Fable of the Freed One: An In-Depth Analysis of "The Handmaid's Tale".
Lit Log #1 For my Lit Log, I will be doing prompt #1, and comparing a part of The Handmaid’s Tale to a historical context. Specifically, I will be analyzing the later half of Chapter 22, where Moira, having had as much as she could take from The Aunts, frees herself from the re-education camp. I call the reader’s attention to page 133, where the other residents of the camp realize that “…Moira had power now, she’d been set loose, she’d set herself loose. She was now a loose woman.” The way that Moira not only escapes from the terrible fate set out for her, but also makes herself a hero in the eyes of the other handmaids-in-training reminds me very much of the 15th Century Maid of Orleans herself, Joan of Arc. The way they both radiate power, allowing themselves to become the one of the last symbols of hope in their people’s eyes, is too much of a coincidence for me to not notice.
However, there are, I believe, two small differences between Moira and Mdmsl. of Arc, that being their receival among their fellow women, and their beginnings. When Joan was fighting for the Dauphin, she did so out of loyalty to France, but also, sources say, due to the guidance of the Archangel Michael, a prominent figure in Heaven, most well known for dealing the final blow to his equally infamous brother, Lucifer Morningstar, when the latter led a revolution that, if successful, would have displaced God as the ruler of everything. Lucifer’s defeat, and subsequent(not to mention immensely publicized) banishment from Heaven, led to him becoming the being we know and loathe today as The Devil.
Moira, on the other hand, fights only for herself, and against power and religion, as the latter is what got her(as well as the whole country)into this whole handmaid situation in the first place. From that point of view, one might see her as a sort of Anti-Hero Joan of Arc. Not only that, but her reasons for fighting are extremely similar to Lucifer’s as well, both parties wanting more than the fates that those in power had arranged for them. However, for the sake of Moira’s image in the eyes of the readers, I’m going to continue with the Joan of Arc comparison.
However, the difference in their receival among their fellow women is much more, shall we say, hard to distinguish, but can be detected by a keen literary eye. Both Joan and Moira are despised by the men of their era, and admired by the women, of their generation as well as ours, though it is in public opinion where the difference can be found. Where Joan today is lauded with terms of heroism among females and males alike, Moira’s reception is more akin to that of Joan when she was alive, only loved by women, in secret, lest they too be accused of uprising. My point is illustrated best by Offred on Page 133, where she writes: “We hugged her to us, she was with us in secret, a giggle; she was lava beneath the crust of daily life. In the light of Moira, the Aunts were less fearsome and more absurd. Their power had a flaw to it.” The terms upon which Offred is writing this are what I will be discussing next: her escape from the training camp.
Another great author, Roald Dahl, once wrote that most people, when faced with challenges of the highest degree, surrender and hope that things turn out for the best, while others choose to push as hard as they can, with every ounce of strength they have, to overcome said challenges. Moira, as is plainly obvious to anyone who reads Chapter 22 of The Handmaid’s Tale, is one of the latter. The sheer bravery she showed in threatening Aunt Elizabeth like that, followed by stripping her to her skivvies and impersonating her to escape, is reminiscent, like many other things in THT, of the Jews who were forced to employ all manners of deception to escape the Holocaust, in that only those with an unshakeable nerve would have been able to pull it off. After that, though, Moira’s fate is completely up in the air. She seems to have completely vanished from the face of the Earth after escaping the camp. Of course, one can only imagine what sort of effects this has on Offred’s already scarred mind. All I hope is that Moira doesn’t meet the same fate as Joan of Arc, burned at the stake like a marshmallow.
