A Wall In-Between

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Recommended: Literary devices in the handmaids tale

On August 13, 1961, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) constructed the Berlin Wall to prevent its citizen from leaving the country (Frederick Taylor, US News.com). For twenty-eight years, the Berlin Wall completely detached West Berlin, isolating its population from the remaining human race. Margaret Atwood represents this real experience in the novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Instead of dividing a large population, Atwood conveys the Harvard University perimeter wall as a divider between oneself and the people around them. Through this, Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaids Tale demonstrates how the author uses physiological object of the wall to reveal the barriers between the characters, physically and emotionally.

Atwood’s description of the Harvard Wall presents a setting that is intimidating, daunting, and rigidly regulated. We can identify with the fearsome image Atwood describes because we can all picture a common jail cell. The cold brick walls “and barbed wire along the bottom… they are ugly” (31). The walls themselves create and image of fear within the human mind however, it is what is in or on these walls that frightens the mind the most. In prisons we commonly think of the punishment is a hidden form of isolation, humiliation and/or torture, for the misbehaved. The Harvard wall publicly displays these methods of punishment through the form of lynching. This is a method used by Atwood to convey the significance of the wall and the use of fear produced by the Gilead society to create a barrier. “But on one bag there's blood, which has seeped through the white cloth. . . This smile of blood is what fixes the attention finally” (32). As Atwood clearly states, the men who are hanging on the wall are meant to frighten peop...

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...hysical object of the wall and the clothing connect to the emotional separation of the multiple characters by the fear and barriers set by the Gilead government. The fear and barriers come from the Harvard wall an image depicted by Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid’s Tale. The Novel additionally utilizes the image of the wall to show the physical and emotional boundaries it creates within its characters. Borders are created throughout the novel, through clothing, through fear and through people.

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986. Print.

Collins English Dictionary. London: Collins, 2009. Print.

Taylor, Frederick. "The Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall." US News. U.S.News & World Report, 13 Nov. 2008. Web. 02 Apr. 2012.

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