The Handmaid's Tale

In The Handmaid's Tale, the readers are taken into the corrupted world that is, ironically, Gilead. The ideals of this society seem so surreal, but at the same time they are tangible and seem like they can so easily become actions of today's world.  Like We, Atwood's tale of Offred shows how conformity and placing all power in the hands of a select few is not always the best route to take. With great power comes great responsibility and if the hearts of those who control all the power within a society are tainted, then the society as a whole will be tainted and become chaos. A quote that I found rather ironic can be found on page nine, "...a parody of something, some fairy-tale figure in a red cloak, descending towards a moment of carelessness that is the same as danger. A Sister, dripped in blood" (Atwood 9).  Offred is comparing her life to that of a fairy-tale, which despite danger and obstacles, have a positive, happy, desirable outcome in the end. The life that she leads, baby or no, will never have a happy ending; it is, instead, a continuing, vicious cycle that brings about pain, misery, oppression, and suffering no matter which path is taken.

Zamyatin Yevgeny's "We"

We, by Zamyatin Yevgeny, was a very interesting novel based in a society of one mindedness and rigidly structured day-to-day activity.  It was an unique style of writing and gave insight to a single man's changing, shifting moods and feelings; and the collapse of his mind as he is opened to a new world where life is not structured for every hour of every day, courtesy of I-330.  The closer that our main character, D-503, gets to I-330 he begins to realize that there is more to the world than what he has grown up believing and begins to unearth more of the animal instincts that the Benefactor and the society he lives in tried to repress and erase from existence, since it was an emotion from the Savage time period.

It was actually quite frightening to see how easily the people in this Utopian society fell into the same patterns and routines, and how looking into the room next door was like looking in a mirror. Everybody doing the exact same thing at the exact same time an in the exact same manner is quite unsettling.

Overall, We was a rather interesting book, but it was difficult to follow at times, especially further into the book as D-503 began to lose his mind. His thoughts and though process became more fragmented as he became more infected with the poison that is I-330.  

Quick test run using this blog..

I don't like this... :c