offred

point 1: Offred as a passive survivor

the Psychological Effects of Oppression

point 1 quotation: metaphorically conveying her entrapment

“I am leashed, it looks like, manacled; cobwebbed, that’s closer” (ch31, pg209)

point 1 quotation: symbolises controlled existence

“I have a fork and a spoon, but never a knife” (Ch35, pg236)

point 1 quotation: psychological toll of oppression

“The fact is that I no longer want to leave, escape, cross the border to freedom” (ch41, pg279)

point 1 AO3 - totalitarian regime forced submission

Indoctrination, strict social hierarchies, and thought control in Gilead echo tactics used by oppressive states to instil submission » Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia

point 1 AO4 - compare to 1984: resignation

Winston’s eventual surrender to Big Brother mirrors Offred’s resigned acceptance of her fate

point 1 AO5 - feminist criticism: how effective is her passive resistance?

Feminist critics debate whether Offred’s passivity is a failure of agency or a necessary form of survival

point 2: resistance in memory n identity

Offred’s retroactive resistance through storytelling

point 2 quotation - nostalgia for intellectual freedom

“I had a paper due the next day” (Ch7, pg43)

point 2 quotation - loss of cultural identity

“I’m a refugee from the past, and like other refugees I go over the customs and habits of being I’ve left or been forced to leave” (Ch35, pg235)

point 2 quotation - storytelling as an act of defiance

“I’ve tried to make it sound as much like her as I can. It’s a way of keeping her alive” (Ch38, pg252)

point 2 AO3 - the Holocaust n Soviet censorship

In Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, rewriting history and restricting access to books and personal narratives were common tools of control, similar to Gilead’s destruction of women’s rights to literacy and personal history

point 2 AO4 - compare to The Catcher in the Rye: youth resistance

Holden narrates this novel, throughout attempting to resist ‘phony’ adult narratives in doing so, and telling things how he sees them and how he wishes to portray them

point 2 AO5 - postmodern criticism: nature of the truth

Postmodernist perspectives view Offred’s narration as unreliable and fragmented, suggesting that truth itself is malleable and subjective

point 3: Offred’s ethical struggles

desensitisation and moral ambiguity

point 3 quotation - oppression erodes moral urgency

“I scarcely take the trouble to sound regretful, so lazy have I become” (Ch41, pg279)po

point 3 quotation - gradual loss of resistance

“Ofglen is giving up on me. She whispers less, talks more about the weather” (Ch41, pg279)

point 3 quotation - fear of dehumanisation

“I don’t want to be a dancer, my feet in the air, my head a faceless oblong of white cloth. I don’t want to be a doll hung up on the Wall” (Ch45, pg294)

point 3 AO3 - Jim Crow laws and apartheid

everyday people became accustomed to structural violence and discrimination, just as Offred becomes increasingly desensitised to Gilead’s brutality

point 3 AO4 - compare to Brave New World: complacency

The characters become complacent in an oppressive but comfortable world, paralleling Offred’s moral struggles

point 3 AO5 - psychoanalytic criticism: mental defence

Psychoanalytic readings suggest Offred’s desensitisation is a defence mechanism against trauma