Black Hole Sun - Soundgarden “Black Hole Sun” is a very nihilistic song, which is fitting for Gilead, as it’s a country seemingly gone insane. The songs yearning for death sit in Offred’s entality. “ Black Hole Sun, won’t you come and wash away the rain?” The downbeat locals and bodies a world in which hope has been exterminated and replaced with apathy. Offred feels this in her bones.“I am like a room where things once happened and now nothing does, except the pollen of the weeds that grow up outside the window, blowing in as dust across the floor.” (18,104) She has become a machine, mindlessly doing her tasks, devoid of all emotion other than a permanent feeling of discomfort and abandonment. Just like this son, she sees their only way in which she sees her story ending, that being the inevitable death that all handmaids will inevitably experience, the death of their usefulness.

Song 33 - Noname Gilead is nearly identical to Noname’s Song 33. The song is spoken over a jazz hip-hop beat. Noname calls out the world for its ignorance of this violence again and again; she sees more and more people like her go missing or be murdered outright. “They’ve removed anything you could tie a rope to.” (1,7) Her dark tone as she repeats herself, appalled by the violence and the indifference of the people around her, is nearly identical to how the book depicts Gilead. Noname can’t after every verse shows the cyclical nature of the violence that she is seeing, the spoken word style of her rapping makes it all the more similar to OfOffred’s relentlessness in the world in which she must face the violence inflicted on her every day.

Watching him fade away - Mac DeMarco The hazy guitar loop, muffled vocals, and nostalgic tone of Mac DeMarco’s “Watching him fade away” perfectly fit into Gilead’s atmosphere of a bitter new world, having this way from the Bittersweet world remembered by Offred in the before times. The detached sadness mirrors Offred’s quiet surrender as the memories of the before times are slowly drowned out, not by what is inflicted on her but by the simple and mundane memories and routines. The song’s lack of climax parallels how Gilead strips the past of emotion and vividness. Throughout the song Mac DeMarc expresses his displeasure with the person that is singing about but he also realizes that part of him still hurt that he is gone “I know you never meant to put him down. And even if you did, he sure deserved it” if you substitute “ him” As America’s system of patriarchy, and this song is very close to ow Offred els in Gilead. America’s patriarchy was destroyed and replaced with one unimaginably worse. Where did you sleep last night - Lead Belly There’s a cold danger to Lead Belly’s “Where did you sleep last night?” The song feels like the lead-up to a horror movie. The question he asked is concerned as to reveals hell dark and dangerous the Pines are. Eventuallyrevealing that there was a body found in the woods. The song mirrors the darkness of Gilead and the dangers of breaking the rules. Offred’s private meetings, Scrabble games, and cigarettes with the commander aren’t intimacy. It’s Danger dressed as privilege. When he asks, “Where did you sleep last night?” it’s out of concern, as the forest is only filled with darkness and danger. The commander performs politeness and benevolence, but both of them know that he has the power to send her to the gallows. When she finally realizes that she is only a doll to the commander too late.

Which side are you on?- Pete Seeger

Throughout the story, Offred is given a choice: compliance or death. Gilead is terrified by the disloyalty of its citizens, so it uses secret police to disappear anyone who speaks against the government’s totalitarian and rabidly paternalistic policies. Offred’s whispers have become her only protest: “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum”(9,52) (Don’t let the bastards grind you down). The folk-protest classic “Which Side Are You On?” It is very similar as it is a song meant to resist the ruling class, although in Gilead, the ruling men and not the Capital owners. The pride and survivalism are clear in both the song and the quote as both regard the ruling class as being in the way of dragging them down and ontologically evil, while uplifting the people.

In Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks, the character, Lord Rufus Crabmiser, says a line that heavily reminds me of the current position of women of Gilead: “ The only thing a crab is good for is holding back other crabs. A crab doesn't want to see another crab make it.” Margaret Atwood’s depiction of Gilead is only possible with the acceptance and collaboration of other women to oppress each other. This is most prominent in a chapter of the book, in which Offred is forced to participate in the ritualistic shaming of Jasmine, another handmaiden in training. It's one of the most outright depictions of the ways that the women in Gilead are trained to blame each other

” Her fault, her fault, her fault, we chant in unison. Who led them on? Aunt Helena beams, pleased with us. She did. She did. She did. … Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson”(72)
The handmaids, including Offred, all shamed Janine for events that she was clearly a victim of; it was obviously not Janine’s fault for being raped, but in the new culture of Gilead, she is at fault. The Aunts who are indoctrinators for the Handmaids are paramount to constructing his style of culture within Gilead. Their main goals are to create an environment in which handmaids have no trust between each other and do not have the solidarity to stage any disruptive activity, as well as to normalize the degradation of their bodies into vessels for men to impregnate. This undoubtedly uncomfortable scene is so spot on when it comes to the discourse that surrounds women whenever they come out as victims of rape. Atwood is practically bashing you over the head with the comparisons of Janine and female victims in real life.

Janine, finally broken from the constant derision of her most traumatic experience, broke down and admitted that it was her fault. Even the clear victim in this case eventually became brainwashed into thinking that it was her own fault. In a lot of ways, it's deeply realistic as many people are brainwashed to admit that the traumatic experience that they where subjected to was their fault. 

“That was last week. This week, Janine doesn’t wait for us to jeer at her. It was my fault, she says. It was my own fault. I led them on. I deserved the pain. Very good, Janine, says Aunt Lydia. You are an example.” Atwood’s depiction of Gilead is so radical that it has set up a system of industrialized victim-blaming, in which the handmaids give in to the reactionary demons inside their own heads. Demons that have their roots in the ugliest parts of American culture and its destructive ideas on women’s rights. They were taught that Janine’s pain and, subsequently, all of the pain that she would feel at the hands of men was justified.

Throughout the flashback, it’s very apparent how women are pitted against each other; however, what stands out even more than that is the way Atwood portrays them. Up until this point, Offred had been discussing the red centers in very neutral terms, as she rarely questioned the authority of the Aunts or the guards outside. Offred primarily blames herself for partaking in the group shaming. This feeling of learned helplessness permeates the pages of The Handmaid’s Tale as all of the women are forced to live in conditions that were made against their freedom. Now the only “freedom to” is the freedom to survive, and survival is just a synonym for submission.

In just this short section, there’s a booming microcosm of what America has eroded into. a fascist state in which sister is turned against sister, Aunt against niece. a state that shames women for being promiscuous when they get raped, yet simultaneously forces women to give birth as slaves, a contradiction that reinforces female bodily autonomy. By far the darkest part of Gilead is that it isn’t a detached science fiction Empire, or a piece of ancient history, but it is America. Atwood’s depiction of America takes place in the 1980s. coming out of a decade of police brutality, crackdowns of anti-war protests, and COINTELPRO. She barely even had to exaggerate when it came to the top-down complete domination of the government that we see throughout the book, something that also reflects in the culture. The Handmaid’s chant of “her fault” Is echoed throughout American Halls of power.

throughout this quarter I’ve used my notebook. it has helped me through many projects and discussions and I will rely on it in the future

https://www.wevideo.com/view/2933350259