Margaret Atwood uses characters in The Handmaid’s Tale to indicate to us that it is part of human nature to fight rules that control our freedom.

In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale, the author Margaret Atwood uses some of the main characters to indicate to us that it is part of human nature to fight rules that control our freedom. She uses different characters to emphasise that although they all break the rules in different ways, they are all bound together by the fact that they want more freedom. The novel is set in Gilead, a fictional country that was previously the USA before a totalitarian government gained control. Under this new regime women are split into their stereotypical roles. The four main groups being the Wives, the Marthas, the Handmaids and the Aunts. A small group of men called the Commanders hold all the power. Anyone that rebells against the regime will be taken away and will be killed, tortured, or sent to the colonies.

Freedom is defined in the oxford dictionary as “The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants.” By this definition freedom has been completely taken away from the handmaids. The Aunts, the women in power who train the handmaids, believe there is another type of freedom. This new type of freedom is part of the idea that the new society has been built around. It is important because it is essentially propaganda for the new regime. They redefine freedom so they can tell the handmaids and other women that they do have freedom. That they are safer now than they were before.

“There are two types of freedom, freedom to and freedom from” In this quote aunt Lydia is indicating to the handmaids that before the new regime there was freedom for an individual to do what they like, which she believes is a bad thing. She believes “freedom to” is a bad thing because in the old society some women would be raped and murdered by men. Aunt Lydia doesn’t talk at all about the many positives of having freedom to do what you want. She also implies that in the old society it was legal to rape and murder if you chose to which we know is completely untrue.

Aunt Lydia believes women now have “freedom from” where they have protection from such men. This belief is incredibly ironic because Gilead has institutionalised rape with the Commanders having unconsentual sex many times with the handmaids. If the handmaids break the rules they could be tortured or put to death, and if they do not produce a baby they are sent to the colonies where they will almost certainly die. So even with “freedom from” women are being treated much worse than before.

Rebellion can not only be portrayed by words or actions but also through thoughts. Our protagonist Offred is a handmaid, they are the women who are still fertile, forced to copulate with one of the Commanders in an attempt to become pregnant. “walking wombs” is essentially what the handmaids are reduced to. Thoughts are the main way Offred rebells against the system she has been forced into. “You can’t help what you feel, but you can help how you behave” In this quote Offred indicates to us that although she behaves like a handmaid is supposed to she does not agree with the ideas forced upon her. Even though Offred does not speak out against the system because she is afraid for her and her daughters lives. Rebelling in thought is useful because she does not allow herself to be bullied into submission in her mind. That’s the one thing they cannot take away from her.

The Commander is an excellent example of how no one likes being controlled. He is one of the highest ranking members in the new society, therefore it is ironic that he continues to break the rules of the regime that he supports. One of the biggest rules he breaks is meeting up with his handmaid Offred alone in his study. The last handmaid he had before our Offred committed suicide when the commanders wife found out they had been meeting in secret. He tells Offred he meets with her to make her life more bearable, and this is partly true. I believe The Commander does feel bad for the handmaids. We see this when he tells Offred “Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some” In this quote we see that the Commander does realise the situation now is worse for some women. He sees that the handmaids certainly have it worse than it was before the new regime. He likes the new regime though and is too selfish to want to change it. This does not mean that he doesn’t feel bad for what he has done to the handmaids. The main reason he meets with Offred though is that he is lonely and he wants the young, attractive handmaids to admire him.

The Commander has the childish mentality that he is the one who is entitled to break the rules when it suits him because he can get away with it. Margaret Atwood uses the commander to break the rules to show that he is not so different from everyone else in the book. Even the most high ranking members of a society with the most freedoms break the rules, because they two do not like to abide by laws that control their freedom.

The current lockdown situation has given me a small insight into The Handmaid’s Tale. Although the lockdown is only temporary and it’s for a good cause I can now see what it must be like to be stuck in a house day after day with very little face to face contact with the outside world. We can also draw parallels between The Handmaid’s Tale and the lockdown when David Clarke, New Zealand’s Health Minister broke the rules of the lockdown and drove 2km to go mountain biking. Much like the commander breaking rules in The Handmaid’s Tale, David Clarke did not want to abide by the laws that controlled his freedom, even though he helped put some of those laws in place. This was because those rules prevented him from doing something that he wanted to do and he was publicly shamed for breaking them.

Margaret Atwood uses another handmaid Moira to emphasise her point about human nature. Moira is very strong willed and brave. She escapes from the handmaid’s training facility “the Red Centre” by tying up one of the Aunts and taking her clothes. Offed later describes her by saying “Moira was like an elevator with open sides. She made us dizzy. Already we were losing the taste for freedom, already we were finding these walls secure.” In this quote Offred shows that even though she and many of the other handmaids were losing the will to escape, Moira wanted freedom more than anything. Part of the reason Moira is more strong willed than the other handmaids is because she is a feminist and a lesbian. Her beliefs were opposite to that of the commanders and the new regime that oppressed women. She had only her own life to loose and was willing to put that on the line in order to escape.

Margaret Atwood uses characters such as Offred, Moira and The Commander to show us that they are connected by the fact that they all want freedom. Although Offred and The Commander are almost opposite in their beliefs, gender and rank, They both want more freedom than they currently have. This is Margaret Atwood’s point about human nature. They are both human and they and nearly every other human want what they do not, or cannot have. Even though many do not realise it, freedom is what humans desire the most.