Censorship
The Handmaid Tale’s Quotes:
● "they only show us victories, never defeats"
● "An uncoordinated wink at the camera. They'll never show it of course; this isn't
live"
● "oasis of the forbidden" - from a psychoanalytic perspective, we can interpret
reading as being one of Offred’s desires because she calls books an “oasis”
- something people of dream of
Context:
● Nixon threatened to have journalists indicted for treason when they released
documents which showed that US leaders wished to prolong and escalate the
unpopular war
● "During my visits to several countries behind the Iron Curtain, experienced the
wariness, the feeling of being spied on, the oblique ways in which people were
conveying information, and these had an influence on what I was writing"
● Critic Amin Malak, "The state in Gilead prescribes a pattern of life, based on
frugality, conformity, censorship and corruption"
● Mario Klarer - "Women from all classes of society ... are excluded from any
kind of written discourse."
● Alternative interpretation - TV show, s4, some handmaids have mouth rings
to prevent them from speaking
F451 Quotes:
● They didn't want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the
wrong kind of social life. People talked too much. And they had time to think."
●
● "No, houses have always been fireproof, take my word for it."
●
● Coloured people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good
about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer
of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book."
Context:
● German Student Union book burnings of anything that opposed the ideology of
nazism
●
● Japanese textbooks rewritten to create a sense of national pride
●
The Handmaid Tale’s Quotes:
● "they only show us victories, never defeats"
● "An uncoordinated wink at the camera. They'll never show it of course; this isn't
live"
● "oasis of the forbidden" - from a psychoanalytic perspective, we can interpret
reading as being one of Offred’s desires because she calls books an “oasis”
- something people of dream of
Context:
● Nixon threatened to have journalists indicted for treason when they released
documents which showed that US leaders wished to prolong and escalate the
unpopular war
● "During my visits to several countries behind the Iron Curtain, experienced the
wariness, the feeling of being spied on, the oblique ways in which people were
conveying information, and these had an influence on what I was writing"
● Critic Amin Malak, "The state in Gilead prescribes a pattern of life, based on
frugality, conformity, censorship and corruption"
● Mario Klarer - "Women from all classes of society ... are excluded from any
kind of written discourse."
● Alternative interpretation - TV show, s4, some handmaids have mouth rings
to prevent them from speaking
F451 Quotes:
● They didn't want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the
wrong kind of social life. People talked too much. And they had time to think."
●
● "No, houses have always been fireproof, take my word for it."
●
● Coloured people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good
about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer
of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book."
Context:
● German Student Union book burnings of anything that opposed the ideology of
nazism
●
● Japanese textbooks rewritten to create a sense of national pride
●
