Quote:
Originally Posted by CharredScribe
On Nyssa and issybird's points on Offred, heroism and survival: I don't know that we can evaluate their choices fairly. It is also my own instinct to think that the women could have done more. I mean, they could remember freedom. This was not generations after a significant change. The women could remember a different life. How could they not do more to reclaim their freedom? But I also think that that is Atwood's point. We have many examples in history of a social group "submitting" to a worsening of their own oppression. I think the reality is that fear and the desire to survive conspire to make resistance seem hopeless or too frightening, combined with the very real threats of violence. The handmaidens saw what was done to those who resisted.
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(Emphasis added by me)
This ties in with a similar point made in the book I'm currently reading,
Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler.
In it she, through her main character Dana, makes a very poignant statement:
Quote:
“I closed my eyes and saw the children playing their game again. 'The ease seemed so frightening.' I said. 'Now I see why.'
'What?'
'The ease. Us, the children ... I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.”
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