“A dystopian dystopia –

Is the Handmaid’s Tale a Dystopia?”

Structure

- What is a dystopia?
- From Dictionary of Reference.com “…is the often futuristic vision of a society in which conditions of
life are miserable and characterised by poverty, oppression, war, violence, disease, pollution,
nuclear fallout and/or the abridgement of human rights, resulting in widespread unhappiness,
suffering and other kinds of pain.”
- What has caused this pain?
- What is freedom? JS Mill - the ability to do what one wishes
- The two concepts of freedom.
o Negative Freedom => Ignorance is bliss?
o Positive Freedom => a new man, new freedoms, involves sacrifices
- The retreat into the inner citadel from the freedoms of modern society.
- Brainwashing – is it wrong?
- How has America decayed into Gilead? Or has there been a decay at all?
- Freely competitive societies vs Fascist societies.
- Gilead from above or Gilead from below?
- Two reasons that caused pain and suffering for Offred and the Commander:
o Inability to adapt to the new options of life and the loss of the old freedoms
o Unpredictability of the future
- Is it then a dystopia? Can we call Gilead a dystopia or is every society is dystopia?
- A recurring theme, a motif:
o the perpetual struggle between our unlimited desires and limited choice our inability to
adapt to the set of freedoms and options