The Handmaid's Tale

Comparing texts forces us to question our values in the context of the author’s zeitgeist and our own. The dystopia novel The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), written by Margaret Atwood, and the film adaptation Children of Men (2006), directed by Alfonso Cuarón, both examine the abuse of power by totalitarian government regimes which come about as a result of chaotic disasters. These oppressive governments’ abuse of their given power creates a dystopic world, and with it come restrictions to individual freedom. By viewing the two texts together, we are able to gain a greater understanding of the composer’s context.

In The Handmaid’s Tale, the issue of infertility prompts the establishment of Gilead, a totalitarian regime which abuses its power in
its attempt to maintain control and order. The novel brought to life the fears that feminists had of religious conservatives taking away the progress women made during the sexual revolution. In the book, the regime blames women for the decrease in birth rates, subsequently leading to the immoral rules placed upon them. The replacement of the handmaids’ real name with degrading names relating to their “owner” is an example of how the Gilead establishment abuses its power in the name of control. Offred’s statement “I have another name, which nobody uses now because it’s forbidden demonstrates the law that is placed upon the Gileadean society which discriminates against females. This opposes the Civil Rights Act, passed in 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on race, colour, religion, national origin, or sex, as the Handmaidens in the novel have been stripped of all their rights. This discrimination is similar to that faced by the ‘fugees’ (illegal immigrants) in Children of Men, who are put into cages out in the view of the public, symbolising their equivalent to animals and dehumanisation. The control methods used by the governments in both texts are used by the composers to warn the audience of what happens when a government uses oppressive means of control. The totalitarian authority controlling the state of Gilead, abuses its power over society in the aim of maintain normality in a world in disarray.

Similarly, the government in Children of Men justifies the abuse of its power in the name of a smoothly run society.
The United Kingdom, one of the last stable nations in the world, becomes a militarised police state in response to the influx of ‘fugees’ fleeing their war-torn and chaotic countries, which collects and imprisons these immigrants. The point-of-view shot as the bus enters the Bexhill Detention Camp shows faceless victims being tortured and humiliated. The scene deliberately evokes images of the Abu Ghraib prison, where US Army and CIA committed human rights violations against the Iraqi detainees, as well as Guantanamo Bay, where prisoners were tortured by the guards. The shaky camera shot of Kee and Theo as they pass a pile of luggage at the entrance of Bexhill deliberately recalls images of piled suitcases and shoes commonly found in Holocaust memorials. The close-up shot of Theo dying on the small boat at the end of the film, sacrificing himself for the sake of humanity, alludes to Jesus dying for our sins. This Christian symbolism is also seen in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The biblical allusions in the name of the food store “Loaves and Fishes” and the expression “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” are used by the Atwood as a means of bringing to light the effects of following the Bible in a literal sense. By recreating several well-known images of historic suffering, Cuarón allows us to link ‘our own’ historic or memorialized suffering
with the apocalyptic suffering in the film.