Religion and Language in Dystopian Literature

Preface

This is the extended essay I submitted back in 11th grade as part of the IB diploma programme. Initially, I had hoped to pursue a topic in Computer Science or Math given my strong interest in those subjects. Unfortunately, limited advisor availability led me to choose English instead. Still, I'm rather satisfied with the outcome, especially since English isn't really my strong suit. It may sound cliche, but I guess that goes to show that it's possible to experience success in areas outside of your perceived strengths as long as you put in the effort. In any case, I hope future IB students will find my essay to be a useful resource during their own research and writing process. Even if you are not an IB student, you are welcome to read it!

Research Question

How is state control of religion and language used to establish a patriarchal society in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale?

Introduction

The Handmaid’s Tale was published in 1985, one year after the time George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984 takes place. Like 1984, which preceded it, The Handmaid’s Tale offers a glimpse into a possible future in which a longstanding liberal democracy is suddenly transformed into a totalitarian state. The main distinction between the two being is that in Atwood’s world, the focus is on a society embracing a return to so-called traditional values, as opposed to one departing from the beliefs of the past.

Before writing the novel, Atwood set a rule to not include any event in history that had not already transpired. The Islamic revolution in Iran in 1978-1979, for example, saw the former Iranian government replaced by a theocracy that greatly restricted the rights of women, much like in Atwood’s novel. So, while the premise of the story might at first seem to lack plausibility, its contents are in fact a chilling reflection of the past. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood attempts to warn her readers of how such a drastic event could occur in the United States under the right circumstances. To make such an argument convincing, she focuses on the implications of state control over religion and language on the political, social, and cultural climate of a region.

This essay aims to investigate the ways religion and language are used to justify the creation of a patriarchal society in The Handmaid’s Tale by examining the various authorial choices and themes present in the book. Although the scope of this essay is mainly limited to this novel, secondary sources such as passages from the Bible will be used to supplement the analysis of the author’s choices when appropriate.

Background

The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood set in an alternate timeline in which the US government is overthrown in a violent religious coup and replaced by the theocratic and totalitarian state of the Republic of Gilead. The novel’s central character, a woman referred to in the novel only by the name Offred, serves as a Handmaid to one of the Commanders responsible for running the nation. Although she used to have a family, including a loving husband and daughter, she has since been separated from them, with little idea of their current whereabouts, or if they are even still alive. The main source of conflict throughout the novel is her struggle to retain some semblance of her past identity, all while the state gradually increases its control over every aspect of her life, through both its enforcement of strict religious values and its control over language.

The Handmaids are essentially walking wombs whose only purpose is to conceive children for the households of the Commanders, high-ranking men in charge of Gilead. Although the existence of such a forced relationship is typically seen, by our standards, as morally reprehensible, it is justified by the Biblical story of Rachel and Leah, in which Jacob’s wife Rachel, unable to bear any children herself, wishes for Billah, her handmaid to bear her children for her:

And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die. And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel: and he said, Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her” (King James Bible, Genesis. 30.1-3).

The center the Handmaids are re-educated in is referred to as the Rachel and Leah Center, though all the Handmaids call it the Red Center. The color red not only makes them easier for the Guardians to see but also echoes their purpose in Gileadean society, as red is the same color as menstrual blood.

Religious Ceremonies

Atwood gradually reveals to us the true extent of Gilead’s control over the post-democratic American society she has constructed through not only Offred’s interactions with other characters, but also, and perhaps most prominently, through Offred’s experiences participating in Gilead’s many religious ceremonies. These various customs and practices Gilead has developed serve to subjugate the population and further the regime’s goals.

One such practice, named the Ceremony, occurs at the start of each month and is essentially a highly ritualized rape by which Commanders have sex with their Handmaids in an attempt to conceive children. (Because of the accumulation of toxic chemicals and nuclear waste in the environment, most people in Gilead have become infertile and are no longer capable of producing offspring.) In a way, the Ceremony serves a necessary function in Gileadean society. However, the sheer weight of the religious undertones present throughout the entire process seems to imply something far deeper and more meaningful than what actually occurs. In Offred’s own words, “I do not say making love, because this is not what he’s doing” (Atwood, 94). From the stiff and forced readings of cherry-picked stories from the Bible, to the awkward way in which the Handmaid, Wife, and Commander must be positioned in the bed to symbolize that they are “one flesh, one being,” to the fact that the ceiling lights are kept on to remove any semblance of a romantic atmosphere, all of this is an attempt by the state to justify and moralize the barbarity of what is actually happening by invoking the weight of the divine and camouflaging it with religious iconography (94).

Ironically, in trying to create meaning through its various formalities and allusions to the Bible, the Ceremony becomes a gross parody of the meaningful religious ceremonies that it attempts to imitate. More importantly, however, the Ceremony highlights how religion is only being used by those in power when it is convenient or aligns with their narrative. For example, the state claims that in the time before Gilead existed, society was structured in such a way that women were routinely victimized by men, but that since the establishment of the current regime, “[women] are protected, [and] they can fulfill their biological destinies in peace.” Yet in true hypocritical fashion, the state now subjects women to the same cruel fate it claims to be protecting them from, thus showing how backwards and shallow their religious beliefs really are. Rather than entirely eliminate rape, they have instead redefined the meaning of the term to give the Ceremony the guise of being a moral alternative, when it is functionally the same.

The Particicution is another tradition that Gilead practices, but unlike The Ceremony, it is a communal gathering only the Handmaids can partake in. The word itself is a portmanteau of the words “Participation” and “Execution,” and as the name implies, it is a kind of public execution carried out by the Handmaids. Those executed in the Particicution are typically men charged with rape or other violent crimes against Handmaids. However, it is later revealed that not all those who are convicted have committed sexual crimes against women. During the Particicution described in the novel, one of the condemned men was actually a member of the Mayday resistance, a group of rebels bent on overthrowing Gilead. We can infer that the false charges were an attempt by the government to evoke a violent reaction from the Handmaids.

While the purpose of the Particicution is not explicitly made clear, the personal nature of the crimes and the fact that the Handmaids are allowed free reign over how they choose to kill implies that it is a means for the Handmaids to release their pent-up rage after years of being deprived of their basic freedoms. Furthermore, the Particicution directly follows the Salvaging, another public execution involving women, usually Handmaids, who have committed treason against the state. As such, it’s plausible that the Handmaids see the Particicution as a sort of revenge against the system.

Despite her efforts to restrain herself, Offred finds herself in a state of euphoria: “The air is bright with adrenalin, we are permitted anything and this is freedom, in my body also, I’m reeling, red spreads everywhere” (279). The whole primal, instinctual nature of the execution is reminiscent of, or perhaps even inspired by, the village stoning that takes place in Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery”. Though both stories take place in vastly different settings, the circumstances surrounding the executions are similar: both are instances of herd mentality, both are public spectacles, and both are traditions riddled with deep religious undertones. But while the stoning in “The Lottery” is a long-established tradition that the people follow out of reverence to the past, the Particicution itself is a new practice created for the very specific purpose of satisfying the needs of the restless masses.

Lastly, the Prayvaganzas (a combination of the words “Pray” and “Extravaganza”) are public gatherings, consisting of either all men or all women, for various occasions. For the men, they are celebrations of military victories, whereas for the women, they are typically mass marriage ceremonies in which the daughters of Wives are assigned to Angels in arranged marriages. The lack of choice on the women’s part in deciding their partners is a callback to more traditional societies where such one-sided marriages were and still are commonplace, and further reinforces the patriarchal system that pervades all corners of Gileadean society.

Free will isn’t the thing being taken from the daughters, however. It is implied that many of the daughters were children stolen from their original parents, who likely refused in some way to conform to Gilead’s prescribed way of life and placed in the care of the household of a Commander and his Wife. This is done to indoctrinate the children, to implant within them the ideology of the state, as their original parents were deemed unfit to teach them the ways of society. Furthermore, this indoctrination is shown to be quite effective. When Offred is shown a photograph of her daughter, whom she hasn’t seen for many years, she realizes with great sadness that “I have been obliterated for her. I am only a shadow now, far back behind the glib shiny surface of this photograph” (228). Ultimately, the Prayvaganzas, like nearly all of the religious ceremonies in Gilead, are just another reminder to the women of the new gender hierarchy that Gilead operates under, created to reinforce the notion that they must be subservient to men.

Control of Language

Language is the primary means by which a person expresses themselves, and words are the basic unit of language. Through words, emotions are communicated, ideas are spread, thoughts are internalized, and, at a broader level, identity is formed and shaped. How a person portrays themselves through language can have a profound effect on how they are perceived, which is especially important when living in a totalitarian state such as Gilead, that seeks to root out and eliminate all dissidents. From the very beginning, Offred recognizes that in order to survive, she must carefully regulate her outward appearance and behavior, including the language she uses. “I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born” (66).

In the story, the use of language plays an instrumental part in Gilead’s rise to power. Perhaps the most prominent example of this can be found in the character of Serena Joy, the Wife of the Commander of the household Offred serves. Before Gilead, Joy was an eloquent public speaker who advocated for a return to traditional values, especially with regard to gender norms. As part of the radical religious group that would eventually found Gilead, she spoke fervently about the proper place for women in the home, where they could fully devote themselves to their husband and children, free from the many distractions and social temptations of the outside world. Her speeches about the “sanctity of the home” most certainly contributed to the movement which enabled her radical religious organization to attain power, allowing traditional beliefs commonly considered to be obsolete to gradually resurface and become increasingly acceptable in the eyes of the public (45). With the masses successfully indoctrinated, there were almost no individuals willing to oppose the religious group when it finally seized power, and the few who spoke out were quickly purged. In light of her contributions, Joy was rewarded with a life of relative comfort as the Wife of a Commander. Yet ironically, the very speeches she gave ended up rendering her speechless when the ideals she advocated for became realized, leaving her an empty shell of her former self. As Offred observes, “She stays in her home, but it doesn’t seem to agree with her. How furious she must be, now that she’s been taken at her word” (46).

In the end, Gilead came into existence via the actions of those who were playing within the boundaries set by the previous democratic system, rather than directly opposing the rules — by utilizing the right to freedom of speech, they were able to popularize their archaic ideology among the masses, ensuring that there would be little opposition when their fateful coup finally occurred. Indeed, religious rhetoric played an important part in the regime’s rise to power. However, while the suppression of language played an equally important role in its maintenance of power, the reason Gilead was able to prevent opposition from ever taking root lies not in the strict enforcement of its own ideology, but rather its suppression of any ideas that went against their narrative.

Language is the means by which rebellion comes to fruition. To have dissidence, there must first be discontent, yet it is only when that anger towards authority is translated into words that the collectively disillusioned are able to organize and meaningful action can occur. In other words, language is the vehicle through which the ideas that inspire rebellion promulgate throughout society. Thus, the group most likely to protest Gilead’s new system — women — are banned from reading and writing.

The measures taken to enforce this policy of illiteracy are quite extreme, encompassing almost all aspects of life. Books and magazines are burned. Television and radio are censored. Store signs are replaced by cutouts in the shapes of the items being sold, underscoring the lengths that the regime is willing to go just to prevent even the mere reading of a few seemingly harmless words. These strict regulations on the dissemination of language are intended to limit the range of thought, discourage discussion and interaction among women, and thereby prevent the seeds of rebellion from ever being planted.

The Handmaids, the women deemed most likely to resist the new regime, have even their very names stripped from them. Instead of names, they are designated a number, or sometimes simply referred to as the property of a certain Commander. For instance, the main protagonist Offred’s name means “belonging to Fred,” and her friend Ofglen’s name means “belonging to Glen.” At one point, Offred, trying to downplay the loss of her name, tells herself that “it doesn’t matter, your name is like your telephone number, useful only to others,” only to later realize that “what I tell myself is wrong, it does matter” (84). Despite her best efforts to forget it, Offred acknowledges that the name she was born with is meaningful in its own right. It serves as a vital link between the false persona of a Handmaid she wears in front of others and her prior identity, which is rapidly vanishing under the oppression of the new regime. It qualifies her as a unique individual, rather than another cog in the machinery that is Gileadean society. Without one, she is no different from a nameless tool to be first exploited by the state before getting tossed away. By stripping her of her name, Gilead intends to erase all ties to her past self and remold her into something without any sense of individuality, a subhuman being that simply accepts their current situation as it is and conforms to the role given to them.

Throughout history, there have been countless instances of governments, authoritarian and democratic alike, attempting to subjugate and dehumanize certain parts of the population through various means. Jews under Nazi occupation were forced to wear demeaning armbands and sent en masse to concentration camps, where, like the Handmaids, they were assigned numbers. African slaves living in 19th century America were banned from owning property or anything that might be considered their own, including ownership of their own children. But regardless of the method, such directed acts of systematic oppression have always inflicted significant psychological damage on the groups being victimized. Many were left so traumatized that they simply lost sight of who they were, rendering them incapable of fighting back against their subjugators. Similarly, the Handmaids have been dehumanized to the point of resigned acceptance of their situation.

In addition to names, greetings, too, are heavily regulated and carry significant religious connotations. The standard greeting in Gilead is “Blessed be the fruit,” to which the common reply is “May the Lord open” (19). The former is likely an allusion to “The Hail Mary,” a traditional Christian prayer, in which “the fruit of thy womb” clearly refers to the process of childbirth (King James Bible, Luke. 1.42). The latter is perhaps a spin on the many priestly blessings that begin with “May the Lord bless”. Rather than bless the Handmaids, however, the regime is only interested in babies that they may deliver, wishing instead for their wombs to be “opened”. These greeting phrases not only act as a daily reminder of the duty the Handmaids must faithfully execute for the nation but also their position as second-class citizens who must carry the burden of childbirth in the place of the Wives. Subtleties like this demonstrate the careful conditioning that takes place within Gilead. While on the surface, such minute procedures seem difficult to enforce, the regime makes it clear that disobedience of any kind will not be tolerated.

The Eyes of the Lord, or more simply known as the Eyes, act as the secret police, keeping a watchful eye over the populace and stifling insurrectionist activity before it can spread. That any person might be an Eye is enough to leave people wary and distrustful of others, and their mere existence ensures that everyone is kept in a permanent state of fear, preventing anyone from saying or doing anything that might remotely suggest insurgency. Offred herself believes that they are omnipresent, remarking that “The Eyes of God run over all the earth” following her failed attempt to cross the border with her family in the early days of Gilead, presumably after one of her neighbors reported her (Atwood, 193). As a result, even something as insignificant as failing to use the proper greeting can be dangerous, as it suggests defiance against the regime’s carefully ordained rules.

These linguistic formalities influence a person’s conscious awareness and regulation of their behavior to such a degree that they are not willing to say anything other than that which has been officially approved. When Offred’s Commander used the greeting “Hello,” she was stunned, having not heard it spoken in so many years that it seemed “a flip backward in time” (137). Rules which are supposedly universal do not seem to apply equally to everyone, as seen in the Commander’s blatant usage of the banned greeting. Clearly, the regime does not enforce its restriction of language on men to the same extent it does for women. Yet despite the regime’s best efforts to suppress language, Offred and a few of the other Handmaids still find their own subtle ways to subvert the system. ‘Mayday’ is a key phrase used by those among the resistance to identify each other. By cleverly fitting the two words together in their dialogue, Handmaids are able to communicate to one another their camaraderie and indulge in a kind of shared defiance.

The formation of these ‘unspoken pacts’ is not the only instance of unauthorized collaboration between Handmaids. In the cupboard in Offred’s room, the previous Handmaid inscribed a message in Latin in a small corner hidden by the shadows: “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum,” which translates to “Don’t let the bastards grind you down” (52). Offred finds herself feeling sympathetic towards the anonymous Handmaid’s situation. Although she initially cannot understand the meaning behind the phrase, given that she has never learned Latin, she surmises that the previous Handmaid wrote it in an act of defiance during her final days. This phrase is of deep significance to Offred when she discovers it, as she imagines it as something her old friend Moira would have said. The fact that this sole act of defiance took place in a room meticulously designed to prevent such behavior offers her a sliver of hope in a time lacking any.

Still, not everything is as it seems. As it turns out, the previous Handmaid learned the phrase from the Commander, a shocking revelation for Offred. The Commander is an interesting and nuanced character in that, despite his position, he still holds on to parts of his old life, storing within his office old magazines, board games, and other objects outlawed by the regime. Moreover, he tells Offred that he wishes to make her life as bearable as possible by secretly offering her chances to relive moments from the past through friendly games of Scrabble or glimpses into his magazine collection. But in spite of his seeming benevolence, he undeniably remains part of Gilead’s system of oppression. He risks his life not for the sake of the Handmaids, but for the twisted sense of satisfaction he receives from helping those he himself is subjugating, making him perhaps the biggest hypocrite in the book. The Commander demonstrates how even those who believe they are doing the right thing may still be responsible for perpetuating Gilead’s oppressive patriarchy.

All of these instances of state suppression of language are meant to dehumanize the Handmaids, to make them believe that they are simply the property of the government: tools with no other function than to produce children for the nation. In essence, they are slaves, which is likely what Atwood had in mind when choosing to portray them in such a subservient manner. ¹

Conclusion

The Handmaid’s Tale offers a chilling glimpse into the dystopian society of Gilead, which has dramatically altered the political, social, and cultural landscape of a country once known for its championing of liberal democracy. To achieve this, religion is used to great effect by the government of Gilead as not only a catalyst for change but also as a means to justify its patriarchal society and its rules after its establishment. Customs and traditions based on the Bible are created to encourage conformity and promote a twisted sense of camaraderie. Through the careful control of language, as well, the elite in charge are able to create an official vocabulary that bends reality in order to reinforce the principles of their ideal society. In doing so, they deprive women of their individuality and relegate them to a status subservient to men. Atwood, through her novel The Handmaid’s Tale, aptly warns how religious rhetoric and control over language, when left unchecked, can be used to tear apart even the most established of societies from within.

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret Eleanor. The Handmaid's Tale. Random House Inc, 2017.

The Bible: King James Version. Collins, 2008.