Overpowering Minds, Dehumanizing the Soul

"It has taken so little time to change our minds about things like this" 

This quote from the Handmaids Tale by Margaret Attwood represents how quickly their society has changed. From woman wearing knee length skirts, high heels, and red lipstick to becoming a thing used for just reproducing. Taking walks to keep their stomach muscles stretched for when they're pregnant and being only used for that. 

The quote also emphasizes how fast this change has occurred, not just a little change but drastic. From being an independent woman to being a resource. And realizing that staying silent, and doing as told led to this; even made the process go faster because no one questioned the actions. It also represents the fear, that if this drastic dehumanization has occurred in this little amount of time what other corruption will occur? How far will they go? And how much of themselves as people, as humans with souls will be taken away from them until they stop? if they ever would stop. 

 This quote also ties in with how the angels hand pick the guards and give them guns. In this Dystopia what makes it so extreme is how Margaret Attwood uses the bigger power, "God" and his followers in heaven, the "angels"  as the ones who create the destruction. The dystopia manipulates mother nature, our basic reason of life, to produce; and turns it into a job, but not only a job, but manipulates the whole concept of a woman becoming a mother, to a woman being a tool for men, to get the job done. Dehumanizing the woman to such extremes that she has no thought process, not say in anything. Just the title, her only identity, of being a "Handmaid"

The Animal underneath the Human Shell

"The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear- fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable, what he wants above everything else is safety." -Henry Louis Mencken 

In the Land crab by Margaret Atwood the characteristics of fear and aggression are imaged as "soft gut" and "hard bone" of a land crab to represent our defensive and vulnerable sides as humans. We extinguish the fact that we have this fight or flight instinct in ourselves because we refuse to believe that underneath our language, morals, and conscience that we are animals. Our fear is emphasized with this refusal of being an animal by having this hard shell we refuse to look underneath, Margaret Atwood represents this with the allusion of a "nightmare" symbolizing what we don't want to see in ourselves. 

"When we're afraid, we lose all sense of analysis and reflection. Our fear paralyzes us. Besides, fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators repression." -Marjane Satrapi

Does this make us the "dictators" of ourselves? Our fear causes us to repress the fact that we are mammals, we are animals on this earth. With dictating this quality we have, does this cause our fear and aggression characteristics? If we accepted both sides of ourselves as humans would our decision making be altered? 

Even though we have this "nightmare" that terrifies us, we have to remember that a nightmare is short term, it's not always there. Which is like our animal instincts, it's not constantly activated. We have more qualities than this, we think about the future rather than just the present, we think about the consequences of our actions, and even if we react to things without our conscious awareness we remember how it affected others so that we can fix it if it wasn't the way we wanted it to be. 

The Land crab in the poem represents the negative connotations of a human, we try to extinguish this parallelism but our harsh environment causes us to have this "hard shell" as well. 

Fear can only control you if you let it to be. What makes us different is that we can control this instinct. We can choose to be fearful or choose to overcome and realize our hard shell can push us through the barrier we had. We have the knowledge to realize if the situation is worth being fearful about,  and realize that we are capable of changing the outcome.

Angels for the Guns

"Guns were for the guards, specially picked from the angels" -Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood

How far can a human being go in the process of gaining power, before it crosses the line of protection and becomes corruption? 

Protect: to defend or guard from attack, cover or shield from injury or danger
Corrupt:Having or showing a willingness to act dishonestly in return for money or personal gain. Cause to act dishonestly in return for money or personal gain.

The quote from Handmaids tale prevails the setting of a dystopian society and contradicts the typical stereotype of an angel and a gun. An angel is a spiritual being believed to act as an attendant, agent, or messenger of God; representing hope, peace, guiding you towards the right path. The fact the "angels" are handing the guns emphasizes their governments purpose, to control all through fear. It represents their want to dehumanize the people, while showing them that they don't care what the cost is to gain power. How soulless and power ridden to go through drastic procedures to gain want they want. With the angels "specially" picking the guards demonstrates how they reward violence. Praise is only received through violent actions. This representation also shows how guns and violence is a good thing in their society because the "messenger of God" is picking them, meaning it has to be the right choice. Showing that protection is not the purpose of these guns, but authority and the ability to make people fear you to gain control leading to absolute power, and because they have already reached absolute power the next step is corruption.