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The Handmaid’s Tale: Power in the wrong hands! “Better never means better for everyone… it always means worse, for some”(Atwood,32). When specific groups of people are not included in decision making, some people always suffer for example in the novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margret Atwood talks about how when it’s only men in power make the decisions for a whole population the excluded End up suffering the consequences, sometimes people think that what they are doing is beneficial to everyone but the truth is nothing is always good for everyone and always someone has to have it worse due to such decisions. An analysis of the text in The Handmaid’s Tale reveals that The Gilead Republic was built on the concept of controlling women and the roles they play in society. Margret Atwood suggests that When men are in charge of making decisions about what is good for women, they make it better for men (not women). Atwood achieves this by using internal thoughts, diction and use of negative connotations. The decisions the commanders made were terrible for almost all the women involved in many ways; one of the ways is physical. Offred hides butter from her lunch in her shoe, then she; “I rub the butter over my face, work it into the skin of my hands. There’s no longer any hand lotion or face cream, not for us.” “Such things are considered vanities.”(Atwood ). The first quotation shows the theme because men decided that self-care and skincare are “vanities” and women are not allowed to do them. which can cause dry skin thus making one prone to getting diseases such as Atopic Dermatitis. Furthermore, Moira had tried to escape by acting sick and she was caught by the angles so “Afterwards she could not walk for a week, her feet would not fit into her shoes, they were too swollen. It was the feet they’d do, for a first offence. They used steel cables, frayed at the ends. After that the hands.”(Atwood). the women were punished by torture and their hands and legs were battered because as said Aunt Lydia; “ For our purposes, your feet and your hands are not essential.”(Atwood) and most of these rules and punishments were made by the men in power so as to be able to control the women by threatening their physical wellbeing. ultimately, the choice of law and how to implement it causes physical harm to women in many different ways some of which have been mentioned above. Men being in power and deciding on how things should be done has caused so much emotional distress. “If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending.”(Atwood) Offred is remembering her mom and the loss of her daughter. the way Offred relates her memories of what happened in her former life indicates emotional trauma because she lost the people she loved due to the choices of the men who formed The Republic of Gilead. by the same token, the ways women are treated and forced to “testify” in the red centre, for example, Janine; “It was my fault, she says. It was my own fault. I led them on. I deserved the pain. Very good, Janine, says Aunt Lydia. You are an example.”(Atwood) testimonies are a technique the people in power emotionally manipulating women into thinking it is their fault for being the victims of sexual assault by barbaric men so that they can be easily controlled and guilt trip them into becoming submissive and not think or try to see how wrong and backwards the fundamentals of the Republic of Gilead are. as can be seen, the decisions and the ways the people in power in The Republic of Gilead decide to use can cause so much emotional distress to the women involved in the situation. The republic of Gilead was constructed to take control of women’s sexuality which will technically end on bad terms. the choices the men chose and the laws they made, caused women sexual suffering and having to choose between sex work or death. the commander, Serena and Offred are performing the ceremony to try to impregnate the handmaid Offred, she thinks; “ There wasn’t a lot of choice but there was some, and this is what I chose.” As Offred says, “ There wasn’t a lot of choice but there was some,” she has two choices; one is to accept and become a sex (reproduction) slave or go and die in the colonies. and the first choice is relatively better than the latter because they get to at least live and have some hope of survival or even escape. In other circumstances, almost all the women would have refused to become handmaids. identically, some of the troublesome women like Moira are driven into sex work. As Moira says; “I had my choice, they said, this or the Colonies. Well, shit, nobody but a nun would pick the Colonies. I mean, I’m not a martyr.”(Atwood) while talking to Offred at “Jezebel’s”. the women who manage to escape or who are deemed “too dangerous to be allowed the privilege of returning to the Red Centre.” (Atwood)is then forced into choosing sex work rather than dying in the colonies. to conclude, the decisions of the men in power caused so much suffering for all the women involved. To conclude, the decisions of the men in power caused so much suffering for all the women involved. When men or a specific group of people make decisions on behalf of everyone involved, it is inevitable that some people suffer because their needs aren't considered while those decisions were being implemented. The fundamentals of The Republic of Gilead, which were made by men, were not only damaging physically, emotionally but also sexually to women. This novel is important because we still have governments that have very little inclusivity and the main decision-makers are either men, straight people or white people and in some places just straight white Christian men. This novel proves one group of people can not make good decisions for everyone mostly when it is for a whole population. As has been noted, a constellation (specifically straight religious white men) making decisions on behalf of a whole population can be disastrous and devastating for the people whose well being isn’t being considered.

Atwood, Margaret. “The Handmaid’s Tale .” For ESL English Language Learners, 2019, esl-bits.net/ESL.English.Learning.Audiobooks/Handmaid/indice.html.