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Week13 : The Handmaid’s Tale (6pt)

12/5/2020

I decided to revisit The Handmaid’s tale that I read a couple years ago. I noticed the resistance and the subversion in the novel seem really restrained. I kind of see it as an internal form of resistance or subversion. I think since they are not fully brainwashed but are living under that system, they can not really do anything but thinking about that in their heads even though they know what is wrong or right. They surely are the presentations of the opposite attitudes toward a pressing authority. I think it’s because of the situation the characters are in, which is a strict and over conservative, “protective”, society. One of the examples is when Offred comes back from shopping at the grocery and met Nick who was still polishing the Whirlwind. He “looks up and begins to whistle. Then he says, “Nice walk?” to her, and this is considered prohibited. However, Offred quotes what Aunt Lydia saying “ They can’t help it, she said, God made them that way but He did not make you that way. He made you different.” I think she uses this quote to explain why Nick would do such a risky action, but at the same time, I think she is also satirizing the relationship between men and women has to be so constrained even if it’s just human nature. Another example is more towards internal resistance and subversion, and I think the front half of the novel that I’ve read is full of this kind of resistance and subversion. In Offred’s narrative, there are always expressions of resistance and subversion. They are usually comparisons of the life she used to have or her instant real thoughts of the event was happening. When Offred is upstairs and sees the Commander coming out of the house, she critiques his appearance and thinks “If I could spit, out the window, or throw something, the cushion for instance, I might be able to hit him.”

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