PAPER 2 TEA PREPARATION

Themes
● Loss of freedom / individualism
● Manipulation of information
● Excessive surveillance
● Loss of knowledge and misinterpretation (religious in HMT, history in 1984)
● Strict/controlling regimes
● Oppressive authorities
● Rebellion
● Identity control - Confining gender roles
● Utilitarianism
● Internalization of guilt
● Torture tactics
● Indoctrination and institutionalized beliefs
● Dehumanization
● Brainwashing (children - 1984), (women - HMT)
Formal Qualities
● Structure
● Setting
● Characterization
● Dramatic tension
● Speech and Dialogue

Techniques:
● Symbolism
● Irony
● Biblical metaphors
● Allusions
 ● Motifs
● Tone
● Paradox
● Antithesis
Key concepts
● Creativity - characterisation, reality,
● Perspective - Repressed
● Representation
● Identity
● Culture
● Transformation - Transformation of Texts over Time,
● Communication - Authorial Choices

FORMAL QUALITIES:
CHARACTERIZATION:
The Handmaid’s Tale:
Offred — Offred is the narrator (unreliable in nature because of how she constantly goes back
on her words and memories, recounting events constantly in different ways) and her real name
is never revealed. Offred belongs to the class of Handmaids, fertile women forced to bear
children for elite, barren couples. Handmaids show which Commander owns them by adopting
their Commanders’ names, such as Fred, and preceding them with “Of.” Offred remembers her
real name but never reveals it. She no longer has family or friends, though she has flashbacks
to a time in which she had a daughter and a husband named Luke.Though Offred is rebellious,
even violent, in her thoughts, and full of passionate memories, she seems stolid and devout to
outsiders, doing her best to obey Gilead’s laws. Despite her passivity, she makes keen
observations and displays honest emotions despite the brainwashing that she’s gone through.

She does not appear as a hero as she very quickly submits to her role in the regime rather than
endure further torture. Atwood contrasts her with her feminist activist mother, whose causes
Offred often felt uncomfortable with. Offred tells us herself that her relationship with Luke began
as an illicit affair while he was married to someone else. Although Offred is friends with Ofglen,
a member of the resistance, and feels a thrill at the possibility of someone bringing down Gilead,
she fears joining it herself. In her affair with Nick, too, Offred becomes absorbed by a physicality
and autonomy that Gilead has denied her, and she turns away from participating in Ofglen's
plans. When the possibility of escape finally comes at the end, it comes through Nick, rather
than a plan Offred puts in place herself. Offred's inertia shows how an oppressive regime like
Gilead can destroy most people's ability to resist it.

QUOTES:
1. “Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?”
2. “I try not to think too much. Like other things now, thought must be rationed.”
 3. “There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom
from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from.
Don’t underrate it.”
4. “I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it.
Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance.”
5. I’ve crossed no boundaries, I’ve given no trust, taken no risk, all is safe. It’s the choice
that terrifies me. A way out, a salvation.”
6. “I avoid looking down at my body, not so much because it’s shameful or immodest but
because I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to look at something that determines me so
completely.”

Serena Joy — Also known as the Commander’s Wife, she is unable to have children and
therefore requires Offred’s services. Before Gilead, she was a singer who became famous on
TV for her emotional Christian music. She also used to give speeches about how women ought
to be housewives. During the novel, she occupies her time gardening with Nick’s help, and
knitting elaborate scarves for soldiers, despite her arthritis. For much of the novel, she
resentfully ignores Offred, but towards the end she encourages Offred to try to get pregnant by
having sex with Nick.

Though the Commander's wife, Serena Joy, had been an advocate for "traditional values" and
the establishment of the Gileadean state, she is bitter at the outcome. She is confined to her
home and forced to take in a Handmaid to try to conceive a child with her husband. Serena’s
obvious unhappiness means that she teeters on the edge of inspiring the reader's sympathy, but
she forfeits that sympathy by taking out her anger on Offred. Serena Joy seems to possess no
compassion at all for Offred. She can see the difficulty of her own life, but not that of another
woman (SEE: FOIL CHARACTER).

Serena is willing to break the rules to help Offred get pregnant, which may seem generous, but
Serena benefits from Offred’s pregnancy because it will be her baby after it's born. Furthermore,
Serena’s offer to show Offred a picture of her lost daughter if she sleeps with Nick reveals that
Serena has always known where Offred's daughter was. Not only has she cruelly concealed this
knowledge, but she exploits Offred’s loss of a child to try to obtain a child of her own. Serena’s
lack of sympathy makes her the perfect tool for Gilead’s social order, which relies on the
willingness of women to oppress other women. She is a cruel, selfish woman, and Atwood
implies that such women are the glue that binds Gilead.

The Commander — The Commander is the head of the household where Offred works as a
Handmaid. He initiates an unorthodox relationship with Offred, secretly playing Scrabble with
her in his study at night. He often seems a decent, well-meaning man, and Offred sometimes
finds that she likes him in spite of herself. He almost seems a victim of Gilead, making the best
of a society he opposes. However, we learn from various clues and from the epilogue that the
Commander was actually involved in designing and establishing Gilead. Though he is a
high-ranking official of Gilead who may have played a large role in its construction, he breaks
many laws, including going to the sex club Jezebel’s.
The Commander poses an ethical problem for Offred. First, he is Offred’s Commander and the
immediate agent of her oppression. As a founder of Gilead, he also bears responsibility for the
entire totalitarian society. In person, he is far more sympathetic and friendly toward Offred than
most other people, and Offred’s evenings with the Commander in his study offer her a small
respite from the wasteland of her life. At times, his unhappiness and need for companionship
make him seem as much a prisoner of Gilead’s strictures as anyone else. Offred finds herself
feeling some amount of sympathy for this man. However, Offred recognizes that if the
Commander is a prisoner, the prison is one that he constructed and that the prison he's created
for women is far worse. As the novel progresses, we come to realize that his visits with Offred
are selfish rather than charitable. They satisfy his need for companionship, but he doesn’t seem
to care that they put Offred at terrible risk. We know that the Commander is aware of this risk,
since the previous Handmaid hanged herself when her visits to the Commander were
discovered. The Commander’s moral blindness, which is apparent in his attempts to explain the
virtues of Gilead, is highlighted by his and Offred’s visit to Jezebel’s.

Offred’s relationship with the Commander is best represented by a situation she remembers
from a documentary on the Holocaust. In the film, the mistress of a brutal death camp guard
defended the man she loved, claiming that he was not a monster. “How easy it is to invent a
humanity,” Offred thinks. In other words, anyone can seem human, and even likable, given the
right set of circumstances. But even if the Commander is likable and can be kind or considerate,
his responsibility for the creation of Gilead and his callousness to the hell he created for women
means that he, like the Nazi guard, is a monster.

Moira — Offred’s best friend in college, a brave, opinionated feminist lesbian whom Offred
encounters again at the Rachel and Leah Center. After one failed attempt, she manages to
escape the Center and move along the Underground Femaleroad, but the Eyes capture and
torture her. She decides to work as a prostitute rather than go to the Colonies (the Colonies are
essentially a death sentence). When Offred sees her at Jezebel’s, it seems that the authorities
have managed to break Moira’s spirit. Her defiant nature contrasts starkly with the behavior of
the other women in the novel. Rather than passively accept her fate as a Handmaid, she makes
several escape attempts and finally manages to get away from the Red Center. However, she is
caught before she can get out of Gilead. Later, Offred encounters Moira working as a prostitute
in a club for the Commanders. At the club, Moira seems resigned to her fate, which suggests
that a totalitarian society can grind down and crush even the most resourceful and independent
people.

Throughout the novel, Moira’s relationship with Offred epitomizes true female friendship. Gilead
claims to promote solidarity between women, but in fact it only produces suspicion, hostility, and
petty tyranny. The kind of relationship that Moira and Offred maintain from college onward does
not exist in Gilead.

In Offred’s flashbacks, Moira also embodies female resistance to Gilead. She is a lesbian, which
means that she rejects male-female sexual interactions, the only kind that Gilead values. More
than that, she is the only character who stands up to authority directly by making two escape
attempts, one successful, from the Red Center. The manner in which she escapes—taking off
her clothes and putting on the uniform of an Aunt—symbolizes her rejection of Gilead’s attempt
to define her identity.

Aunt Lydia — The Aunts are the class of women assigned to indoctrinate the Handmaids with
the beliefs of the new society and make them accept their fates. Aunt Lydia works at the “Red
Center,” the re‑education center where Offred and other women go for instruction before
becoming Handmaids. Although she appears only in Offred’s flashbacks, Aunt Lydia and her
instructions haunt Offred in her daily life. Aunt Lydia’s slogans and maxims drum the ideology of
the new society into the heads of the women, until even those like Offred, women who do not
truly believe in the ideology, hear Gilead’s words echoing in their heads. Offred often
remembers—and quotes—one of the Aunts responsible for Offred’s “re-education” at the Red
Center. Aunt Lydia is one of the least likable faces of the Gileadean regime. Armed with a cattle
prod, she is responsible for some of the most misogynistic statements in the novel, and also
some of the most extreme distortions of religious ideas.

For example, when she warns Offred and the other Handmaids to be careful of Wives, Aunt
Lydia says: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do”—quoting Jesus on the cross. She
then adds, “You must realize that they are defeated women,” because they have been unable to
bear children (Chapter 8). By making a woman an especially hateful representative of the
Gileadean government, the novel suggests that women are complicit in sustaining the
male-dominated regime. By joining the Aunts, women “escape redundancy, and consequent
shipment to the infamous colonies.”

Luke — Offred’s pre-Gilead husband and father of her daughter. He was previously married and
had a long affair with Offred before divorcing his first wife. Though Offred passes a lot of time
remembering him, he seems to have been frequently at odds with her emotions. He doesn’t
seem greatly distressed when Offred loses her job and must cede all her money to him.
Perhaps he lacks sympathy, or perhaps he’s sexist. After their failed escape, Offred imagines
many fates for him, but never pictures him joining with Gilead, although subtext suggests that he
might have.

Offred remembers him lovingly, and feels anguish when she cannot preserve her memory of
him: “night by night he recedes, and I become more faithless” (Chapter 40). The word “faithless”
here suggests that Offred feels bound to by a traditional idea of romance, in which Offred owes
unswerving loyalty to her husband. There are other hints, too, that Luke was not entirely
untouched by the belief in male supremacy that rules Gilead: “he teased [Offred’s mother…]
he’d tell her women were incapable of abstract thought” (Chapter 20). Offred recalls that when
legal measures were first introduced to oppress women, she thought: “He doesn’t mind this […]
We’re not each other’s anymore. Instead, I am his” (Chapter 28). In Offred’s memories of Luke,
The Handmaid’s Tale draws a connecting line between the male-dominated society of Gilead
and the feelings and behavior of men in our own era.
Nick — Nick is a Guardian, a low-level officer of Gilead assigned to the Commander’s home,
where he works as a gardener and chauffeur. He and Offred have a sexual chemistry that they
get to satisfy when Serena Joy orchestrates an encounter between them in an effort to get
Offred pregnant. After sleeping together once, they begin a covert sexual affair. Nick is not just a
Guardian; he may work either as a member of the Eyes, Gilead’s secret police, or as a member
of the underground Mayday resistance, or both. At the end of the novel, Nick orchestrates
Offred’s escape from the Commander’s home, but we do not know whether he puts her into the
hands of the Eyes or the resistance.

1984:
Winston — Although the narration of the book is third person limited omniscient (meaning we
see Winston’s perspective from a third person standpoint), Winston is the protagonist of the
book who privately rebels against the Party's totalitarian rule. Frail, intellectual, and fatalistic,
Winston works in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth rewriting news articles to
conform with the Party's current version of history. Winston perceives that the Party's ultimate
goal is to gain absolute mastery over the citizens of Oceania by controlling access to the past
and—more diabolically—controlling the minds of its subjects. Orwell uses Winston's habit of
introspection and self-analysis to explore the opposition between external and internal reality,
and between individualism and collective identity. Convinced that he cannot escape punishment
for his disloyalty, Winston nonetheless seeks to understand the motives behind the Party's
oppressive policies, and takes considerable personal risks not only to experience forbidden
feelings and relationships but to contact others who share his skepticism and desire to rebel
against Ingsoc (English Socialism).

Orwell’s primary goal in 1984 is to demonstrate the terrifying possibilities of totalitarianism and
he does this through the eyes of Winston. His personal tendency to resist the stifling of his
individuality, and his intellectual ability to reason about his resistance, enables the reader to
observe and understand the harsh oppression that the Party, Big Brother, and the Thought
Police institute. Whereas Julia is untroubled and somewhat selfish, interested in rebelling only
for the pleasures to be gained, Winston is extremely pensive and curious, desperate to
understand how and why the Party exercises such absolute power in Oceania. Winston’s long
reflections give Orwell a chance to explore the novel’s important themes, including language as
mind control, psychological and physical intimidation and manipulation, and the importance of
knowledge of the past.

Apart from his thoughtful nature, Winston’s main attributes are his rebelliousness and his
fatalism. Winston hates the Party passionately and wants to test the limits of its power; he
commits innumerable crimes throughout the novel, ranging from writing “DOWN WITH BIG
BROTHER” in his diary, to having an illegal love affair with Julia, to getting himself secretly
indoctrinated into the anti-Party Brotherhood. The effort Winston puts into his attempt to achieve
freedom and independence ultimately underscores the Party’s devastating power. By the end of
the novel, Winston’s rebellion is revealed as playing into O’Brien’s campaign of physical and
psychological torture, transforming Winston into a loyal subject of Big Brother.
One reason for Winston’s rebellion, and eventual downfall, is his sense of fatalism—his intense
(though entirely justified) paranoia about the Party and his overriding belief that the Party will
eventually catch and punish him. As soon as he writes “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” in his
diary, Winston is positive that the Thought Police will quickly capture him for committing
thoughtcrime. Thinking that he is helpless to evade his doom, Winston allows himself to take
unnecessary risks, such as trusting O’Brien and renting the room above Mr. Charrington’s shop.
Deep down, he knows that these risks will increase his chances of being caught by the Party; he
even admits this to O’Brien while in prison. But because he believes that he will be caught no
matter what he does, he convinces himself that he must continue to rebel. Winston lives in a
world in which legitimate optimism is an impossibility; lacking any real hope, he gives himself
false hope, fully aware that he is doing so.

Julia — Winston’s love interest and sexual partner, Julia is opportunistic, practical, intellectually
primitive, vital, and uninterested in politics. She believes that the Party is unconquerable through
organized resistance, and that secret disobedience is the only effective form of revolt. She
delights in breaking the rules, and her cunning and courageousness inspires Winston to take
greater and greater risks. Julia disguises her illegal activities beneath an appearance of
orthodoxy. For instance, she is an active member of the Junior Anti-Sex League.

Julia is Winston’s lover and the only other person who Winston can be sure hates the Party and
wishes to rebel against it as he does. Whereas Winston is restless, fatalistic, and concerned
about large-scale social issues, Julia is sensual, pragmatic, and generally content to live in the
moment and make the best of her life. Winston longs to join the Brotherhood and read
Emmanuel Goldstein’s abstract manifesto; is more concerned with enjoying sex and making
practical plans to avoid getting caught by the Party. Winston essentially sees their affair as
temporary; his fatalistic attitude makes him unable to imagine his relationship with Julia lasting
very long. Julia, on the other hand, is well adapted to her chosen forms of small-scale rebellion.
She claims to have had affairs with various Party members, and has no intention of terminating
her pleasure-seeking, or of being caught (her involvement with Winston is what leads to her
capture). is a striking contrast to Winston: apart from their mutual sexual desire and hatred of
the Party, most of their traits are dissimilar, if not contradictory.

O’Brien — The antagonist of the novel—a corrupt bureaucrat, member of the Inner Party, and
symbol of dehumanizing and dehumanized despotism. O'Brien's charismatic appearance and
manners fool Winston into believing that he too is working against the Party, leading Winston to
incriminate himself. Even after O'Brien reveals himself to be the Party's instrument of terror,
Winston continues to admire his intelligence, and under torture comes paradoxically to worship
him as his savior.

One of the most fascinating aspects of 1984 is the manner in which Orwell shrouds an explicit
portrayal of a totalitarian world in an enigmatic aura. While Orwell gives the reader a close look
into the personal life of Winston Smith, the reader’s only glimpses of Party life are those that
Winston himself catches. As a result, many of the Party’s inner workings remain unexplained, as
do its origins, and the identities and motivations of its leaders. This sense of mystery is
centralized in the character of O’Brien, a powerful member of the Inner Party who tricks Winston
into believing that he is a member of the revolutionary group called the Brotherhood. O’Brien
inducts Winston into the Brotherhood. Later, though, he appears at Winston’s jail cell to abuse
and brainwash him in the name of the Party. During the process of this punishment, and
perhaps as an act of psychological torture, O’Brien admits that he pretended to be connected to
the Brotherhood merely to trap Winston in an act of open disloyalty to the Party.

This revelation raises more questions about O’Brien than it answers. Rather than developing as
a character throughout the novel, O’Brien actually seems to un-develop: by the end of the book,
the reader knows far less about him than they previously had thought. When Winston asks
O’Brien if he too has been captured by the Party, O’Brien replies, “They got me long ago.” This
reply could signify that O’Brien himself was once rebellious, only to be tortured into passive
acceptance of the Party. One can also argue that O’Brien pretends to sympathize with Winston
merely to gain his trust. Similarly, one cannot be sure whether the Brotherhood actually exists,
or if it is simply a Party invention used to trap the disloyal and give the rest of the populace a
common enemy. The novel does not answer these questions, but rather leaves O’Brien as a
shadowy, symbolic enigma on the fringes of the even more obscure Inner Party.

Big Brother — Big Brother is the supreme ruler of Oceania, the leader of the Party, an
accomplished war hero, a master inventor and philosopher, and the original instigator of the
revolution that brought the Party to power. The Party uses the image of Big Brother to instill a
sense of loyalty and fear in the populace. The image appears on coins, on telescreens, and on
the large posters which are plastered all over the city with the slogan “Big Brother is watching
you.” While these facts are undisputed, much of the rest of Big Brother’s nature is undefined
and subject to change, even within the reality of the novel. In fact, part of Winston’s job is to go
into old articles and change what Big Brother said in the past to match what he says in the
present. Big Brother is merely a convenience that suits the current goals of the Party.

Despite his hugely powerful role in society, Big Brother makes no actual appearance in the
novel. Winston never interacts with Big Brother in any way, and in the one scene where Big
Brother speaks during the Two Minutes Hate, not only is the reader not told what he says, but
Winston observes that nobody present listens to what he says either. The idea of Big Brother is
sufficient to keep the people living in a state of fear, and the fact that no one seems to have ever
seen him may make him even more effective as a leader. In fact, several passages throughout
the book suggest that Big Brother either doesn’t exist, or perhaps never existed, as an actual
person. When Winston is held in the Ministry of Love, he has a conversation with O’Brien about
the nature of Big Brother. Winston asks O’Brien if Big Brother exists, to which O’Brien replies,
“‘Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment of the Party.” When
Winston asks if Big Brother will ever die, O’Brien simply says, “Of course not. How could he
die?”

Goldstein — Emmanuel Goldstein is introduced as the Enemy of the People during the Two
Minutes Hate at the beginning of the novel. He was once an important member of the Party but
became a traitor. Although he was sentenced to death, he escaped and formed the
Brotherhood, an organized body of rebels committed to the destruction of the Party and the
party’s way of life.

Like Big Brother, Goldstein very likely does not exist as an actual person, but rather, is a
propaganda tool used by the Party to stir up emotion in the citizens. Goldstein functions as a
threatening but ill-defined monster that the Party uses to keep citizens in line and prevent
rebellion. Like Eastasia and Eurasia, Goldstein provides the Party with an enemy to act against.
When the Party does things that hurt the populace, their actions can be blamed either on
terrorist attacks by Goldstein’s followers or on necessary precautions to prevent further attacks.

Goldstein’s most significant contribution to the plot of the novel is as alleged author of the book
The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. The book contains the truth of the Party as
well as a model for how to overthrow them, as is quoted at length in Book Two: Chapter IX of
1984. These sections go into detail about how the Party uses endless war, the manipulation of
history, and the threat of the Thought Police to control the population. The book also lays out a
hopeful plan of rebellion whereby the tiny resistances made by disobedient Party members
eventually accumulate to become powerful enough to tear down the Party. Winston gets a copy
of Goldstein’s book from O’Brien and is hugely affected by what he reads in this book. Although
the content of the book seems to be largely accurate to the way the Party really works, we later
learn that the book was not written by Goldstein, but by O’Brien and a committee of Party
loyalists as another prop and trap for drawing in thought-criminals.

Syme — An intelligent, outgoing man who works with Winston at the Ministry of Truth. Syme
specializes in language. As the novel opens, he is working on a new edition of the Newspeak
dictionary. Winston believes Syme is too intelligent to stay in the Party’s favor. This is then
confirmed when he is wiped from the system and collectively, from everyone’s memories except
Winston who realizes and recognizes Syme’s absence almost immediately and realizes what
had happened.

Mr. Charrington — Mr. Charrington is a widower and the owner of a second-hand shop in the
prole district of London. He is the only prole with whom Winston has any significant interaction.
Winston believes that Mr. Charrington may have once been a writer or musician, and notes that
he speaks with an accent “less debased than that of the majority of proles.” He provides several
key resources that facilitate Winston’s various crimes against the Party. Mr. Charrington sells
Winston both the blank book which Winston uses to record a diary and the glass paperweight
that becomes a symbol of Winston’s connection to a concrete past unaltered by the Party’s
propaganda. Mr. Charrington also rents Winston the room where Winston and Julia carry out the
bulk of their sexual relationship.

Like O’Brien, Mr. Charrington must be re-assessed two-thirds of the way through the novel,
when Winston and the reader learn that Mr. Charrington is a member of the Thought Police. In
light of this revelation, all of Mr. Charrington’s interactions with Winston take on a different
meaning. Contrary to what we’ve believed so far, Mr. Charrington was never a sympathetic
appreciator of the past who identified with Winston’s rebellious spirit. Instead, he was acting as
a manipulative agent of the Party laying traps to test how far Winston would go.

More than any other character, Mr. Charrington seems to physically represent the unsettling
ability of the Thought Police to hide in plain sight and infiltrate the lives of Party members. The
moment of Mr. Charrington’s revelation occurs in the transition from Book Two, where Winston
leads the best part of his life, to Book Three, where his life becomes a nightmare of torture and
horror.

He even goes through a physical transformation in the books. Winston first describes him as a
60 years old who is frail and bowed with white hair, and bushy black eyebrows. However, when
it is revealed he is a member of the Thought Police, his appearance changes to 35 years old,
with black hair and no wrinkles. He strikes Winston as straighter, larger, more alert, and even his
accent has disappeared.

SETTING:
The Handmaid’s Tale:
Gilead: The Sons of Jacob have overthrown the United States, and have established the
Republic of Gilead. Gilead is based upon the Old Testament, using Biblical Scriptures as its
reference points consistently. However, Gilead’s usage of the Bible is subverted, as it supports
the idea that the actual sinners (abusers) are not the sinners, and that women who lead them
hold that position.

One of the most terrifying and important aspects of Gilead is the fact that its internalization as a
society is so deep that it penetrates people’s psyches and their minds. This is especially seen
when Aunt Lydia refers to the fact that “The Republic of Gilead knows no bounds, Gilead is
within you.”

Gilead itself is a neatly organized setting, and yet as lifeless as it comes. Offred describes
Gilead as one of those beautiful pictures they’d use in magazines about homes and interior
decoration, however notes the absence of people. She talks about the heart of Gilead as a sort
of museum or model town that showcases how people used to live, how children used to live in
the streets, and how there aren’t children anymore. This connects with the larger theme of there
being almost no children in the text, despite children being the very goal of Gilead’s society as a
whole.

It should also be noted that Gilead’s society is painted as an in-transition stage of sorts. Every
society has a phase where they rework their very fundamentals to change themselves and who
they are at their root, and thus that transitional period is skimmed over and looked past in
historical texts. The Gilead that Offred sees is that, with the people in power scurrying to find a
solution to how devastated the environmental effects of the “wars” outside have left them, and
how fertility is an issue and a growing rarity, something that needs to be combatted if Gilead is
to survive and persevere in the future.
Key Locations:
The wall: Harvard has been completely converted into a prison run by the Eyes, and the outer
walls of Harvard are used to hang dissidents as a warning to the people of Gilead. Symbolic in
the way that an institution for knowledge is now being used to suppress knowledge.

The Commander’s Home: A prison of sorts for Offred, where she feels constantly surveilled,
even going as far as to describe a patch of plaster in the ceiling of her bedroom as a “blind
plaster eye”. (Chapter 17) Serena Joy’s garden is especially important, as within the first half of
the book, it’s used to depict all of the forces that the Commander and his government have tried
to suppress, and how the flowers essentially represent Gilead as a whole. However, near the
end of the book, Offred describes the flowers and the garden as a whole as a sense of buried
things bursting upwards, connecting to Offred’s own rising of rebellious thoughts within her.
(Chapter 25)

Jezebel: Biblical Symbolism: Jezebel was the Phoenician wife of Ahab who was killed in
accordance of Elijah’s Prophecy, however her importance here is the fact that she defied the
great prophets Elijah and Elisha, and was denounced as a murderer, prostitute, and enemy of
God. Despite there being so much more to who Jezebel was, it’s clear that the Elite Men of
Gilead only focused upon her denunciation when naming the club. The club is a place meant for
the elites to indulge in their desires for extramarital sex, and the prostitutes there are the only
women in Gilead who still wear pre-Gilead clothing.

The Red Center: Otherwise known as the Rachel and Leah Center, which is ironic as the story
of Rachel and Leah is about Rachel not being granted freedom of her own body, and was
present as a way to show the dangerous and controlling temptations of men. The Red Center is
where the Handmaid’s are trained, and where the process of internalizing Gilead and its ideals
takes place.

Significant Episodes:
“We slept in the Gym.”
“A Chair, a table, a lamp.”
“Doctors lived here once.”
“The lawns are tidy.”

1984:
All of the events in the text take place in a fictionalized version of London during (what we and
Winston assume to 1984.) London is a capital of a province called Airstrip One, and is a part of
Oceania, one of the 3 large world-powers along with Australasia and Eurasia. The division of
groups in London is particularly important to note, as London is divided into the Inner Party, the
Outer Party, and The Proles. The Inner Party are made up of those living luxurious lives and
have access to a variety of goods, the Outer Party, is the most surveilled, as Winston and others
live in dilapidated conditions, and have no real control over their personal space or property. The
Proles are essentially slums that the party leaves alone but also does not provide much support
to.

The city is dominated by large mega-structures that represent the Four Ministries. Each ministry
and its name are paradoxical, as the functions of the MInistries serve the exact opposite
function as the name.

Ministry of Love: Law and Punishment

Ministry of Peace: war
Ministry of Plenty: Rationing Food, keeping a heavy amount of resources for the Inner Party
Ministry of Truth: Propaganda, rewriting History

Technology and Surveillance :

There are numerous fictional technologies within 1984 that are only utilized in order to serve
Ingsoc’s goals of manipulation and surveillance. This includes the versificators which are used
to generate fiction without the need of human authors. This also includes the memory holes,
which are slots for immediately depositing and burning any submitted documents. Old
Documents are also destroyed in order to erase any seditious material, and replace old
outdated documents with new propaganda. The Telescreen is the most important of these new
devices, as they serve as two-way television, showing the Party Members a constant stream of
Propaganda and giving the Thought Police a way to watch every single individual in the city.
Telescreens represent (literally and symbolically) the all-seeing eye of Big Brother, and how Big
Brother is always watching you.

The constant stream of propaganda and Big Brother’s constant presence through screens and
posters alike, both in and out of the Ministries is used to convey the fact that Big Brother is
always watching, and the constant theme of surveillance is always present within 1984. The
constant usage of the slogan adds onto this feeling of being watched as well, and ultimately play
into the main purpose of the party and what Orwell’s message was too, to conform

Key Locations:
The Alcove: The Alcove is the hidden spot where Winston keeps his diary hidden away from
the prying eyes of Big Brother through the telescreen in his home. He uses it to not only store
his diary, but write in it in a place away from the sight of Big Brother. The screen could hear him,
but won’t see him.

The Chestnut Tree Cafe: A place of the long-dead and long-forgotten, haunted by old painters
and musicians. The location is ill-omened, especially due to the fact that the old party heads
gathered there after being exposed as traitors. The speciality of the Cafe is gin flavored with
cloves, perhaps to depict the luck behind their survival.

Winston’s Apartment: A depressing, colorless place where telescreens are ever present. Even
the scent is described as revolting, smelling of old rags and cabbages. Above all else, Winston's
apartment is his prison in the same vein that the Commander’s Home was Offred’s. He cannot
be himself in it, and the constant reminder of Big Brother and his presence enforces that.

Mr. Charington’s Rented Room: Sits above the Junk-Shop, and is virtually the only place in
the entirety of the novel that can be described as remotely free. Julia and Winston first meet
there, and it's a place they visit time and time again due to its lack of telescreens, and hence its
lack of The Party.

Community Center: Party members are “supposed” to go to the community center to relax,
recreate and drink, however this is paradoxical given the fact that party members are not
expected to take breaks. The Community Center represents hope for a break from work that
any Party member, especially those living in the Outer Party, will never have.

The Golden Country: A recurring landscape in Winston's dreams with an old pasture, a few
molehills and a nearby stream. Winston thinks he recognizes this landscape when he visits the
Country Area with Julia. Representation of Hope and a more life-filled future, but only one that
can exist in dreams.

The Junk-Shop: A shop in which Winston first bought his diary, a place where objects of old are
forgotten and tossed away, like junk.

Victory Mansions: The apartment building where Winston's apartment is. The entire building is
falling apart, and the name Victory Mansions is antithetical to that, with such a victorious name
and then such a sad state of living.

Significant Episodes:
“Since about that time, war has been continuous.”
“Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had something to do with the
production of pig-iron.”
“The Hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and Old Rag Mats.”
“Big Brother is watching you.”

DRAMATIC TENSION:
SPEECH AND DIALOGUE:

POINT OF VIEW (STRUCTURE) :

The Handmaid’s Tale: Loss of Identity
Non-Linear narrative woven around specific episodes, includes multiple different flashbacks and
repetitions, as some events are described as happening in the present while others are
described as happening in the recent or distant past.
The narrative style is also deeply introspective and detailed. Offred sees the world around her
with vivid detail and describes situations that she’s not even in as if she were there. Offred finds
beauty and meaning wherever she can as a survival/coping mechanism against Gilead’s torture,
and as a resistance in order to not give in fully to the colorless world of Gilead. She even talks
about the fact that she includes repetitive descriptions in order to have a level of control over
herself and her story, otherwise she’d be completely lost.

Narrative Perspective: First-Person, Internal, Unreliable Narrator. Everything is presented

through Offred’s perspectives, and this is combined with the narrative structure in order to
convey uncertainty to the reader, both about what Offred is feeling, and about the dreadful feel
of Gilead as a whole. Offred often detaches herself from the present in order to think about her
time in the Red Center or her marriage with Luke.

This narrative perspective that we follow throughout the text limits the reader’s ability to know
beyond what Offred is seeing or thinking at a particular moment. The first person narration and
the present tense used in the book convey the feeling of confinement, as not only can we only
see what Offred sees, we can only see what Offred chooses to see or feel. Offred’s
unwillingness to speak in cases such as about the death of her daughter limit not only what
she’s feeling but what we might take away from her character.

Usage of Present Tense:

The usage of present tense is important in the Handmaid’s Tale because while quite a lot of the
story is told through different flashbacks and repetitions, the present is what gives off the most
feeling of confinement and dread. Officially speaking, and for the readers at the very beginning
of the text, she has no past, and no knowledge of the future. Hence, we are stuck in the present
as well, waiting for Offred to explain her situation and how Gilead itself came to be.

Significant Episodes:
The Ceremony: “What I could see, if I were to open my eyes, would be the large white canopy
of Serena Joy’s outsized colonial-style four-poster bed, suspended like a sagging cloud above
us, a cloud sprigged with tiny drops of silver rain, which, if you looked at them closely, would
turn out to be four-petalled flower.”

“There is more than one kind of Freedom” : Offred reflects on the idea of freedom, and Aunt
Lydia telling her about how there is more than one kind of it, freedom to and freedom from, and
how she had the freedom to expression in her life before Gilead, how she was free to wear what
she wanted, even to places as simple as the laundromat, and how that’s reflected back in the
present due to the shops all being stripped of their identity.

“Ordinary is what you are used to.” Offred connects her vivid description of the flowers in
Serena Joy’s garden to Gilead as a whole, and then further connects it to what Aunt Lydia told
her about how Offred would come to get used to the new ordinary that she lived in, and that she
would simply have to navigate through the tyranny of Gilead to just survive.
“I don’t want to be telling this story, I don’t have to tell it, I don’t have to tell anything, to
myself or to anyone else.” Offred begins reflecting on her past and everything that happened
with Luke and her daughter when they attempted to cross the border, specifically her emotions
and how they progressed as the passport was rejected, and they were forced to flee into the
woods. She talks of the feeling of running away, but then stops, limiting the story from the
readers and herself due to the weight it holds.

1984:
1984 is told entirely through the third person-perspective, but through a limited third person
perspective, as the point of view that’s focused on is still Winston's. We see the totalitarian
society of Ingsoc’s Oceania through Winston's eyes, and we see the fear the party invokes and
its effects through winston himself, especially when he believes himself already dead at when
writing his thoughts down in his journal, despite The Party’s strict rules about the production and
recording of thoughts. As the reader sees everything through the eyes of Winston, the same
judgements that he makes are passed onto us, such as his initial meeting and hatred of Julia,
where he made the assumption that she wasn’t someone worth his time, and hence treats her
aggressively.

The perceptions that he has of people are often flawed, and that’s shown time and time again,
with Julia, O’Brien, and even all those that he’s working with in the Ministry of Truth, and all o
this works to convey the paranoia in winston and the larger society as a whole, as the idea of
making actual connection sis something that could result in execution under the party. Winston’s
point of view is also important to consider when looking at dehumanization in the society, as
we have a deeper understanding of his psyche than he does, and regularly questions his own
memory and his humanity.

The usage of third person is also important in how Orwell uses different devices to provide
larger contexts about the society of Oceania as a whole. The readers learn a great deal about
The Ministry of Truth through his perspective, and while we are left as much in the dark about
the workings of the Inner Party as he is, there is a larger understanding that we can gather
about their usage of brainwashing that Winston doesn’t. This also plays into his relationship with
other characters such as O’Brien, relationships where the reader may be able to tell that
something is off, but Winston himself doesn’t. Sometimes, Orwell steps out of Winston's
perspective as well for the purposes of 1984’s political critiquing, for example when Winston is
reading Goldstein’s perspective, he’s reading it aloud and not giving any of his own personal
opinions on it while he reads it. This is done to offer readers the chance to make their own
opinions on the politics of 1984.

Significant Episodes:

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
“Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled
they cannot become conscious.”’

“I love Big Brother.”

TECHNIQUES:
SYMBOLISM:
1984:
Big Brother - Big brother is a symbol of the totalitarian government in Oceania. This symbol is
introduced in the first chapter, through which we understand that big brother (although connotes
that he may have a warm, watchful power that can help the citizens for good, be someone the
citizens look up to), but rather big brother is someone who maintains the tough regime in
Oceania. There is instead an abuse of power, as big brother is a looming threat to people like
Winston who are hiding their secrets from the party, such as his diary, and his rebellious
thoughts.

Red armed Parole Women - Winston and Julia continue to believe they’re doomed throughout
the book, and believe that the red armed parole women, whose vitality and fertility give hope to
Winston. He believes that the parole women can be the ones to overthrow the totalitarian
regime, as they can give birth to the next generation in which children can rebel against the
party.

Telescreens - Symbolize party’s constant surveillance, and wish for complete control over their
citizen’s lives. Introduced at the beginning, almost an integral part of the house, and the
telescreen

BIBLICAL METAPHORS AND SYMBOLISM (HMT):

ALLUSIONS:

IRONY:
Handmaids
● Atwood uses Irony, in the form of a feature of Gilead Republic, to show the
Politicization of Religion in the book. The Republic manipulates the language and
symbols in Religion, to use them for their advantage.
● In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale she criticizes the society that women live
in. Atwood uses allusions to the Old Testament, Cultural Revolution, Salem Witch
 Trials, and the Taliban to satirize the oppression of women in political, religious and
social aspects.

1984
● The verbal irony is used in the book 1984 because the whole political system of the
depicted anti-utopian world exists in self-contradictory slogans. When the readers
see the sentence “War is Peace,” they understand that those notions are absolute
antonyms. They try to convince the citizens to manipulate them into believing these
slogans to gain control. The three slogans of the party are war is peace, freedom is
slavery, and ignorance is strength.
● It names its Ministries, the centers of its power, ironically as well. The Ministry of Truth is
concerned with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture, and the Ministry of Peace with war

MOTIFS:

TONE:
The handmaid’s Tale:
The tone is dark and bleak. In the present when Offred is narrating her story post Gilead, she is
blunt: all of the hope has been stripped from her, her identity has been stripped. What remains a
shell that observes. The story is written to convey the horrors of Gilead while also portraying
how detached Offred is, the Author does so through tone.

And for a character like the narrator, stuck in a society that's taken so much away from her, it
would be adding insult to injury to use language to mask or hide her situation, which is already
so empty. Even though the narrator says at one point, "I wish this story were different [...] I wish
it were about [...] sunsets, birds, rainstorms, or snow" (41.1), she can't put in things that aren't
there. She can't add frippery or positive imagery.

Offred constantly lives in paranoia, imagining worst-case scenarios, such as Oflgen lying about
May Day and Luke being imprisoned or dead. Her thoughts sometimes border on the macabre
in their bluntness, such as when she considers saving a match for future use: “I could burn the
house down. Such a fine thought, it makes me shiver.”

Chapter 13: “we meant it, which was the bad part. I used to think well of myself, I didn’t then”
During the worst moments of the book, the Author states the facts as they are. Without any
euphemism. This aids to show how Offred has been shaped by Gilead and how she has been
brainwashed to believe everything she is told.

Chapter 16: “I do not say making love, because this is not what he’s doing. Copulating too
would be inaccurate because it would imply two people and only one is involved. Nor does rape
cover it”
1984:
The tone of 1984 is similar to that of the handmaid’s tale, being dark, gloomy and overall
pessimistic.

This stems from the fact that both the texts feature a character who yearns for more, they are
stuck in a totalitarian regime knowing that there is more the world has to offer. In its essence
both of them seek freedom: freedom of choice, of thoughts, of actions. In fact, a difference
between Winston’s thoughts and his speech can be seen. Orwell loads the apartments and
workplaces of the novel with foul smells, noise, and a lack of privacy. Food is gray and
unappetizing; indulgences like alcohol and cigarettes are unsatisfying and of poor quality.This
tone echoes the dystopian mood and themes of the novel. Oceania is tightly controlled by a
repressive government with a cult of personality in its leadership. People’s more positive
qualities have been channeled into conformism and mob mentality. Against this backdrop,
Winston has developed a pessimistic, fatalistic attitude, believing himself to be as good as dead
from the moment he begins writing in his diary: “To be killed was what you expected.”

PARADOXES IN 1984 AND HMT :

1984:
Doublethink: Doublethink is paradoxical in nature. It is meant to leave the Party Members in a
state of cognitive dissonance. Doublethink is essentially the act of accepting 2 beliefs as
simultaneously correct. Doublethink is utilized by the Party to put the Party Members in a
constant state of confusion and self-doubt, so much so that they are unable to form any
rebellious thoughts of their own, due to their constant state of self doubt.

“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling
carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out,
knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against
logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was
impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, “

“that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once
again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to
understand the word—doublethink—involved the use of doublethink.”

“War is Peace.”: The most contradictory statement of the Party’s slogan. This part of the
slogan is essentially telling the people of Oceania that in order to achieve peace, one must go
through the horrors of war. One key aspect to add onto the paradoxical nature of this statement
is the fact that the people of Oceania never see the war itself, and never feel its effects beyond
what they’re told by The Party and beyond shortages that are blamed on the war, thus resulting
in the statement being paradoxical in nature as it states that war is peace, and yet as the novel
goes on, it’s clear that there is no war at all, as winston states that at first they were fighting
Eurasia, and then Australasia. The fact that there is no war at all is used by The Party as a
unifying idea of sorts to get the people in line under a common goal of fighting a common
enemy, thus being inherently paradoxical, as how can war be peace if there is no war at all?

“Freedom is Slavery.” : This part of the statement from the Party’s Slogan communicates the
idea that anyone who’s independent of the party is bound to be unsuccessful, and is bound to
be a slave to their own wants and their own freedom. Thus, The Party communicates the
thought that adhering to the rules set in place by Big Brother is what’s ideal for one’s own
wellbeing and one’s own safety and security. The paradoxical point is present here in the fact
that by painting freedom and being free as slavery, The Party is forcing its members to enslave
themselves to them and them alone, and if you follow them and all of their rules, then you are
safe. Freedom in Oceania is the freedom to do what one wants if it falls under the rules of the
Party, and does not deviate in any way whatsoever.

“Ignorance is Strength.” : This part of the statement is essentially communicating the fact that
the people of Oceania need to subvert their will and their awareness in order to to accept the
various paradoxes that The Party puts forth. They are expected to accept the irrationality of the
Party and forgo any concept of “personal truth” that they once held. Ignorance is thus strength
as by ignoring the obvious contradictions of The Party and the power that holds over the people,
the people of Oceania abandon their rights to think for themselves, and to potentially rebel.
Ignorance is strength, not for the people of Oceania themselves, but for The Party, as it is only
through ignorance that people can live in an oppressive society such as 1984’s.

The Ministries: The Ministries are all paradoxical in nature as well. The Ministry of Truth
rewrites history and promotes propaganda disguised as “truth”, The Ministry of Peace carries
out all matters of war, The Ministry of Love enforces the rules of the government through
extreme surveillance and violence, and The Ministry of Plenty carry out the production and
distribution of resources, but only limit the majority of them to the Inner Party.

“At nineteen he had designed a hand-grenade which had been adopted by the Ministry of
Peace and which, at its first trial, had killed thirty-one Eurasian prisoners in one burst. At
twen- 60 1984 ty-three he had perished in action”

Newspeak: Different words in Newspeak have heavily paradoxical meanings, such as

duckspeak, which refers to "to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that
has two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse; applied to someone
you agree with, it is praise"

Another such example is the word: “”Blackwhite.” which means to accept the truth that the
party gives, even if they say that black is white, however everything else is also blackwhite, and
hence what the party is saying isn’t true.
The Handmaid’s Tale:
Narrative Paradoxes: Offred presents a series of paradoxes throughout the novel when
expressing her personal viewpoints or opinions on something. One such example is her
reflecting on the role of The Commander in society, and how he’s expected to keep his emotions
in check in order to fulfill his duties as a Commander in Gilead. “Still, it must be hell to be a
man like that. It must be just fine. It must be hell. It must be very silent.”. The first 2 lines
are especially paradoxical in the fact that it must be both hell and must be just fine to be a man
like that, conveying that Offred believes that it is simultaneously hell for a man to live without
showing who they truly are or how they may be feeling, but also it must be completely fine for
them to be able to do so as they are not being oppressed by Gilead regarding their identities,
and still hold far more freedom than any of the women do.

Another narrative paradox is present in Chapter 18 when Offred goes over 3 different possible
versions of where Luke might currently be, and how he might be doing, stating just one thing at
the beginning of each scenario; “Here is what I believe.” She asserts that to her, each of these
scenarios are equally true at once, thus conveying that she’s reached a point where the only
way she’s able to believe in anything at all is by believing in paradoxes, and by finding any
potential truth from them that she could find.

This same presentation of multilinear narration, which is the presentation of contradictory and
paradoxical statements, is also present in Offred’s closing line too. While it's clear that Offred
herself isn’t aware of what her fate is going to be, her closing narration is one that’s paradoxical
in nature, as she refers to stepping up, either into the darkness within, or else the light. This
conveys the fact that Offred fully believes that she is stepping to both her death and a new
beginning at the same time, and she has no way of knowing which will end up being true.

“Whether this is my end or a new beginning I have no way of knowing: I have given
myself over into the hands of strangers, because it can’t be helped. And so I step up, into
the darkness within; or else the light.”

ANTITHESIS:

FORESHADOWING:
Winston’s fate is foreshadowed from the start of the text. Winston dreams about O’Brien, and
believes that the two will meet where there is no darkness. At the end of the novel, this does
happen, where Winston is tortured in the ministry of love, where there is always light. Use of this
suggests that Winston was doomed from the start of the novel, and that the novel ends on a
note of despair, that despite Winston’s small rebellions, there is no concrete way to escape the
totalitarian government’s control.
Important Quotes:
- ‘’You can think clearly only with your clothes on.’’- offred’s handmaid’s outfit makes her
feel less empowered

- Offred quotes – ‘’ Hope is rising… like sap in tree and blood in a wound’’- ‘’opening (from
the area)’’- a possibility of escape for the girls

- Examples of indoctrination of women: ‘’modesty is invisibility ‘’– page 34 last line

- And - ‘’to be seen….is to be penetrated’’

- ‘’We are not each other’s anymore. Instead, I am his’’- Page 182- despite offred’s love
for Luke, she cannot suppress the fact that the loving with the existence of sexism is not
easy for her