DYSTOPIAN AO5
Dark Knowledge in ‘THT’, Jeanne Campbell Reesman
● “It’s heroine’s voice offers a moving testament to the power of language to transform
reality in order to overcome oppressive designs imposed on human beings”
● Atwood on why she sets THT in America even though she is Canadian:
○ “The States are more extreme in everything”
○ “The mindset of Gilead is really close to that of the seventeenth century
Puritans”
● “Because Offred is prohibited from addressing other women and from forming
relationships with them, she must survive male oppression of her voice and body and
make her address to women and men in another society outside her prison of
silence”
● “Writers often employ metaphors in order to shock the reader into rejecting limited,
patriarchal epistemologies of language and knowledge”
● Dickinson and Atwood
○ “In Dickinson and Atwood, sun and light, identified with male values, are
described as the burning rays of a relentless Eye of cruel, judgemental
knowledge, while darkness and even confinement are setting for these
women speakers’ healing dialogue with readers”
○ They “suggest that darkness is nourishing to those who flee the barren life of
the single Eye”
○ “Though their narrators’ voices, Dickinson and Atwood violate traditional
notions of truth”
● “It is Offred’s voice that frees her from victimisation in Gilead”
● Amin Malak: from it’s sleepy, disjointed beginning, her narrative voice “is steadily and
imperceptibly, yet convincingly, transfigured into a full-roundness” and this “parallels
her maturing comprehension of what is happening around her”
● General knowledge
○ Nuclear war and world-wide pollution have rendered most people sterile, most
particularly the vaguely WASP-y leaders of society
○ Handmaids are indoctrinated into a definition of femininity imposed on them,
involving emotional and physical manipulation (cattle prods)
● Handmaid’s clothes
○ Handmaids wear red - instantly visibly in this muted world
○ “Their brightly coloured gowns, however, define them as objects to be looked
at”
○ The wings keep their faces out of site and keep the world out of their vision
● Interesting bits
○ When Handmaids go on walks (shopping), the shops have signs in the form
of pictured to keep them from reading anything
○ Offred worked as a librarian, keeper of words, before Gilead - why she uses
interesting language
● “Her voice breaks the barriers of time and place and constitutes a leap of faith from
the mechanisms of her society’s male and female roles”
● The story is a “testament to the power of words over everything else”
● Light and dark
, ○ “Light is the province of the male Establishment, while darkness is associated
with women”
○ “The men fear the dark, and the women fear the light, but each aspires to the
other’s status”
○ Commander: plays scrabble, goes to Jezebels - he’s attracted to darkness -
also emphasis by his black suit and car
○ Offred pursues the dark as an escape - meetings with Nick in the night,
memories in the night of Moira, whisper between Handmaids in the dark
○ “Darkness furnishes the women with a hiding place from oppression, but the
light also keeps them there”
● Enclosure as a theme
○ “Enclosure itself is cleverly “enclosed” by freedom in the narrative structure as
well as narrative voice”
○ Chapter titles alternate - shopping and night
○ The garden at Commander’s house is an enclosure sharply defined by a
gravel path
● “Under His Eye” - characterises the male-defined rules concerning the appearance of
the women and men
● “Underground code word, ‘Mayday’, (is) an allusion to May 1, the traditional holiday
of the mother Goddess”
○ Ritual of particicution was practised by Goddess-worshippers as solstices and
equinoxes
○ ‘Feminine’ rituals (like particicution) have been appropriated by the patriarchy
and falsely presented to the women as their own
○ Even appendix shows the continuation of oppression of women though softer
and subtler in form
● Offred’s punning reduces the power of the Commander by reversing the usual
positions of power being described
○ “The power of the phallus is challenged by the power of her words”
● Image clusters of eggs run throughout the novel
○ Eggs Offred eats each morning to the eggs she hopes will become fertilized
within her
○ Her desires to conceive so she will be freed from the danger of becoming an
‘unwoman’
● “Her narrative, reversing both the phallogocentrism of Gilead and her logophagy in
the Scrabble games, itself becomes her longed-for birth act”
○ Phallogocentrism = privileging of the masculine (phallus) in understanding
meaning/ societal norms
○ Logophagy = ingestion of words
● Offred’s inner voice “transcends the terrible world it describes, breaking through the
womb-trap of biological determination and giving birth to a new word and world at the
same time”
● “In her developing wit and poetry lies her power” (her word play on ‘egg’)
● The ending
○ Because it preserves the novel’s openness, the sudden and ambiguous
ending is strangely satisfying
○ “‘Historical Notes’ present a better world but not a perfect one”
Dark Knowledge in ‘THT’, Jeanne Campbell Reesman
● “It’s heroine’s voice offers a moving testament to the power of language to transform
reality in order to overcome oppressive designs imposed on human beings”
● Atwood on why she sets THT in America even though she is Canadian:
○ “The States are more extreme in everything”
○ “The mindset of Gilead is really close to that of the seventeenth century
Puritans”
● “Because Offred is prohibited from addressing other women and from forming
relationships with them, she must survive male oppression of her voice and body and
make her address to women and men in another society outside her prison of
silence”
● “Writers often employ metaphors in order to shock the reader into rejecting limited,
patriarchal epistemologies of language and knowledge”
● Dickinson and Atwood
○ “In Dickinson and Atwood, sun and light, identified with male values, are
described as the burning rays of a relentless Eye of cruel, judgemental
knowledge, while darkness and even confinement are setting for these
women speakers’ healing dialogue with readers”
○ They “suggest that darkness is nourishing to those who flee the barren life of
the single Eye”
○ “Though their narrators’ voices, Dickinson and Atwood violate traditional
notions of truth”
● “It is Offred’s voice that frees her from victimisation in Gilead”
● Amin Malak: from it’s sleepy, disjointed beginning, her narrative voice “is steadily and
imperceptibly, yet convincingly, transfigured into a full-roundness” and this “parallels
her maturing comprehension of what is happening around her”
● General knowledge
○ Nuclear war and world-wide pollution have rendered most people sterile, most
particularly the vaguely WASP-y leaders of society
○ Handmaids are indoctrinated into a definition of femininity imposed on them,
involving emotional and physical manipulation (cattle prods)
● Handmaid’s clothes
○ Handmaids wear red - instantly visibly in this muted world
○ “Their brightly coloured gowns, however, define them as objects to be looked
at”
○ The wings keep their faces out of site and keep the world out of their vision
● Interesting bits
○ When Handmaids go on walks (shopping), the shops have signs in the form
of pictured to keep them from reading anything
○ Offred worked as a librarian, keeper of words, before Gilead - why she uses
interesting language
● “Her voice breaks the barriers of time and place and constitutes a leap of faith from
the mechanisms of her society’s male and female roles”
● The story is a “testament to the power of words over everything else”
● Light and dark
, ○ “Light is the province of the male Establishment, while darkness is associated
with women”
○ “The men fear the dark, and the women fear the light, but each aspires to the
other’s status”
○ Commander: plays scrabble, goes to Jezebels - he’s attracted to darkness -
also emphasis by his black suit and car
○ Offred pursues the dark as an escape - meetings with Nick in the night,
memories in the night of Moira, whisper between Handmaids in the dark
○ “Darkness furnishes the women with a hiding place from oppression, but the
light also keeps them there”
● Enclosure as a theme
○ “Enclosure itself is cleverly “enclosed” by freedom in the narrative structure as
well as narrative voice”
○ Chapter titles alternate - shopping and night
○ The garden at Commander’s house is an enclosure sharply defined by a
gravel path
● “Under His Eye” - characterises the male-defined rules concerning the appearance of
the women and men
● “Underground code word, ‘Mayday’, (is) an allusion to May 1, the traditional holiday
of the mother Goddess”
○ Ritual of particicution was practised by Goddess-worshippers as solstices and
equinoxes
○ ‘Feminine’ rituals (like particicution) have been appropriated by the patriarchy
and falsely presented to the women as their own
○ Even appendix shows the continuation of oppression of women though softer
and subtler in form
● Offred’s punning reduces the power of the Commander by reversing the usual
positions of power being described
○ “The power of the phallus is challenged by the power of her words”
● Image clusters of eggs run throughout the novel
○ Eggs Offred eats each morning to the eggs she hopes will become fertilized
within her
○ Her desires to conceive so she will be freed from the danger of becoming an
‘unwoman’
● “Her narrative, reversing both the phallogocentrism of Gilead and her logophagy in
the Scrabble games, itself becomes her longed-for birth act”
○ Phallogocentrism = privileging of the masculine (phallus) in understanding
meaning/ societal norms
○ Logophagy = ingestion of words
● Offred’s inner voice “transcends the terrible world it describes, breaking through the
womb-trap of biological determination and giving birth to a new word and world at the
same time”
● “In her developing wit and poetry lies her power” (her word play on ‘egg’)
● The ending
○ Because it preserves the novel’s openness, the sudden and ambiguous
ending is strangely satisfying
○ “‘Historical Notes’ present a better world but not a perfect one”
