Comparing The Handmaid's Tale And Black Boy

Tolerate the indifference
A widespread issue throughout the civilization of our century is that no one observes the traits of the individual being subjected to discrimination, as an alternative their label is based off unchangeable characteristics. The two accounts being discussed on the theme of discernment are The Handmaid’s Tale and Black Boy. In both books, characters scuffle in their identifiable methods against a culture that dominated them. They both ultimately battle and seek risky and dangerous road to escape.
In The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, a women by the name of Offred is labeled by the viable ovaries as a handmaid. Handmaids are the fertile women whose sole purpose is to bear children. The handmaids have horrible lives as prisoners. Living like a handmaid would have been brutal and extremely challenging. The culture basically belittles women and practically enslaves them. Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable.
In the autobiography Black Boy by Richard Wright, Richard discusses his challenges throughout childhood. He faced a massive deal of racism and pure ignorance. Richard finds his salvation in reading, writing, and thinking. He
grows up feeling insecure about his inability to meet the expectation of his culture. “The color of a Negro 's skin makes him easily recognizable, makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target.” (Wright)
While comparing the two books, one should find that Offred and Richard share multiple similarities. The correspondence between sexism and racism consist of leading a person feeling uncomfortable and inferior. Both characters had less opportunities in life and personal confidence issues.
Offred experienced a life before Gilead and was aware of the liberation she lost along with her family. Atwood displays Offred’s mindset towards Gilead by mentioning “My name isn 't Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it 's forbidden. I tell myself it doesn 't matter, your name is like your telephone number, useful only to others; but what I tell myself is wrong, it does matter.” (Atwood, 84)
Richard Wright often used metaphors to express how it felt to face Jim Crow Laws. “Lynching is a terror that comes in many forms; there is lynching of a man’s spirit as well as their bodies, and spiritual lynching occurs every day for a Negro in the South.” (Wright) Black Boy told the twisting layer of his childhood and youth in the South, particularizing the life-threatening poverty in which he lived, his experience of racism, violence, and his growing awareness of literature.
Wright’s idea of himself emerged from the intense discrimination and segregation in the South. He wrote in Black Boy: “At the age of twelve, before I had had one year of formal schooling, I had a conception of life that no experience would ever erase, a predilection for what was real that no argument could ever gainsay, a sense of the world that was mine and mine alone, a notion as to what life meant that no education could ever alter, a conviction that the meaning of living came only when one was struggling to wring a meaning out of meaningless
suffering.”
Sexism and racism are two well-known conflicts that needs an imperative resolution. Both can be considered as tools of oppression concerning differences prescribing that an individual’s role may be assigned according to their sex or race rather by their interests, talents, abilities or preferences.
The judging mind feels tight and a bit angry, and individual’s acts of judgment confirm us in that tendency. My interpretation of that phrase is to not judge the person because of one or few actions. We have all had crazy times in our lives and done stupid things. Should we be judged based on those times? I don 't think that is fair. I also don 't think we are in any place to judge others. To me, judging a person is like saying we are better than them. Like we know better what is right. However, the world is an extremely corrupted place where judgment prevails in everyday society. Although there will never be an end to prejudice or discrimination, there can be a tolerant of others. Humanity is often afraid of the unknown and the indifferent. It is a natural habit and flaw to place a discrete judgment. Instead of downing judgment, society should tolerate others.
Wright and Offred were both faced with multiple cases of judgment. People are often mistreated and judged in a less than equal manner before people even know the true nature of the person. Civilization has become blinded by the personal perceptions of each other, and what we want to see. Society does not have to necessarily approve of what some people have done, but tolerate the indifference.

Works Cited
Wright, Richard. Black Boy. Sixtieth Anniversary Edition. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993. 1-257. Print.
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid 's Tale. New York: Anchor Books, 1998. Print.