Handmaid's tale and 1984

setting

1984

• It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.

• The hallway smelt of old cabbage

• the eyes follow you about when you move, BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU

HMT

• A chair, a table, a lamp.

• like the place where an eye has been taken out

• they’ve removed anything you can tie a rope to.

HMT

"But I keep on going with this sad and hungry and sordid, this limping and mutilated story, because after all I want you to hear it, as I will hear yours too if I ever get the chance you into being. Because I'm telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are"

Parsons family vs Janine

1984

• Dust in the creases of her face"

• "It was somehow slowly frightening, like the gambolling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man eaters."

• "A fattish but active man of paralysing stupidity"

• 'I know they give you a fair hearing. Oh, I trust them for that!''

• ..a picture of dimpled knees and sleeves rolled back from pudgy forearms

HMT

• "Her belly swells triumphantly"

• “She’s a flag on a hilltop”

• "She looked disgusting: weak, squirmy, blotchy, pink, like a newborn mouse"

• "By that time Janine was like a puppy that's been kicked too often, by too many people, at random: she'd roll over for anyone"
  "Here eyes were open, but they didn't see me at all. They were rounded, wide, and her teeth, she was whispering to herself"

Offred vs Winstons fear

1984

• You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct -that every sound you made was overheard and except in darkness, every moment scrutinized

• He was already dead, he reflected. It seemed to him that it was only now, when he had begun to be able to formulate his thoughts, that he had taken the decisive step.

HMT

• “the night is mine, my own time”

• What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth ... Otherwise you live in the moment. Which is not where I want to be

• There will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it

Winston rebeliion

1984

• He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken.

• " 'In this game that we're playing, we can't win.  Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that's all.' "

• If there is hope... it lies in the proles