How Does Margaret Atwood Use Power In The Handmaids Tale

In today’s society, it is necessary to impose a substantial amount of power and control for a government to function properly. However, too much power takes away freedom, and the ability to live an ordinary life. The novel, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood demonstrates a dystopic vision on the abuse of power. Atwood creates an imaginary futuristic new society called, the Republic of Gilead that abruptly strips away the freedom of women. Offred, the narrator of the novel is a Handmaid. The Handmaid’s are the ones with the least amount of power. The highest at power are the Commanders; the dictators of Gilead. Throughout the novel, Offred explains how the Republic of Gilead began and how Gilead maintains its power. In the novel, power is

illustrated in many different manners.

The Handmaid’s Tale shows how Gilead manipulates power through fear, communication, and reproduction control.
Fear is a feeling everyone has experienced at one time or another. Some people live in constant fear; of accidents, of bad people doing harm, of heights, of spiders, etc. Fear is everywhere and is hard to escape. In the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, there is a state of constant fear. The Wall is a method of fear that Gilead instills in its people. The Wall holds all of those who have committed acts against the government. In the novel, Offred states, “We stop, together as if on signal, and stand and look at the bodies. It doesn’t matter if we look. We’re supposed to look: this is what they are there for, hanging on the Wall. Sometimes they’ll be there for days, until there’s a new batch, so as many people as possible will have the chance to see them” (Atwood 32). The Wall is a symbol for sin and it creates fear in the Republic of Gilead. It is a warning to all the people that

if the set rules aren’t obeyed this will be there punishment. Another form of fear is the spies, known as the Eyes. In the novel, the Eyes represents paranoia, surveillance, and Gilead’s authority. Everyone in Gilead is always being watched. “I wonder who told them. It could have been a neighbour, watching our car pull out from the driveway in the morning, acting on a hunch, tipping them off for a gold star on someone’s list. It could even have been the man who got us the passports; why not get paid twice? Like them, even, to plant the passport forgers themselves, a net for the unwary. The Eyes of God run over all the earth”(Atwood 193). This explains how the “spies” are always watching and how they are symbol for God that God knows and sees everything that happens in the Republic of Gilead. This influences the people of Gilead to be cautious with their actions and that no one can be trusted.
Throughout the novel, Offred desperately seeks the communication she is being denied.

In the Republic of Gilead women are denied to communicate with anyone. They are not read nor write and are required to speak a certain way. The Republic of Gilead uses religious language to help maintain the theocratic dictatorship. “Blessed be the fruit,” she says to me, the accepted greeting among us. “May the Lord open,” I answer, the accepted response” (Atwood 19). They are forced to use prescribed greetings for personal encounters, and if you fail to use the correct greetings you are to punished. “I go to the window and sit on the window seat, which is too narrow for comfort. There’s a hard little cushion on it, with a petit-point cover: FAITH, in square print, surrounded by a wreath of lilies. FAITH is a faded blue, the leaves of the lilies a dingy green. This is a cushion once used elsewhere, worn but not enough to throw out. Somehow it’s been overlooked. I can spend minutes, tens of minutes, running my eyes over the print: FAITH. It’s the only thing they’ve given me to read. If I were caught doing it, would it count? I didn’t put the cushion here myself”(Atwood 57). This pillow is a symbol of Offred’s freedom. This is the first thing she has been able to read. Though, she still is cautious and worries that if she were caught reading it she would be punished. This language and set rules they are forced to use and follow brainwashes individuals to come accustomed to the new life of

Gilead and to slowly forget what “Pre-Gilead” used to be like.
Most women in Gilead are infertile. The few fertile women are known as “Handmaids”; the “breeding tool” of the Republic of Gilead. The infertile lower-class women are "Marthas”; who are the house servants. The infertile higher-class women are known as the wives; the ones who take care of the handmaid’s child when born. No women in the Republic of Gilead are allowed to be openly sexual; sex is for reproduction only. “My red skirt is hitched up to my waist, though no higher. Below it the Commander fucking. What he is fucking is the lower part of my body. I do not say making love, because this is not what he’s doing. Copulating too would be inaccurate, because it would imply two people and only one is involved. Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I haven’t signed up for. There wasn’t a lot of choice but there was some, and this is what I chose”(Atwood 94).This represents how the Handmaids are forced to have sexual interactions with the Commanders. The Handmaids are only viewed as objects, they have no control over their bodies they are used over and over again. Their only purpose for life is to reproduce and if they could not fulfil their duty they were categorized as Unwomen. “Unwomen were always wasting time. They were encouraged to do it. The government gave them money to do that very thing” (Atwood 118, 119). The term “Unwomen” shows how in Gilead, as in any totalitarian society, it dehumanizes women to make them feel useless and powerless.