Fear is one of the strongest emotions humans often experience. It influences our thoughts, feelings, and behaviour. Respect and fear are closely linked and have similar effects on others. Some national leaders command respect, while others demand it. Leaders who demand respect are often more powerful and influential, asserting control through fear. These leaders instill fear in their citizens, requiring their citizens to conform to their ideologies and customs. This theme of fear of control is prominently seen in dystopian literature such as George Orwell’s 1984 and Margarette Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. These leaders predominantly use surveillance and manipulation tactics, including propaganda, as a means to gain control and respect through …show more content…
They are used to control a population or group of people. Censorship is inhibitory and restrictive, while propaganda evokes constructive and emotional feelings in the consumer. Censorship derives from power and force from fear and the threats of power, while propaganda uses the emotions of the consumer to manipulate its audience. Fear through censorship prevents the expression of opinion and personal thoughts. In George Orwell’s 1984, the Ministry of Truth constantly manipulates the citizens of Oceania by rewriting history, censoring media, implementing “thought crimes”, and using propaganda to create falsified feelings and beliefs. This abuse of manipulation can be seen in these passages from 1984: “Moreover, to be efficient it was necessary to be able to learn from the past, which meant having a fairly accurate idea of what had happened in the past. Newspapers and history books were, of course, always coloured and biased, but falsification of the kind that is practised today would have been impossible” (Orwell 251). This passage explores the idea of how the media and history books are being censored by Big Brother in an attempt to control their citizens' knowledge, ideas, and beliefs; “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” (103), this passage explains Big Brother's approach to their censorship and propaganda along with controlling thought. They force their citizens to accept what Big Brother tells them and ignore whatever else they may think and believe from any information besides theirs; ‘Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and
This collective whole is easily controlled and manipulated. Society has always been troubled by the idea of overpowering control. In George Orwell's 1984, humanity is dominated by an extreme government whose intent is to abolish all aspects of freedom. Orwell indicates that when subjected to mass propaganda and intimidation, the ignorant majority’s memory and concept of truth are distorted, making them extremely malleable and subservient. The Party employs slogans to convince the ignorant that what they want is what they already have.
The belief that a government is always watching their citizens can control people’s thoughts and propaganda can help to establish this belief. The leader of a totalitarian government is often “omnipresent, all-knowing, larger than life and half-divine” (Roelofs 4). An omnipresent leader can institute an extreme level of obedience into the citizens of their country because the citizens may conclude that the government could determine if the citizens support most of the government’s actions by analyzing videos or other visual evidence collected by the government. The leader can force the citizens to act in a similar way to help create a sense of unity. In 1984, Big Brother is omnipresent and spies on all of the citizens of Oceania through the façade of moving eyes on the posters that say “Big Brother is watching you” (Varricchio 7). The moving eyes of Big Brother demonstrate that Big Brother watches all of the citizens of Oceania all of the time since the average citizen of Oceania is unable ...
Thesis Statement: Both 1984 by George Orwell and The Handmaid 's Tale by Margaret Atwood are similar as they are placed in dystopian societies with governments that have complete control over their citizens, however, the roles of the narrator in both novels contrast each other. In 1984, the point of view is Limited Omniscient while the point of view in The Handmaid 's Tale is first person.
sharing the surname of so many others, but also has the ring of a hero
The ability to create life is an amazing thing but being forced to have children for strangers is not so amazing. Offred is a handmaid, handmaid's have children for government officials, such as Commander Waterford. Offred used to be married to Luke and together they had a daughter but then everything changed; Offred was separated from her family and assigned to a family as their handmaid. The society which Offred is forced to live in shaped her in many ways. In The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood uses cultural and geographical surroundings to shape Offred's psychological and moral traits as she tries to survive the society that she is forced to live, in hopes that she can rebel and make change.
The oxford dictionary refers to the word “utopia” as being a place of “paradise, heaven on earth” as well as perfection. It can be labeled as a place that is the most desirable in any nation on earth and can sum up what we as humans search for. “A Handmaid’s Tale” depicts a twisted, yet not to far off, version of our country not to long ago when we lived in the opposite of this so-called paradise. No word can describe this story better than the opposite of utopia, a “dystopian” society. The entire U.S. government fell into a dystopian-type ruling when the very laws created by the government served to treat women as no more than maids and harlots. In this chaotic story, Margaret Atwood depicts a society where men and women fall into the rules of the old testament based on older beliefs describing women as lesser individuals compared to men. Atwood shows the similarities between the Republic of Gilead and the way we used to see the roles of women as well as some aspects of society today. Her overall reason for creating this story is to show her readers around the world the scary truth and effects of the belittlement of women and disregarding them as more than just wives and housemaids.
In the dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood describes a totalitarian and oppressive society that seeks to place every person into an orderly box. But, people being individuals, conflict arises. Atwood uses this heightened setting in order to explore the larger role of individuals. The Handmaid’s Tale poses the dilemma of being uncertain of one’s place in society and of how power affects one’s place in society.
The Handmaid's Dystopia The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood is a dystopian tale about a world where unrealistic things take place. The events in the novel could never actually take place in our reality." This is what most people think and assume, but they"re wrong. Look at the world today and in the recent past, and there are not only many situations that have ALMOST become a Gilead, but places that have been and ARE Gileadean societies. We're not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy! Even today, there are places in the world where there is a startling similarity to this fictitious dystopia.
Both worlds of The Handmaid's Tale and 1984 are governed by a party or group which strictly monitor most aspects of the lives of its civilians. This imposing form of government is generally described as totalitarian and is heavily present throughout both novels. The "Dystopian" genre is named so due to its opposition to the rather more common idea of "utopia", a world of impracticable perfection in which a common goal of peace is pivotal.
Offred is a Handmaid in what used to be the United States, now the theocratic Republic of Gilead. In order to create Gilead's idea of a more perfect society, they have reverted to taking the Book of Genesis at its word. Women no longer have any privileges; they cannot work, have their own bank accounts, or own anything. The also are not allowed to read or even chose who they want to marry. Women are taught that they should be subservient to men and should only be concerned with bearing children. Margaret Atwood writes The Handmaid's Tale (1986) as to create a dystopia. A dystopia is an imaginary place where the condition of life is extremely bad, from deprivation, oppression, or terror. Three ways she displays the dystopia are through the characters, the language and the symbolism.
In the two dystopic novels, The Handmaid's Tale by Margret Atwood and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, they lack essentials freedoms that are necessary for a functioning society to exist. In these novels, each individual in the society has been deprived of their freedoms by their government Their particular government has made sure to control every aspect that makes us human such as our individuality, knowledge, and the relationships we from with others. Both of these governments share a common goal, which is to create stability in a weak society.
Dystopian novels such as Orwell’s totalitarian ‘1984’, and Atwood’s theocratic ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, explore how governmental bodies often misuse the power that they have in order to exert their own complete control of their society. Both novels enforce this through the use of surveillance, the inclusion of public acts of hatred and. This is done so regimes can ensure that they have complete control over their society, ensuring none may feel the need to start rebelling against them, some going to the extent of murder to ensure this, all whilst completely misusing the power they have. Both Orwells totalitarian ‘1984’ and Atwoods theocratic ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, feature their regimes using their overwhelming power over their citizens in order
Εὐδαιμονία often referred to in the English language as happiness, is Aristotle’s idea of what happens when a person lives ethically and morally in search of the good that will make a person truly happy. Although it would be more realistically translated as well-being, prosperity or flourishing, his view on happiness is more to do with the mental health of an individual. Εὐδαιμονία is one of the few things that is pursued for its own sake, one does not try to obtain it for any other purpose or person, this means it has a complete end and is final.
In Some societies extreme religious laws and rules is followed as a solution to problems. Allowing religious fundamentalists to run a regime can lead to injustice, for certain people in the regime. In the Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaids tale such things like these take place where freedom is revoked and nightmares are reality for the women of Gilead. The novel presents as a totalitarian society where there is a governing system in which a ruling command holds all power and controls everything in the society. The regime takes it laws very strict because these laws are said to be of god and by disobeying the government the people are disobeying God. The narrator reminds us that there are freedom but
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a compelling tale of a dystopian world where men are the superior sex and women are reduced to their ability to bear children, and when that is gone, they are useless. The story is a very critical analysis of patriarchy and how patriarchal values, when taken to the extreme, affect society as a whole. The result is a very detrimental world, where the expectation is that everyone will be happy and content but the reality is anything but. The world described in The Handmaid’s tale is one that is completely ruled by patriarchal values, which is not unlike our society today.