The Story Of Offred's Struggle In Gilead

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Atwood made Offred have limited ethos in order to make the narration and the story of Offred and her struggles in Gilead realistic and believable. The government banned education and censored everything that Offred is being exposed to in order to restrict and control her thoughts, knowledge and her mind. They also effectively used coercion and instilled fear into Offred to make her follow the strict anti-feminist rules in Gilead.
The strict censorship on everything being heard or seen by Offred combined with the ban on education populated her mind with what the government desires which lowers Offred’s ethos. The only thing the Handmaids we able to read in the society and on the streets is the picture language. For example, when Offred went grocery shopping she mentioned “Next we go into AllFresh, which is marked by a large wooden pork chop hanging from two chains” (34). This shows that the education received and the knowledge HandMaid’s have is totally controlled by the government because the girls only know how to read pictures and the government only has pictures of simple things like street signs, shop names to limit and control what they read. Also, the girls are being brain washed into thinking the way the government wants them to in the “Red Center”. An example of this can be found in a comment Offred makes about the Beatitudes being read to them in the Red Center. She mentions, “They played it from a tape, so not even an aunt would be guilty of the sin of reading…Blessed be the meek. Blessed are the silent. I knew they made that up, I knew it was wrong, and they left things out, too, but there was no way if checking” (110-11). This indicates that the government censors everything that the girls are being exposed to in orde...

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...ote shows one of the many ways government used to scare the citizens in Gilead to get them to obey the laws. The government killed and hung people on the wall for the public to view. This scared everyone because they know that if they do anything against the government, the next body hanging on the wall could be theirs. This fear resulted in Offred following the rules and made her do whatever it takes to survive safely in Gilead. Handmaids in Gilead had only one job which was to make babies with the commander they were assigned to. The Handmaids that failed to do so are either sent to the colony or if rebelled, got killed. Offred explains this fear of not fulfilling the expectations by saying, “Each month I watched for blood, fearfully, for which it means failure. I have failed once again to fulfill the expectations of others, which have become my own” (Atwood, 91).

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