In my visual representationI chose to depict the scene where Offred notices the phrase “Nolite te bastardes Carborundorum” scrawled into her closet,this roughly translates to “don’t let the bastards beat you down”. This scene really stood out to me as it shows possibly two things, a previous handmaid had scratched this into her closet shortly before escaping gilead and moving on to brighter pastures. Or a previous handmaid had scratched the message into the closet shortly before being captured, punished, or even killed for displaying rebellious behavior. I think the fact that this scene was so open to interpretation is what made me so interested in it. However I chose the ladder in my depiction, having very muted colors and a general disheveled and gloomy look to the closet certainly does not paint a picture of hope. I chose to have the cloak hanging slightly off of the hanger in order to show that Offred still has some human instincts of laziness and that the brainwashing has not yet fully taken her over. My choice of only putting one robe and wing set in the closet is meant to show how little the handmaid’s actually possess; they are allowed no personal belongings, and the ones mandated to them are very few. The dresser itself I tried to make slightly more ornate, in order to make it fit with the rest of the house, but made sure to make it not overly complicated in order to re-emphasize the point that there are no luxuries when you are a handmaid.I think the main reason that I wanted to add a visual component to this scene is because Offred goes into very little detail regarding the closet and the message inside it, and I believe that it deserved more attention. This must be a choice by the author to show offred’s attitude towards rebellion at the time. I think that gilead is full of amazingly grim imagery that is very well conveyed just for being words on a page. When reading it is as if I can see the world of gilead around me. I made this piece feel natural, as if I had this picture In my mind the whole time.

In “The Handmaid’s Tale”, we are introduced to the teachings of Aunt Lydia that she drills into the handmaid’s head. In chapter 19, we see Aunt Lydia expressing to the girls how women are the problem in our society. Especially the women in the “time before”. She would claim that they had too much freedom and didn’t want to follow the words of God. She sees it as her job to save these women from their world of freedom. In chapter 19 on page 114 it says, “A thing is valued, she says, only if it is rare and hard to get. We want you to be valued, girls. She is rich in pauses, which she saves in her mouth. Think of yourselves as pearls. We, sitting in our rows, eyes down, we make her salivate morally. We are hers to define, we must suffer her adjectives. I think about pearls. Pearls are congealed oyster spit”. When I first read this, I began to break the quote down and analyze this section. Aunt Lydia’s claim of being valued only if you save or protect yourself from being free is a claim I disagreed with. As people, we should oppress ourselves to be treated with mutual respect or to be seen as valuable. I relate to Offred in this moment because many Muslim scholars would make their ideas about Islam and compare Muslim women to candy. The more it’s covered, the more you are willing to go for the candy. But if it is uncovered and has dirt and hair on it, you would not go for the candy. They are trying to say that the Muslim women in Islam who don’t cover up are not valuable compared to those who do cover up. In many religions, modesty falls on women a lot. In Islam, it states both men AND women have to dress modestly but the women are always getting attacked if not. It also raised a question, why are women compared to objects when it comes to trying to compare our value? Personally, as a woman who does cover up for her religion and God, I do not appreciate being compared to being a candy that’s wrapped. As for the women who may not dress like me and follow the same religion, being compared to an unwrapped candy will only push them further away and discourage them. As everyone has their own paths. “Suffer in her adjectives” (114). It’s very easy to take wording from a religious book, make an adjective out of it and the meaning is completely lost. I really liked how this quote showed us how taking the word of God can be manipulated and cause the view on religion to be seen in an oppression view. They may think making it oppressive will have people listen, for example, stripping the handmaids of their freedom of everything. But it only causes more pushback towards those ideas.

In the time before, Offred’s mom would protest for women’s rights, whereas Serena Joy was the opposite and would advocate that women should be traditional wives.“Freedom to choose. Every baby wanted a baby, to recapture our body. Do you believe a woman’s place is on the kitchen table?” (120). This quote resonates with me because women are still fighting for RIGHTS in this country. Just thinking about it is appalling and something we as a country too need to fix immediately. I connected this to Serena Joy because she advocated that women stay home and they should fit the “Traditional Wife” standard. Now with Gilead in place, Serena does absolutely nothing but be a trophy wife without the case. She is simply a woman with the title “wife”. The handmaids, Martha’s, and Econowives have more importance to Gilead than she does. “She wasn’t singing anymore by then, she was making speeches. She was good at it. Her speeches were about the sanctity of the home, and about how women should stay home. Serena Joy didn’t do this herself, she made speeches instead, but she presented this failure of hers as a sacrifice she was making for the good of all”(14). Serena Joy to me is seen as hypocritical. She was working and giving speeches about how women shouldn’t work and express their voices. She is now in the world she advocated for and is merely a person with a title. She searches for entitlement, for example in the living room before the ceremony. “The sitting room is supposed to be Serena Joy’s territory, he’s supposed to ask permission to enter it.”(86). Despite this claim, he walked in anyway. Serena Joy advocated for her rights to be taken away and now that they are gone, she is scrapping for pieces of entitlement in a world she advocated for

Comparing women to an object to represent their value, women having to fight for their basic rights, and women putting down the rights of their gender, are all under the umbrella of misogyny. It’s a system of women being oppressed no matter the circumstances, whether it’s from a religious lens, women vs women, or in a dystopian world called Gilead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHzOOQfhPFg (Just a Girl - No Doubt)

Throughout the Handmaid’s Tale, there is a continuing theme of the repression of women in Gilead. Several lyrics call out the stereotypes and strife of women in the 1990s: “Oh, I’m just a girl, all pretty and petite/So don’t let me have any rights” being the most impactful. In Gilead, the Handmaids are covered up completely, with big white bonnets to cover their face and a red dress and gloves. “The white wings too are prescribed issue; they are to keep us from seeing, but also from being seen”(8). Women in Gilead are often treated as ornaments, or instruments for one thing, much like in Just a Girl, when the singer remarks, “I’m just a girl in the world/That’s all that you’ll let me be,” drawing a parallel between the stereotypes of the gender and the repressive society of Gilead. In Gilead, women are not allowed to be seen, as Aunt Lydia remarks. “To be seen—to be seen—is to be—her voice trembled—penetrated. What you must be girls, is impenetrable. She called us girls”(28). The women, including Offred, are so indoctrinated by Gilead that they have these very stereotypes and ideas drilled into them, by watching pornography and snuff films: “Women kneeling, sucking penises or guns, women tied up or chained or with dog collars around their necks…Once we had to watch a woman being slowly cut into pieces…Consider the alternatives, said Aunt Lydia. You see what things used to be like? That was what they thought of women, then”(118). Gilead trained the Handmaids through film and constant beration of the past to put them in a box and teach them forcefully that Gilead is a better life for them, even though they are incredibly and singularly repressed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sjxr_No-yuY (Sheela-na-gig - PJ Harvey)

The sexualization and treatment of the Handmaids has been another recurrence throughout the book. The Handmaids are used as surrogates to give birth to a child for the Commander and his Wife, and are consequently treated with jealousy from the other women in Gilead, and a sort of longing and respect from the men, who need to earn the right to touch a woman. “Look at these, my child-bearing hips” is one lyric in PJ Harvey’s song that I feel encapsulates how men are portrayed in Atwood’s book. The Guardians at the crossing viewed Offred as something to covet, something unattainable to them, and she knows the one thing that gives her power is her sex appeal: “I hope they get hard at the sight of us and have to rub themselves against the painted barriers…They have no outlets now except themselves, and that’s a sacrilege”(22). It’s ironic that the one thing that gives her power is something not thought needed by a Handmaid, whose only purpose is to provide children: “I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will”(73). The reason no lotion or skin products are provided to Handmaid’s is simply because Gilead thinks of them as vessels for child-birth. “He said ‘wash your breasts, I don’t want to be unclean’/He said ‘please take those dirty pillows away from me’” is another line that relates to the opinion of many women that it’s okay for men to sexualize women, but if women act sexy, they’re called out and demeaned for it. Just like if Offred acts on her base urges instead of following societal norms; she’ll be classified an Unwoman and shipped away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf04EYSifjE (Holy War - Thy Art is Murder)

Although religion is not talked about very much thus far in the text, it is a recurring theme. “Armies of guardians, servants of bibles” is a lyric that connects to the structure of Gilead, which the reader also knows very little about, only as much as Offred does. Guardians, or Guardians of the Faith, are soldiers and butlers, some of which work under the Commanders, some of which work the crossings the Handmaids pass through. Angels are higher up, and nothing is known about them as of yet. But aside from the biblical references throughout the text, there are clues as to what happened in Gilead’s past and is happening in the present—Offred comes across bodies on the wall, “One is a priest, still wearing the black cassock. That’s been put on him, for the trial, even though they gave up wearing those years ago, when the sect wars first began; cassocks made them too conspicuous”(43). This provides a small clue to what has happened—Gilead is out to get other religious groups, who are deemed heretics for not following Gilead’s leadership and code. “I reject the laws of the misguided/False prophets imprison nations fueling self annihilation” corroborates this speculative story. Before the Ceremony, a broadcast takes place that provides some more, perhaps skewed, information: “‘Five members of the heretical sect of Quakers have been arrested,’ he says, smiling blandly, ‘and more arrests are anticipated’”(83). This further reinforces the plausible narrative created with the little information given.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ckom3gf57Yw (The Unforgiven - Metallica)

The Unwomen are not very discussed in the Handmaid’s Tale. However, there have been many clues as to how Unwomen are classified and some conjecture as to what could possibly be their fate. The Marthas seem to have more knowledge than Offred, who finds out over eavesdropping on their conversation earlier in the book: “Go to the Colonies, Rita said. They have the choice. With the Unwomen, and starve to death and Lord knows what all? said Cora. Catch you”(10). There is this idea of false choice that emerges in several other contexts in the book—while the Handmaids have the choice of going to the Colonies, why would they want to, when there is this life for them in Gilead, that is comfortable, while not the ideal way to live their lives? In other parts of the book, it becomes apparent that people in higher positions of power can reclassify women, as Offred is constantly afraid of. “I’ll label you/So I dub the unforgiven” is a lyric of the Unforgiven that matches this idea. “Never free/Never me/So I dub the unforgiven” remarks on the fear Offred feels of being reclassified if she does anything outside of the rules in Gilead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO6nRXPzX1A (Mother - Danzig)

Media censorship has emerged during the chapter on the Ceremony as another big idea that contributes to the success of Gilead. “Serena always lets us watch the news. Such as it is: who knows if any of it is true? It could be old clips, it could be faked. But I watch it anyway, hoping to be able to read beneath it. Any news, now, is better than none”(82). In most cases of media censorship, which we have evidence of in the present, the public is only shown good things that are happening, or incredibly skewed footage. Offred knows this, but if this kind of media is the only way she and others will know about the outside world, what choice do they have but to understand it as the truth? “Mother/Can you keep them in the dark for life?/Can you hide them from the waiting world?/Oh mother” is a lyric that aligns with this idea: if the media they are seeing is the only outlet, it can be incredibly difficult to believe in anything else, especially, in Offred’s case, if she is being told that she’ll be free soon enough: “He tells us what we long to believe. He’s very convincing. I struggle against him. He’s like an old movie star, I tell myself, with false teeth and a face job. At the same time I sway towards him, like one hypnotized. If only it were true. If only I could believe”(83). Offred knows the media is inaccurate, and very selective, and yet, as is the case in many countries today, after a while, it becomes hard to see that what is being shown as not the truth.

The novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” authored by Margaret Atwood, is a masterful work that adeptly explores the intricacies of our society’s treatment of women. Set in the fictitious yet thought-provoking society of Gilead, the novel delves into a world where both women and men face oppression. This dystopian society grapples with dwindling birth rates, prompting women to assume the role of mere childbearing machines, compelled to harness their reproductive capacities. While such a scenario might be somewhat comprehensible given the perilously declining population, the presence of religious overtones within the Gilead community complicates the legitimacy of their circumstances.

For instance, Gilead’s foundation heavily relies on religion, though the novel doesn’t explicitly specify the faith they follow. It is implied that their belief system is likely rooted in Christianity or Catholicism, as evidenced by their reverence for the Bible. In chapter 15, on page 87, there is a scene where handmaids and Marthas assemble in the living room, listening to the Commander reading a verse from the Bible. The passage describes the Commander’s ritual: “He crosses to the large leather chair reserved for him, takes the key out of his pocket, fumbles with the ornate brass-bound leather-covered box that stands on the table beside the chair. He inserts the key, opens the box, lifts out the Bible, an ordinary copy, with a black cover and gold-edged pages. The Bible is kept locked up, the way people once kept tea locked up, so the servants wouldn’t steal it.” This act of safeguarding the Bible implies a constant and forceful imposition of Christianity or Catholicism, which may be causing irritation and sparking a sense of resentment among the individuals in Gilead.

Yet another compelling illustration of the ceaseless psychological conditioning within Gilead is found in Chapter 15, specifically on pages 88-89. In this pivotal scene, Aunt Lydia addresses a gathering of young women, comprising both the diligent Marthas and the subjugated Handmaids, with the intention of conveying the idea that they should consider themselves remarkably privileged and fortunate. Despite her attempts to emphasize their good fortune, it is abundantly clear that, from the perspective of these women, they do not perceive themselves as beneficiaries of such privileges. In stark contrast, they feel imprisoned, cruelly isolated from the world beyond the confines of Gilead. Aunt Lydia’s discourse unfolds against the backdrop of a surreal breakfast scene, during which the women are gathered, partaking in a meager meal of porridge adorned with cream and brown sugar.

As she addresses them, she endeavors to underscore the notion that they are receiving the very best within the constraints of the tumultuous world outside. She reminds them, “We had it read to us every breakfast, as we sat in the high school cafeteria, eating porridge with cream and brown sugar. You’re getting the best you know, said Aunt Lydia. There’s a war on, things are rationed. You are spoiled girls, she twinkled…” Aunt Lydia’s words, delivered with an air of sardonic humor, shed light on the stark contrast between the dismal reality the women face and the distorted perception that Gilead’s regime aims to instill in them. In this poignant moment, it becomes evident that the propaganda and the stringent religious doctrine imposed upon the residents of Gilead serve not only to manipulate their beliefs but also to warp their sense of reality. This passage, therefore, serves as a stark reminder of the power of propaganda and the extent to which authoritarian regimes can manipulate the perceptions and understanding of their subjects.

While reading “The Handmaid’s Tale,” I frequently found myself drawing parallels to real-world occurrences. One striking resemblance is the principle of the separation of church and state, a fundamental concept in the United States, which emanated from the landmark Supreme Court case of Everson v. Board of Education. This principle, often referred to as “church vs. state,” posits that religious institutions and the government must remain distinct and separate entities. It maintains that no official religion should be established within a state, as such an establishment would contravene the core principles enshrined in the Constitution.

This connection serves as a poignant reminder of the enduring relevance of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” highlighting the enduring significance of the themes it explores. Margaret Atwood’s dystopian narrative not only serves as a chilling work of fiction but also as a cautionary tale, urging us to remain vigilant in safeguarding the principles of democracy and the separation of church and state, which are the cornerstones of modern society. In an age where the blurring of these lines can lead to profound consequences, “The Handmaid’s Tale” continues to resonate as a powerful commentary on the fragility of such foundations in the face of authoritarianism and the erosion of individual liberties.