Critical interpretations: The Handmaids Tale and Nineteen-Eighty-Four

Satire
1. Bernard Crick
  1. " I see seven main satiric thrusts: the division of the world by the super states"
    1. i) media a mass agent of "prolerisation"
      1. ii) Power Hunger
        iii) Betrayal of intellectuals
        iv) Abuse of language for control
        v) rewriting history for political purposes
        vi) Toltalitarianism
  2. "not just satire of communism, the imagery of Oceania does not fit"
  3. "So part of the satire is not about totalitarianism at all, but is a bitter rage that the democratic franchise, mass literacy, and compulsory education had resulted not in an educated and active citizenry but rather in a semi-inert mass society of subjects feeding off very low level, sub-literary, thought-deadening products. "Dumbing down" puts it in a more cuddly way. Julia, it will be recalled, quite liked her work. "But she was not interested in the final product. She didn't care much for reading," she said. "Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.""
2. Antony Burgess
  1. ""a comic novel". That goes over the top."
Oppression
1. "The state uses games as a social ritual to control the population" - SISK
2. "The fact that the Handmaids are assigned new patronmetric names. suggesting how western practices of assigning women by the mens last name upon marriage defines men in terms of their men
3. Reproductive freedom is the basis for everything else" - Steinem
Toltalitarianism
1. "Surveillance is fundamental when it comes to keeping the Gilean people docile" -Nyström
2. "surveilance in Gilead both physical and psychological exists between people" - Nyström
Human Failings
1. "For all the risk taking... Offred is constantly afraid of making any choices" - Wagner Lawlor
  1. "even in the final lines of the narrative, she appears to be fence sitting"
Social heirachy
Speculation
1. "what we may be turning into if current trends are allowed to continue

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Critical interpretations: The Handmaids Tale and Nineteen-Eighty-Four

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