Life and Death in Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

"In Hope. Why did they put that above a dead person? Was it the corpse hoping, or those still alive? Did Luke hope?"

This excerpt from Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, in which protagonist Offred has been removed from a "normal" life and flung into a dystopia in which she is forced to have sex for the sole purpose of procreation, presents a parallel to the way in which Offred treats, or has been trained to treat, those from her past (her husband Luke, her daughter, and her friend Moira). By suggesting the paradox of a corpse, a lifeless and unmoving body, hoping for something she introduces the idea that Luke may be both dead and alive completely relative to her perspective and her choice. She illuminates the disturbing condition of the ignorance that society has thrust upon her; all she has now is a pervaded and misinformed personal rationality--if a corpse can hope than Luke can hope, but Offred only knows that there is an undefinable and unreachable "if". The reader realizes that Offred invests a concrete comfort in these thoughts and it is both saddening and frightful to know that the only thing that Offred carries from her past life is an abstraction, and metaphor, and conditionals; all she can do is hope.
She alludes to a semblance of camaraderie with Luke, or her abstraction of him; he is both dead and alive and so is she, lost to society's regime and an inability to define herself. And she has an inability define Luke and an inability to define death. Offred remarks earlier in the novel that in her previous life she felt alive and that her feeling of vivacity was worth the risk of death and of death's implications. The analyzed quote makes it seem as if this is why Luke can waver fluidly between those two worlds, or why anyone from her past can make that transition. The Aunts, in training, told Offred that it is easier to imagine these figures as dead, to suppress any hope that they may be alive. But for Offred, such states exist simultaneously; and her hope is the only thing, for her, that strengthens the world in which her lover, her daughter, and her friends reside. Her difficulty is in choosing; which would she rather hope?

Lions and Serpents and Angels and Lambs

So we did this activity in my English class where our teacher set up a co-ordinate system with the intent of identifying our personalities through a type of self- analysis. The horizontal axis took a measure of our violence or our passiveness; how inclined we were to react to a specific situation with physical force. The icon of violence, fittingly, was a lion while that of passiveness was a lamb. The vertical axis took a measure of our honesty or deceptiveness; how inclined we were to lie in situations that maybe demanded virtuosity. The icon of deception was a serpent and that of honesty an angel. And so we had to evaluate which quadrant we belonged to.
            I am a serpent lamb, a venomous lamb. I decided that I’m more inclined to lie. Not necessarily about cheating or anything of considerable importance, but rather I form false alliances and put on an act for people in order to save face. The same person who could trust me and confide in me can meet their secrets spilled out into the ears of others. It’s all just ammunition to me. But there were others in this group, so ironically I was comforted by the comrades who were just as deceptive. I am also a lamb; not that I wouldn’t react with violence if I could, maybe. I’m just too small. I found it easy to admit these things to myself, to accept them, but I can’t help but feel a guilt that accompanies that acceptance because I know that I’m using it as a justification for my personality. I would see the Angelic Lambs and think “How deluded, they can admit nothing to themselves. They don’t know who they are.” Without ever stopping to understand that those people do exist in the world and maybe they know exactly who they are.

            I found it interesting the people who classified themselves just as I would classify them, how an outside observer sees them and some people who perhaps thought better or worse of themselves than they should have. Maybe who you think you are is who you really are, but I would assume that if one thought it hard enough one would also become it.

            I didn’t find it hard to classify myself at all; I knew exactly who I was. I know exactly who I am. I didn’t have to think “Am I more violent than the average person?” No. Am I a bitch? Maybe. Probably. Yes. In the course from the “maybe” to the “yes” I inadvertently considered how others see me, or how I am expected to be. I would like to think that I knew in that moment that I was a Venomous Lamb and I was proud of it. I was proud of my ability to be passive and deceptive, as if I was mistaking cruelty for cunning. I think once that role is made for me, I assume it. I always say “I’m just going to start being a giant ass to people, who cares? Screw ‘em.” But I never am and I never do.