The Handmaids Tale Offred Analysis

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Trust Manipulation of people’s knowledge of history enables the people to give their absolute loyalty towards a just leader. In order for a just ruler to gain absolute loyalty from their people, the ruler must earn their people’s trust. All decisions are derived from the belief in one’s knowledge or memory of past experiences or history. If people do not believe in the news being given, then that news will be ignored and people’s actions and decisions will be influenced by the data they do believe. Based on the history and experiences that are referred to in order to make a decision and a belief in information, a person must prove the information to be facts. Perceiving historical information manipulates one’s thoughts provoking emotions…show more content…
In The Handmaid’s Tale Offred is taught to fear her menstrual cycle due to the fact that the Commander has placed that fear in her by the example of punishing others “Each month I watch for blood, fearfully, for when it comes it means…show more content…
For a person to truly benefit off of the conformity to the laws of the government, that person must have absolute trust in their ruler through all that contradicts the ruler and the rulers’ laws. In order to do this that person must ignore all contradictory information that has not been proven factual. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred acknowledges that “we [the handmaids] lived, as usual, by ignoring” for that anything that goes against what the commander says or wants should be ignored (Atwood 56). Along with ignorance, Offred was ordered that if information a commander has given to the community has evidently been proven false then the people within that community must come to the realization that their commander’s work “isn’t easy for them” (14). The commander’s work hard to maintain the perfect society. Aunt Lydia, a teacher and enforcer of the laws, tries to teach the handmaids to forgive by trying “to think of it form their [the commander’s] point of view” (14). By thinking of something from the point of view of another person, the motives and thoughts of that other person are more easily interpreted. Knowing the motives of the other person and trusting in that person, there is no need or want to question the ruler especially if there are no memories of contradictory information from the past. Orwell, from 1984, knows the past cannot be used against
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