strict Old Testament-based religious creed. Other religions are not tolerated, and those who do not accept are swiftly executed or shipped to "colonies" which have treacherously high levels of radiation. Both in Orwell’s and Atwood’s books, only the auspicious obtain genuine provisions and the different orders are labeled by particular clothing.
Another similarity is that both communities are scrutinized by “secret enforcements of law”, for Atwood, Eyes and Angels. The spying, subjective arrest and anguish are all the corresponding subjects. Jocelyn Harris stated that “Deliberate incitements to blood lust hold these societies together” In both novels, the authors have created things that the characters crave. Characters within the two novels seem to long for the wall hangings of the “enemies” of the state; it’s really to make a spectacle of them. In The Handmaid’s Tale for instance, Offred and Ofglen cannot help but to pass the wall on the way home from their walks; something inside them desires to see it. Discrimination is a recurring theme in both, Atwood with Quakers, Baptists, feminists, homosexuals, and abortionists; and in Orwell’s with Jews and other nation states. The sexual oppression aids social dominance; in 1984 children are taken from their parents at birth “as one takes eggs from a hen”. The same situation takes place in The Handmaid’s Tale when Offred’s daughter is torn away from her. Harris claims that the characters in the two novels share the irrepressible recollection of memory. Orwell’s character Winston recalls his mother, lost in the great purge and an affair in an unspoiled forest in a Golden Age. Atwood’s Offred remembers her mother as well, sent to a fatal Colony for being a feminist, and bears in mind the memory of happiness with her husband Luke and her daughter.
The protagonists of both the novels revolt, by means of sexuality, memory, reading/writing, trust, and desire to escape: Winston concocts various ways to break free; Offred envisions multiple opportunities for Luke, her mother, her daughter, and herself. In the criticism, Harris acknowledges that even the smallest of details are comparable between the two books. For example, “the yellow teeth of the rat which finally breaks Winston become Aunt Lydia’s, while the humiliations, punishments and petty rebellions of Orwell’s public-school life are renewed in Atwood’s re-education centers, which have been set up in girls’ schools.
It is mentioned that The Handmaid’s Tale embarks where 1984 leaves off; instead of outlining the demolition of a rebel, it depicts a victim learning to survive. Margaret Atwood wrote in her book Survival “if you are determined to be a victim, that’s exactly what you will be.” “The Handmaid’s Tale is indeed a Rapunzel in a tower, veiled, self-silenced, long-haired like Alice in a world of distorting fish-eye mirrors. But in this version of the tale Nick has no rose, no lute, and she herself will break out.” Identified in the criticism, this is stating how the protagonists of the novels do not have anyone to come save them, they must do it on their own.
Harris points out that Orwell’s 1984 were just simply providing Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale with raw materials and it was once said by Northrop Frye that books are inevitably made out of other books. Joyce Harris refers to The Handmaid’s Tale as a metatext - a text that comments on another text, more so than a translation. Atwood’s analysis on Orwell was also discussed in the criticism, it’s stated that Atwood critiques Orwell for locating the origins of totalitarianism in class and among men only; she accuses him of underestimating the evil of misogyny. Atwood had said “we already live in a state of war ‘between those who would like the future to be, in the words of George Orwell, a boot grinding forever into a human face, and those who like it to be a state of something we still dream of as freedom.’ In such a world, in such a dystopia (state in which the conditions of life are extremely bad as from deprivation or oppression or terror), all hands are needed on deck.”