The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Question: Where does The Handmaids Tale take place and what is the significance of the location?

Atwood lays down several indications as the where the events narrated in The Handmaid's Tale take place. Geographically, the site would have been the former site of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the most religiously intolerant Puritan settlement. By choosing Cambridge as the location of Gilead, Atwood effectively draws a parallel between the intolerance that existed in the past and its rebirth in the future. The cyclical patter of self-destruction, she suggests, continues.

Aside from the historic significance of the site, Cambridge is also the location of one of the most prestigious and well-respected academic institutions, internationally. It is symbolic of the freedom and strength of gaining knowledge. It is symbolic of education and activation as young minds are opened to the vast world of thought and diversity. It is thus, to the Gilead society, a symbol of evil and is in need of destruction.

With Gilead now controlling this location, a former institution preaching the importance of academic growth and the expansion of the mind, it quickly turned the famous Harvard Yard and it respective buildings into a detention center overseen by the Eyes. Ordained on the "Wall" that lines the college are bodies of the executed as reminders of the intolerance and oppression resurfacing in a new image, and a clear destruction of the power of knowledge and the pursuit of the American ideal.

Question: How is language used as a tool of power in The Handmaid's Tale?

The world of Gilead uses titles as more than a way to differentiate one person from another, it uses titles to distinguish the very worth of the person. By making this "vocabulary" an official language, the society at Gilead successfully locked the citizens into an unyielding system defining the female and male roles as completely separate and inequitable.

Making reference to the male characters thorough titles of military rank, and females through titles that are specifically gender roles, the society denies them their individuality and essentially, they're humanity. Even those who are challenged in the society are deemed by their own title of being "unwomen" or "unbabies," again stripping them of the very essence of who they are. By reducing the individual to nothing more than a figurehead of a particular idealistic mold, the Gilead society is stripped of its morality and of its own human characteristics making it nothing more than a society conditioned on the basis of degradation and oppression.

The differentiation is not merely between genders, but also between races. Throughout the novel, African Americans and Jews are labeled by Biblical terms as "Children of Ham" and "Sons of Jacob." This distinction only created a greater avenue for discrimination and persecution and essential set them apart from the society as people of a different caliber or status. In essence, the Gilead society maintains control over its people, particularly its women through the titles it gives them, subjecting them to a single purpose.