A* A Level AQA English Literature essay that achieved 25/25. Marked by a professional according to the mark scheme. Explores key ideas, quotes, and analysis of the theme 'Identity' within the Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood.
How does Atwood present Identity in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’?
Identity is our sense of who we are and can be shaped by our values and relationships. In ‘The
Handmaid’s Tale’, Atwood presents the suppression of identity as one of the key ways Gilead
maintains control, limiting a person’s identity to their prescribed societal role. The loss of
identity represents women’s loss of power, and Atwood exposes this practice as dehumanising
and damaging. Yet, amongst this loss of identity, Atwood provides moments of bold reclamation,
fueling potential hope for preserving identity in the novel.
Atwood presents identity as suppressed, to cement the power and control of Gilead. This is seen
through Gilead’s systematic repression of individuality, enforcing conformity and effectively
eradicating personal identity. The anonymity of the Handmaids, through their prohibition from
using their own names and the imposition of their commanders' names, symbolises this profound
loss of individuality. Offred is derived from ‘Of Fred’, suggesting a loss of identity in the sense
she is not her own person, and that she instead belongs to her Commander. Her name is also
significant as it references the colour ‘Red’, suppressing her identity into her role as a Handmaid,
who must wear red, defining her as her society-prescribed role. Atwood’s use of this clothing
also represents a harsh suppression of identity in the novel. The red clothes that all Handmaids
must wear limit self-expression, and therefore limit self-identity. In Chapter 2, Atwood describes
the uniform - 'Everything except the white wings around my face is red: the colour of blood,
which defines us…The white wings too are prescribed issue; they are to keep us from seeing, but
also from being seen.’ Red is the colour of menstrual blood, and therefore Atwood’s use of red
‘defines’ the Handmaids as vessels for fertility, forcibly tying their identity to their physical
attributes, which presents Gilead as dehumanising and suppressive. Clothing also prevents the
Handmaids from ‘From being seen’, which Atwood uses to reinforce the controlling and
dehumanising nature of Gilead, as the Handmaids aren’t able to have a human identity: they
become faceless objects. Atwood therefore contends that in the absence of identity, there is no
basis for individuality, making it easier for Gilead to dehumanise women. Gilead is exposed as
suppressing women’s identity solely into their physical body, as seen when Offred laments this as
she states ‘I'm a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and
more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping’. A ‘cloud’ is an intangible
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