Why Does The Handmaids Tell The Value Of Title

Most connections between people begin with learning the other person’s name. When exchanging names doesn’t occur then it usually means that either one or both of the people want to keep things impersonal. Keeping things impersonal can have its advantages but it can also create risks. Names make a connection and without that connection people become objects, titles, or ideas.
When a person is given a title in place of a name they become the title instead of a person. In The Handmaids Tell this happens to almost everyone. Even the main character never reveals her real name, but instead she only goes by her title, Offred (Atwood 305). Going by titles allows the world they live in to operate, because it limits the value that people would place upon one another if they formed a personal relationship. The titles allow everyone to become their title and to be valued as that title.. Offred realizes the true power of a name and she doesn’t share it with anyone besides Nick (Atwood280). She doesn’t even let the reader know her name. This shows that she doesn’t want a personal relationship with anyone besides Nick. She allows to be damaged,
as a person by being reduced to a title because she doesn’t have much of a choice and it keeps exchanges impersonal and free form attachment. In her case being an object to almost everyone is safer then become valued as a person by few.
Becoming an object takes away the ability to connect to someone on an emotional level but it doesn’t completely take away emotions.
It transfer the source of the emotion from the connection between the to people to a persons opinion of the object or idea that the other person has become. For example the Guardian accused of rape became an “It” (Atwood 280). He became rape itself. The handmaids took out their anger and emptied their emotion onto this man that had ceased to be a man, but instead he was an idea that they saw as evil. He was dehumanized and because of that it was easier for the handmaids to do what they did, because they did not see his value as a human. Without that value he was reduced to the value of the idea he had become. What happened to him shows one extreme that can occur when a person is no longer treated as a
person. The idea of being treated only as a title is not something that is far fetched. This happens everyday. When a person talks about buying something he or she will most likely just refer to the person behind the counter as the cashier because they don’t know the person. The only thing they know is the cashier, the vessel that handles the exchange of tender for a product. They know a title not a person. This is not a bad thing. If a person had a personal connection with everyone they have ever meet then they would be attached to way to many people. Becoming attached to thousands upon thousands of people leaves a person open to thousands upon thousands of potential loses. People live happier and safer lives when they keep most small encounters impersonal. No damage is done in treating the casher as a casher if someone is quickly buying something but when something can effect the cashier as a person it is important to remember that they are a person.