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While reading The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, I experienced a combination of disturbance and strange familiarity. Atwood’s portrayal of Gilead is brutal but also mirrors certain aspects of real-world experiences, especially in how people adapt to the systems of control and power. The book’s scenes, symbols, and main themes Atwood tends to draw are the traditions of religious justification, women exploitation and objectification, power dynamics, and the journey to love and freedom. Even being a male reader in the world world, I found myself connecting to these themes through my own personal past experiences and history. My reaction comes not from sharing the same oppressions the female characters face, but recognizing how power, fear, and identity shape people in different ways. A powerful object in the novel that seems to be mentioned often is The Wall. Early in the book, Offred and Ofglen walk by during their grocery-run where Offred narrates, “What we’re supposed to feel towards these bodies is hatred and scorn. This isn’t what I feel. These bodies hanging on The Wall are time travelers, anachronisms” (page 31, pdf) For me, it would become weird that I would strangely relate to a wall, but that became the case. The Wall is decorated with dead bodies organized in a certain way to symbolize their punishments and the consequences they’ve deserved for their crimes against Gilead, sometimes having a yellow star next to them to show that they’re a Jew. Personally, I would’ve freaked out but Offred doesn’t seem to show any uneasiness or panic, but learns to adjust her emotions in a way to adapt to an environment of fear. In my own life, The Wall resembles my parents’ strict discipline growing up. I’m not objectifying my parents that they’re literally a wall, but the fact that they instilled great discipline in me and redirected me from the unrighteous things in life that made me the person I am today. They represented a kind of firm, moral, and source of fear when it comes to the daily decisions I make. Whenever I would make bad decisions, their punishment wasn’t cruelty, but rather harsh love meant to correct my growth. Over time, I learnt to associate the fear of their discipline with making more morally right choices, just like how The Wall in Gilead stands as a visible reminder of the consequences of disobedience. In a strange way, The Wall became the reminder of moments in my childhood that shaped me into who I became today because of the discipline I’ve been raised on. It helped me understand why Offred doesn’t blatantly rebel on certain occasions because fear causes people to be silent and obedient. Another scene that deeply impacted me was when Offred reflects on her loss of identity due to the environment of Gilead in how they’re misrepresenting women specifically. Offred says, “I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping.” (page 64, pdf) This occurs as she began to see herself through the role that Gilead had forced upon Offred and other women. The role being a reproductive vessel. Offred no longer felt like a human nor a whole person, but just a body with one singular function. Additionally, she was stripped of her responsibilities, financial state, and relationships simply because of Gilead’s substantial power imbalancement. In Gilead’s hierarchy, men are viewed as more dominant, strong, and having more control over women. Especially on how this hierarchy works–their idea of utilizing women for reproduction, objectification, and lustful desires–exploits women completely and changes their whole entire identity. Even if I have never experienced anything like this level of control, I’ve always become an identity that wasn’t me. In school, I remember how I acted dependent on who I was around with. When I was around the “cool kids” and popular people, it meant that I needed to be humorous, chill, and more overreactive. But over time, being around those types of people did not truly make me a better person. I felt detached from my true self and it felt like I had put on a mask just to feel socially accepted, just like how Offred would obey if only there are guards around but wants freedom at the end of the day. At times, I would be caught under the principal’s hand of mischief by the amount of peer pressure that I’ve gotten to do whatever I needed to please those types of people. Both situations reflect on how environments shape behavior, often in ways that make us feel powerless and put on a show. After all, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood didn’t just become a book about women exploitation and gender inequality, but causes a deeper connection with the reader to reflect on their own past experiences similar to the characters and events that take place in The Handmaid’s Tale.

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While reading The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, there was this one scene that I found particularly unsettling and intriguing where the mandatory ritual ceremony with the Commander and the Handmaid, Offred, conducts sexual intercourse. On surface level, it felt like what the author was trying to show was that the Commander was justified by the sacred duty to impregnate Offred for the reproduction of the population of Gilead which is completely understandable especially when they’re struggling in birthrate. However, delving deeper into this scene, it does symbolize how women are often exploited through the aspects of power, obedience, and control. Through this scene, Atwood uses Offred’s perspective to show the objectification of women’s bodies and the uneasiness when they’re being sexually controlled. As I read, I was extremely disturbed by the descriptive imagery that Atwood has used on the ritual between Offred and the Commander. The Ceremony is framed as an event justified by the sacredness of the Bible, but it felt like it was forced. The scene where Offred describes how the Wife and Offred are positioned, “My arms are raised, she holds my hands, each of mine in each of hers.” mimics a spiritual prayer as if it’s being done under the divines. But yet I sensed that it wasn’t spiritual, but done as an act of duty. The ritual transformed sexual intercourse as a sign of obedience, completely removing the aspects of intimacy and showed women’s role as an act of duty. Reading this, I was struck by how easily rituals can be exploited by the justification of faith and scripture, promising comfort and community, became a weapon of forced violence. My reaction reading this scene was uneasy since both roles, the Commander, and the women, had such a difference in power to the point where women could be exploited and trapped easily. For me, the Ceremony became an example on how a hierarchy of different roles with different powers, use religion as a safety net for domination and exploitation of others. What disturbed me further was the way the Ceremony reduces the women’s bodies to functional parts. In the scene where Offred observes how Serena Joy, the Wife, “is lying on her back fully clothed, except for the healthy white cotton underdrawers. Her legs are apart, she is holding my hands.” This position that Offred held emphasizes how her body is literally split off from herself. Because Offred’s upper half of her body is held by Serena Joy and the lower rest is used by the Commander, Offred is seen as a vessel rather than a human being. While the Ceremony has continued with the intercourse between the Commander and Offred, Offred kept note of the Commander’s behavior about how he treated the ritual as something to be required than desired, showing a lack of intimacy, shown form the quote, “He is preoccupied, like a man humming to himself in the shower.” I find that this scene normalized how objectification had become in Gilead when it comes to reproductive control. It wiped out women’s roles of mothers, wives, and lovers, and replaced them with wombs to be exploited against. Atwood also utilized Offred’s narration with irony which created both distance and resistance between the Commander and Offred. This one quote during the Ceremony, “This is not recreation, even for the Commander, This is serious business.” had shown how Offred had reacted. Logically, I would’ve thought she’d react with horror or disgust, but instead, she kind of narrated a flat tone as if she’s mocking the ritual. From what I’ve understood, I felt like her irony became a survival tactic. She knew that she couldn’t stop the act, so she controls the way she frames it in her mind since that’s the only thing she could control. Intellectually, I found this as a coping mechanism and way to detach herself from the brutally awkward Ceremony to stop her from breaking. Personally if I were in Offred’s position, I would’ve reacted the same way: finding ways to resist without directly rebelling. Reflecting on the Ceremony, I realize that I’m sensitive and I tend to be mirroring the discomfortness that Offred had faced along with her own strategies of surviving emotionally. I feel like the author’s intention of including and writing this scene was not just to directly show two different-gendered people having sexual intercourse, but to show the minor problem in reality of how women are treated as reproductive machines rather than actual human beings and how people can easily cover this using religion.

during the qaurter, my notebook has helped me a ton by providing me information, organizing, and planning for any assignments. i hope to be more creative and make my notes more organizing and easily understanble in the future.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MIOdT9R-5iJByK4kpxtfLdIXeDRzhIEX/view?usp=sharing

in this quarter, my notebook has helped me thorughout times where i needed information, so i stored the info in my notebook so that the info is secured. i plan to maximixe myt notebook by being more organizing and creative of creating my notes so i can better understand my notes

video: https://www.icloud.com/photos/#0f5lrgI8tYuGWJ40lw4qE0aNQ

me magazixne project yea