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TWO TALES OF OPPRESSION
To be oppressed is to be kept down by severe and unjust use of force or authority, and the arbitrary and cruel exercise of power is what we call oppression. Anyway one words it, to be weighted down in mind and in body is cruel and unjust. As Florynce R. Kennedy puts it, "There can be no really pervasive system of oppression… without the consent of the oppressed". The book The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short story "I Only Came to Use the Phone" are two places where this quote is prominent in the lives of two women denoted in each of the stories. Both of these stories encompass the motif of oppression first through stripping the women of their identities, then through limiting their interaction with the outside world, and finally by forcing them to conform to new, and different norms.
The Handmaid's Tale is a set between the 180's, and 10's in the futuristic Republic of Gilead. After conservative Christians shoot the president and all of congress, they take over the United States and establish a dictatorship. Most women have become infertile due to prolonged exposure to nuclear waste and leakages from chemical weapons that were used in the overthrow of the government, and are deemed "Un-Women". These such woman are sent off to camps to help with clean up.
The remaining fertile women are taken to separate camps and trained to be "Handmaids", or birth-mothers for the upper-class "Wives" who are infertile. Households are created that include a "Commander", a Wife, a Handmaid, and a "Martha", who serves the Commander and his Wife as a house servant. In this newly created dystopia, being openly sexual is not permitted, as sex in Gilead is only allowed between the Commander and his Handmaid strictly for reproduction. Do my essay on Two Tales of Oppression CHEAP !
Women are no longer allowed to read or write, and are for the most part confined to their Commander's houses. Handmaids are allowed out only with another Handmaid to do chores, and they are required to wear large, concealing red dresses and white head pieces. Martha's are only to wear green dresses equally as un-flattering as those of the Handmaids.
This story is narrated by a Handmaid called Offred, named because she is "of Fred", the name of her Commander. The Handmaids Tale gives a detailed account of Offreds struggle within her head against a totalitarianistic society, and entails her recollections of happiness in "The Old Time", including memory's of her husband, daughter, and best friend.
There are several ways of taking away one's identity; one of them being the alteration of clothing. Offred, of The Handmaid's Tale must strip herself of the liberal garb that she is used to wearing, and step into drastically different and modest attire. At the beginning of the book, she comments about her clothing. "I get up out of the chair, advance my feet into the sunlight, in their red shoes, flat-heeled to save the spine and not for dancing. The red gloves are lying on the bed. I pick them up, pull them onto my hands, finger by finger. Everything except the wings around my face is red the color of blood, which defines us. The skirt is ankle-length, full, gathered to a flat yoke that extends over the breasts, the sleeves are full. The white wings too are prescribed issue; they are to keep us from seeing, but also from being seen." The draconian leaders of Gilead use restrictive clothing as a way of making one undistinguishable from the next. Individual identity is lost, and the label of "mass" is gained.
In Gilead, human interaction is not protocol. It is seen as punishable for a Handmaid to be caught talking to, or looking at someone unnecessarily. While routinely walking to purchase groceries, Offred sneaks a look at a Guardian checking a pass that allows her to leave the confines of her home. "It's an event, a small defiance of rule, so small as to be undetectable, but such moments are the rewards I hold out for myself, like the candy I horded, as a child, at the back of a drawer. Such moments are possibilities, tiny peepholes." Offred's natural instincts beg her to disobey strict rules, but it is usually only a quick, risky turn of the head to glance at another Handmaid, or passerby. This is a dangerous ploy to pull, as it is culpable by torture, or death.
Sexual intercourse every three weeks in Gilead is the new "norm" of reproduction. Commanders partake in vapid, insipid intercourse with his Handmaid, and the event is witnessed by his Wife. Sex is no longer used as an expression of love, or a means to feel good, but as a way to benefit a new society. Offred's comments show her feelings toward this new ritual. "I used to think of my body as an instrument of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will…Now the flesh arranges itself differently. I'm a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping." Offred is contrasting the way she used to look at her body, and the way she looks at under rule of Gilead. She feels that she is only good for producing children, and has completely lost her sense of self. Her comment connotes her internalized Gileadian attitude of women as objects.
"I Only Came to Use the Phone" is about a woman's despondency in a mental health center. Maria is mistakenly placed there after her rental car breaks down on a desolate highway, and she is picked up by a bus going to a mental hospital. Unknowingly, she boards the bus and explains to the dignitary that she just needs to use the phone to call her husband who is expecting her.
When the bus arrives at the hospital, she is guided in among the others, and somehow assumed to be a patient. After being admitted, Maria has a breakdown when she realizes that she has been deemed crazy and must stay in the hospital.
After two months of being treated for her "illness" Maria finally gains access to a phone and calls her husband, who has reputed his wife as a cheater after not hearing from her for months. Unexpected to Maria, her husband yells "Whore!" into the phone and hangs up.
Later, her husband is contacted by an attendant at the hospital, and he finally visits Maria. Upon his arrival the doctor tells Maria's husband that she is in poor mental health and must continue treatment at the hospital. When she learns that her husband, Saturno has not come to bring her home, Maria shuts him out despite his efforts to convince her that he will return when she is well. Maria continues her stay at the hospital, never to be heard of again by her husband, who later moves away.
"That same afternoon Maria was admitted to the asylum with a serial number and a few superficial comments concerning the enigma of where she had come from and the doubts surrounding her identity. In the margin the director had written an assessment in his own hand; "agitated."", an adjective that is read as "crazy" and subsequently condemns her to life of imprisonment in the asylum. This example from the text describes how quickly Maria's identity was taken away from her. Her name is replaced with a number, and she is forced to wear a "serge gown" that blends her in with the rest of the woman at the hospital. Her identity as Maria de la Luz Cervantes has vanished and been replaced with a label of "mental patient" that supersedes that of what she really is.
The first night that Maria spent in the hospital, she was given a sedative that put her to sleep. When she woke, "she was tied to the metal bars of the bed by her wrists and ankles. She shouted, but no one came." She is confused by this, and later upon speaking to a doctor, she is refused use of the phone. Maria also is forced to sleep in the guardroom with the night matron who sexually abuses her. These examples show the ways in which life in the hospital restricts her interaction with the rest of the world. She is forced to comply with what the hospital's authority tells her.
After two months of living in the hospital, Maria finally figures how to fulfill her desire for cigarettes by making artificial flowers for money. With the money that she earns, she is able to buy cigarettes from another patient for "the price of gold". In this new sub-culture of a sanatorium, Maria is forced to conform to it's norms by learning how to function within new monetary and trade systems.
The Handmaid's tale, and "I Only Came to Use the Phone" use several examples of oppression to show how pervasive, restricting, and hierarchical it can be. By divesting someone of their identity, controlling their contact with the outside world, and forcing them to comply with new norms, a dominant group has the power to define and name reality, and determine what is normal, real, or correct. The writing in both of these stories make the reader empathetic to the main character by exhibiting many qualities that abide with the overall theme of oppression.
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