wingedbeast | Entries tagged with deconstruction

This is a well bookeneded chapter. Atwood shows us and lets us figure out, for ourselves, that what she's showing us is the setting of a stage. The furniture is arranged just so and, as they enter, the people will be arranged just so as well. Offred's place in the arrangement is kneeling. Rita's place will be standing there when she could be getting done any of the things she needs to get done. Serena Joy will be sitting. Nick will be standing.

The Commander's place is... late. He's always late. This gives Cora the opportunity to complain about the lateness. This gives Rita the opportunity to scowl (the book's word for it) at Offred. This gives Serena Joy the opportunity to flip through the channels and catch a bit of the televised news.

What's communicated, quite clearly and without having to spell it out, is that this is a stage set, for the Commander, of a household that is full of people content to be in their place, and that staging is a lie.
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This chapter starts with a memory of the time before, wandering through art galleries that had, ubiquitous through the 19th century, paintings of harems and consorts and other bits of eroticism. That is where you would find the classic image of a woman leaning against a Roman-style couch, draped in something gauzy, with an arm over her forehead.

From her current perspective, Offred sees those as less erotic. They're not pictures of women being sexy. They're pictures of women being bored, because they're not currently in use and they're not given much of anything else to do.
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Like most of the chapters so far, this chapter is ritual and memory back to before Gillead. So far, the memories have been about contrast. This time, the memories are starting to be about comparison.

The action of this chapter is Offred takes a bath. That's it. There's a lot of that, so far, such that, if you were looking at just the quick synopsis of the action of any one chapter, you might not bother reading it. But, it remains readable such that I have to resist pushing on.

Offred gets naked, a rare event where her hair's not bound up.
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I'm torn on how to think about the writing of this chapter. On the one hand, it would be insulting to Margaret Atwood to claim that this scene came from her just recording something that happened to her or someone she knows. On the other hand, Atwood has been clear that, at least in historical terms, she made sure that everything that happened in the recent history of her novel had real-world precedent.

And there's that I can't imagine that this didn't happen in the real world at least frequently enough that Atwood would have hear about multiple accounts. Being written in the 1980s, this was still a world where requiring a woman to be your gynocologist would be a relatively new thing on its own, that possibility being relatively new itself.
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My thoughts on Chapter 10 are a bit scattered. I don't know that I can make a singular theme out of this. That's no insult, it's a small chapter and engaging read, so it doesn't need its own theme. It seems like a collection of Offred's thoughts, collected in non-linear manner (perhaps not unlike how the book itself is presented). So, I'll just power through a few thoughts.

The first thing in this chapter is a song you've heard.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
Could save a wretch like me,
Who once was lost, but now am found,
Was bound, but now am free.

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I've neglected to comment on one thread in this story. It's small, but it's thematically important. Offred's initial refusal to call the room she's boarded in hers. That's one bit of very small resistance that she can manage, as it's entirely internal. By not calling this room her own, not using the word "mine" in regards to it, she can deny the identity that makes that room her natural place.

But, the fact that it is so small is what makes this bit of resistance so difficult to keep up. It's a thought that you think without consciously choosing to use that word. So, in the previous chapter when she finds that the Commander was in that room, she's aware of the intrusion and aware that she referred to the room, entirely in her own mind, as "mine".

As a result, this chapter is all about "mine".
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This chapter is one in which we know it's a different day because there are different bodies hanging at The Wall. One of the bodies seems to be the priest or preacher of a different faith. Given bigotries that prevail even today, I would expect Gilead's wars to be especially fervent in their efforts to stamp out Catholicism.

Two other bodies are in Guardian uniforms and the signs hung around their necks state that they were killed for the crime of "Gender Treachery". By Offred's musings of how they might have been caught, we can take that phrase to refer to homosexuality. Today, we'd be more likely to consider the possibility that they were trans.

As a quick aside, my alternate-Gilead game wouldn't be that different from the Gilead we have. Today's religious right culture is filled with the possibilities of "fixing" gay people with "Reparitive Therapy". The Gilead that we have shows neither a sign of the presence of such programs nor a sign of its absence. I can readily believe that Gilead has such programs, but with little funding and, functionally, little value save as a carrot to hang before those accused of "Gender Treachery", to suggest that confessing and naming names would allow them to live and be "fixed".

But, such a program would be required to be very small, indeed, and with a readiness to execute those who haven't been sufficiently "cooperative". This would be a few tokens, enough to have somebody to present for propaganda purposes, not more than that. Reparations and forgiveness of crimes cannot be an element of how Gilead treats crime. Gilead needs executions far more than it needs crime-prevention.
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I started this deconstruction with a side-project of examining ways that things would be different if the diverging timeline didn't happen during the 80s, when this book was written, but instead now. This chapter is the reason why, or at least a concept I now know was in this specific chapter.

Most of this chapter is flashback to an event in Offred's childhood in America. Her feminist mother took her to a public burning of pornography. She was even given a magazine to throw into the fire, but was too young to know what the pictures were and letting her actually see the pictures was a mistake quickly remedied. But, it was an incident of what was, at the time of the writing, a point of agreement between two unlikely allies.

One ally was, of course, the feminists. They (not all, of course) viewed pornography as essentially disrespectful and objectifying of women. It's worthy of note that they weren't as far off as all that. The culture at the time treated men as default (more so than today, I mean) and treated men as the only consumers of pornography. So, all pornography being built upon fantasy, the fantasies were aimed to men and, yes, were objectifying of women. More on this in a bit.

The other ally was conservative Christians. They viewed pornography as immoral sex, at least akin to premarital or extramarital sex. Or at least that was the stated reason. I'm of a less generous frame of mind when it comes to giving them the presumption of good faith as I've experience with a great deal of bad faith coming from those who both claim ownership of and then defend "the faith".
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We've gotten to Chapter Six and that's the third straight chapter about... a walk... the same walk... in which nothing special happens. The only thing that's out of the ordinary, for the life of the handmaids at the time, is the end of the previous chapter in which foreign tourists ask them if they're happy. And, even then, the response is perfectly ordinary.

Everything about this walk is perfectly ordinary.

It was perfectly ordinary for the two handmaids, strangers to each other, to exchange structured and required banalities. It was perfectly ordinary for Offred (though we still don't know either that name or her former name of June) to note the differences between now and then, because it's not like she has anything else to stretch her mind on. It was perfectly ordinary to feel the constriction upon every inch of her life.

And, now, it's perfectly ordinary for the two to want to take the long way back.

It's perfectly ordinary for them not to be able to get a full look at the sky but take it a bit at a time, to get quick bits of beauty. As Offred says "We have learned to see the world in gasps." Not in flashes or in moments, but gasps. "Flashes" would be just as quick, but it wouldn't put you a mind of the most basic and ever-present necessity of life. That feeling of only being able to sneak in the basic capacity to breathe... also ordinary.
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The theme for Chapter Five is fantasies.

There's a memory of back when there was still America. Our main character was still June and she and her husband would walk down a well-to-do neighborhood and talk about how, some day, they would buy a house there. They knew it wouldn't happen, not on their combined income. But, it was fun to dream, to imagine.

That neighborhood that she and her husband would walk down is now this market area where she and her partner, Ofglen, are walking to shop for groceries. The markets aren't marked by lettered signs, but by things like a wooden porkchop or pictures. Reading is tightly controled in Gilead.

Offred notices a lack of whistling and catcalling, what we now call street harassment and that sparks a different memory of an Aunt saying "There is freedom to and freedom from". This is the Aunt acknowledging that, yes, women are not free in this country. But, allegedly, they're safer. "Freedom from"

The lack of street harassment would seem to be the fulfillment of that "Freedom From", the claim that the lack of freedom at least offers them safety... And that leads down a couple lines of reasoning.
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If there's a singular intended theme to the fourth chapter in The Handmaid's Tale, it's control and the limits of control. That's appropriate as that feeds into the themes of the entire novel. If there's an unintended theme (and I'm not entirely certain it was unintended), it's the potential for motivated mistakes.

We start with a look at Nick. Nick is a Guardian, and one with a cigarette indicating both something to trade and the connections to do so on the black market. He's old enough and ranked enough that he could have been issued a woman, as wife primarily and, potentially, servants in the forms of Marthas and Handmaids. But, for some reason, he hasn't. Either he doesn't rate due to a defect or he just doesn't have the right connections in the system to make that work.
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Enter Serena Joy. Or rather, enter the character who, at the end of the chapter, we will find out is named Serena Joy. This chapter gives us little information, for the most part, on who Serena Joy is. She's blond, she's older than our main character. And, our main character is, in her narrating words, "a reproach" of her.

Serena Joy shows no indication of any kind of empathy or compassion for our main character and, in fact, shows all signs of antipathy. In narration, the main character (who I know is Offred but is yet to be called that) notes that Serena, as a wife, is allowed to strike someone in the main character's position, that of a handmaid, with her bare palm. This has scriptural support.

At the very end of the chapter, our main character recognizes this wife and notes her name. As a young child, before in a world with television and freedom for women (at least more than here and now) she would, on Saturday mornings, search for cartoons on TV. When those weren't to be found, she'd switch to religious programming (before the days of Cable that was easy to find in paid TV time) for story time aimed at young children. Based on that, Serena Joy was a recognizable face, with foreshadowing to note that we'll find out more about her back story.

Our main character, upon this realization, notes that her situation is worse than she thought.

Serena Joy... is Cain.
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I'm just starting into my reread of The Handmaid's Tale and, before I really get into it, I know this is going to be different than the other two.

BNW, as I just got through saying in that deconstruction, is more about the false image of the changing values of a changing world than it is about anything real. It's a fear of the different without a full knowledge of what's familiar.

1984 took what was going on at the time, and arguably what is the sins of all societies, and extrapolated from that. I now know why, between the two, it's 1984 that has made the more lasting impression.

The Handmaid's Tale is different. Margaret Atwood constructed both the events that changed American society and the Republic of Gilead from events that had already happened elsewhere. This just isn't as theoretical as either of the previous books.
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I... can't view Brave New World as a key dystopian fiction, anymore. It's a straw-man fiction, much like if anti-feminists were to write a fictional world of the feminist ideal. It's less a chilling view of the future and more of a chilling view of how people view you when they're unwilling to actually see you.

I'm going to tackle two chapters at once, because they're basically the same thing, a drawn-out discussion on why Fordly society is as it is and why it is inferior, though happier, to previous ways of life and society (which is to say, ways that Huxley approves of). And, again, I'm put amind of the recent Kevin Sorbo movie "Let There Be Light".

In that movie, Kevin Sorbo plays the world's top atheist who presents atheism as being about sex, drugs, and music with rocks in. His home-life is one of bitter, alcoholic loneliness. The notion, much like at the heart of this book, is that it's impossible to be different, to not have these particular values, without having different, quite important values to replace them.

I'll go over the beats.
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There's part of me that doesn't want to be too hard on John, here. After all, he's just lost his mother. What's more, he's just lost his mother to her own decision to OD on Soma, a drug that, as presented in the novel, is nigh-impossible to overdose.

This could have been her opportunity to take joy in introducing John, as someone she knows and loves, to the home that she has so longed for. Instead, once she's reached that home she longed for, she decided to seek oblivion. She preferred what was openly stated to be killing her to spending time alive in the world in which she had given birth to John.

That, plus the years of abuse he suffered by her hand directly and by the Malpais people responding to her, he can lay (perhaps not justly) at the feet of Fordly society.

Yet, my point from last week remains. What we're seeing isn't a realistic society. It's a straw man concocted by someone who doesn't understand the new value sets he's criticizing. And that puts a light on what's to come.
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There are two competing elements of this chapter/scene. It's short and it packs an emotional punch. At the same time, that emotional punch is delivered because it is a culture depicted by someone who isn't interested in it.

Here is the chapter where Linda dies. Or rather, here is the chapter where John is there for Linda's death. And, in that much, you can't help but feel for John. You don't have to like him at this point, but you have to feel for him at least a little. His mother is dying and suffering from severe dementia.
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I've repeatedly mentioned that the world Huxley creates for this novel isn't sex positive and is not the alternative to his culture's attitude towards sex, one which we can label "purity culture". Instead, it is a sex-mandating purity culture to mirror Huxley's own sex-averse or sex-controling purity culture. That makes this chapter Purity Culture Clash.

Were I to guess at Huxley's intention, I would imagine that he intends for us to agree with John's judgment but, at the same time, sympathize with Lenina. When I first read this book, back in the 90s and back as a High School Student, I did. Then again, I had a lot more agreement than disagreement with Huxley back then.

This chapter begins with Lenina being distracted by her affection for John. Her job is, apparently, administering vaccinations to feti.

Note: InquisitiveRaven, way back at the first part of this deconstruction, commented that the vaccinations are issued at a point before a fetus would have a functioning immune system. It's just more science that we have to forgive for the sake of the story.
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Chapter twelve is a simple chapter. It's short and it gives a great deal of tell but not show, regarding the story Bernard, John, and Helmholtz. But, for all of that, it's also showing us a great deal about the society that Huxley wrote about.

And, here I think that Huxley's aware of how much the chilling society he wrote about mirrors his own comfortable society, which he fears falling to the, as Bernard says, inexpensive life.

I have my disagreements with Huxley. That's unlikely to end any time soon. There are two important consolations for Huxley on that regard. The first and most obvious is that Huxley, even assuming that he continues to exist, probably doesn't care, in the slightest, what I think of his book.

The other is that this chapter is the clearest example of this book's continuing value.
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Chapter eleven has two intended themes and one big unintended theme.

The first theme is that Bernard is getting caught up with his newfound popularity. This is more told than shown and I'm mainly alright with that.

Thanks to his association with "the savage", Bernard has something to offer women to get dates and a reason to be invited to all the best parties, where people listen to what he has to say. And, I'm perfectly okay not seeing all of that, particularly the part where he "has" six girls in a week.

About the only thing that's left subtle is that Bernard is engaging in the exact same behavior that had him so angry at the beginning of the book. This much is fairly simple.

On this, I have only to say that, during this, I don't like Bernard... but I have to admit how easily I would have, given the opportunity, done the same. I view this, like my view of 1984 as very High School in nature and the person I was in High School, given a shot of popularity, might very well have gotten caught up just like Bernard. I don't know if it was to my benefit or detriment that I didn't get that option.
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There's one part I didn't get into when the opportunity was there. But, right now, it makes for some good compare and contrast. I talked about John's reaction to the Director and, by my guess, the expectation that the Director would regard him as a son rather than the mere concept as an embarrassment. But, let's talk a little about how the Director presents one of the core theses of Fordly society.

The topic is Bernard Marx and the Director's insistence that Bernard must be held to account. He's very good at his job, which would be a reason to accept eccentricity. The Director responds...

"I know. But that's all the more reason for severity. His intellectual eminence carries with it corresponding moral responsibilities. The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted. Consider the mater dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offence is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behaviour. Murder kills only the individual-and, after all, what is an individual?" With a sweeping gesture he indicated the rows of microscopes, the test-tubes, the incubators. "We can make a new one with the greatest ease-as many as we like. Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself. Yes, at Society itself," he repeated.

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