Picture Perfect

My artwork shows how the handmaids are being watched every second they can be. It represents many different scenes in the book “The Handmaid’s Tale” has many different scenes that shows different characters that watch the handmaids at all times. Those characters being, The Eyes, Wives, and the Aunts. But for this specific piece of artwork I mainly wanted to focus on the “Eyes” of the story. The eyes are the secret police of Gilead. They are the ones who watch everything in Gilead. The eyes are tasked with surveillance and enforcing the laws of the state often to intimidation and violence. The job of the eyes in the Gilead world is to create an atmosphere of fear and paranoia among anyone that might be informed of the real world.

In this art piece I am representing Offred (in the hands), being watched by a bunch of eyes around her. The line “The Kidnapping I Can’t Escape,” is on top of her face disguising the fact that she can never escape. I added the hands around “Offred” representing bars, and barriers where she can’t escape “Gilead.” Around the hands at the top I added angels, with eyes. These represent the “Angels” in the story. Angels are Soldier 24 in order to protect the state but they operate more openly on our less involvement in persuasive surveillance.

I added eyes on top of these angels in my artwork because I wanted to represent that they are both forms of restriction in Gilead. The rest of the images on my artwork mostly show how the women in Gilead are treated by the “hierarchy” which is being silenced. The picture of the woman on the left side. Her eyes are being covered by the words , “ive now come to understand the same thing about trauma :happy, well adjusted people are all different. The traumatized are exactly alike.” I wanted to represent how the women in Gilead are being silenced and brainwashed on their traumatic experiences when living and working in Gilead.

In the book “The Handmaid’s Tale” there are many different examples of surveillance and watching in Gilead that represent my artwork. Offred says “There’s something I want to say, but its like the saying of it will cost me something.” (page number) In this quote Offred explains how she wants to say something, but she has this worrying feeling that she will be caught, and punished for what she will say. It develops a fear in Offred, constant surveillance all the time, making her cautious of what she says all the time, in order to avoid being brutally punished for having her different opinions and thoughts.

Ultimately, I created this collage as my art piece to show or depict how Offred, and the Handmaids in general, are being monitored and watched all the time in Gilead. It expresses the art form of the control and paranoia Offred is constantly being in. The reason why I chose to depict the “Eyes” in my art piece was because the eyes play a huge part and role in the story. Its significant to the story, and to Offred because it shows us that there is a higher power, and makes the structure of the people who are in power. We see how controlling the “Eyes” are, by seeing how afraid Offred is just by saying the wrong things. This is important because we see the root of why so many women are afraid to speak up in Gilead.