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Complacency

English Lit: Edexcel A Level The Handmaid's Tale, topic 8.1.2

Atwood's Critique of Complacency?

Atwood may use The Handmaid's Tale to criticise complacency in society, and the act of turning a blind eye to what is happening in the world if it doesn't directly affect us.

Blindness to suffering

Blindness to suffering

  • The novel has been criticised for being too focused on the suffering of Caucasians.
  • But as Atwood constantly references past human rights infringements and atrocities, she may be suggesting that our 'blindness' to others' suffering will result in everyone becoming oppressed.
Offred on complacency

Offred on complacency

  • In her flashbacks, Offred shares her own memories of complacency:
  • "The newspaper stories were like dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others. How awful, we would say, and they were, but they were awful without being believable. They were too melodramatic, they had a dimension that was not the dimension of our lives. We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories."
"Blank white spaces"

"Blank white spaces"

  • By emphasising the "blank white spaces", Atwood may be suggesting that racial divides stop people from viewing prejudice and discrimination as a universal human problem:
  • Offred was happy in her privileged life and decided to ignore the warning signs until it was too late.
"Nothing changes..."

"Nothing changes..."

  • "Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub, you'd be boiled to death before you knew it. There were stories in the newspapers, of course, corpses in ditches or the woods, bludgeoned to death or mutilated, interfered with, as they used to say, but they were about other women, and the men who did such things were other men."
Importance of Historical Notes

Importance of Historical Notes

  • The Historical Notes take place in Denay, Nunavit (Deny None of it).
  • Atwood may be urging her society to start tackling problems that it currently ignores.

Test yourself on Complacency

  • The Handmaid's Tale has been criticised for being too focused on whose suffering?

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