Course Reflection Video

Slideshow

Blog Posts

http://selenazamoraeng102.blogspot.com/2010/06/nabokov-thinks-good-reader-is-one-that.html
This assignments was one of the very first ones and it really set the mood for all the reading we had ahead. It was a farely simple assisnment but gave us a chance to utilize the links and images that were expected to be used.

http://selenazamoraeng102.blogspot.com/2010/06/tim-obrien-blog-post-2.html
Tim o' Brien's book was my favorite reading this semester. I surprise myself when saying this due to not ever thinking I would be interesed in a book like this. I enjoyed all the reading in the book and enjoyed this blog post.

http://selenazamoraeng102.blogspot.com/2010/07/weak-thesishandmaids-thesis.html
This assignment was a struggle for me but it really differentiated between a weak thesis and a strong thesis. I have stuggled with the thesis portion of this class and this made me focus on what I was really lacking. This assignment presented a love/hate relationship. I disliked it when doing it but knew it would help me out in the long run.

"Live Essay" Totalitarian Thought control

Totalitarian Thought Control

“The Handmaids Tale” by Margaret Atwood is a time that seems so unreal. With the actions that go on and the controlling ways of one’s mind is unexplainable to the times women live now in a country of freedom and equal rights. A way of living that every movement you make and thought you think is controlled by another’s power. The women in “The Handmaid’s Tale” have been controlled and robbed of their beings and are controlled through totalitarian thought control. The women have been deteriorated to an all time low in humiliation and a sense of brain washing that makes them believe that in some sense that this is normal.
Totalitarianism’s formal definition from a dictionary is, “Of, relating to, being, or imposing a form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control over all aspects of life, the individual is subordinated to the state, and opposing political and cultural expression is suppressed”(Totalitarianism). With this definition in place, how does this even begin to happen? According to “The Handmaids Tale” this all came about due to the sterility from the industrial pollution. So how did women get treated for being fertile, they were punished for their functioning bodies. This was a way of dictatorship all in a nut shell but this included thought control. The women were under the watch of some type of higher authority, which meant the Aunts, Angels, or Commanders at all times. The women were not allowed to speak to one another, read or write. The billboards or readings the Commanders and staff provided were the only things allowed to be read. These readings only consisted of things that the dictatorship wanted the women to believe that was right. The imagery that was posted and seen by the women of Gilead was things that they wanted the women to instill into their brains to serve and act in the way they wanted them to. This was a form of the totalitarian thought control. By instilling only these topics and ways into these women made them eventually think in this manner. The only activity that was allowed was the ones that they were assigned. The Handmaid’s duties were to shop for food and to serve as a sex slave. In the mist of all of this they were expected to follow everything in this totalitarian ran society.
Starting off the four main aspects of totalitarian thought control are: Control, Behavior and Activities: “The way of life is rigidly laid down in detail (dress, food, contacts, and rights to be observed) and members are kept so busy that little spare time remains. Thought control: Members are taught techniques to stop thinking processes involving questions or doubts immediately. Control of emotions and feelings: Members are kept under control by means of feelings Information control: of guilt and fear which supposedly can only be relieved by means of the group. Access to independent information, education and culture is reduced or forbidden. Contact with former members is forbidden” (“Totalitarian Groups”).
More in depth totalitarian thought control is said to work in many ways. It starts with a language. Through language you can do many things, and even change an individual’s way of thinking. “Language is the means of man’s adaption to his environment” (“The Rape of Mind"). With these words said this is shown by the Handmaid’s. They see and read only what is allowed and have very little communication. The repetition of their days and things they read on a daily basis naturally tend to sink into their brains. The women don’t agree with the ways necessarily but they are scared into being a follower. They are frightened of what will happen to them if they are to disobey, which leads us into fear. Fear plays a huge rule in totalitarian control. Fear is what keeps people obeying when put into situations like this. An individual has to have the mentality to want to keep their dignity. Many individuals cave to the power in spite of fear. In the journal, The Totalitarian Ego the author defines this fear and the identity that an individual lets go when totalitarian thought control is set to take place, “Total terror… substitutes for the boundaries and channels of communication between individual men a band of iron which holds them so tightly together that it is as though their plurality and disappeared into gigantic dimensions” (Greenwald pg. 456).
Another aspect of provoking totalitarian thought control is through isolation. Isolation is the fastest way to mold someone into something you want. People that are shut off from everything tend to absorb the way of life that they are being presented with. As in “The Handmaid’s Tale” these women didn’t want to live this way but they were shut off from all other contact and communication of any sort. This was their new world and now they had to adapt to it. Some may argue that you eventually adapt and this would be a way of life that you learn to live. How can you learn to live in a fashion that is not humane? Being forced as sex slave in rituals that are so humiliating such as when Atwood writes,
I lie on my back, fully clothed except for the healthy white cotton under drawers. What I could see, if I were to open my eyes, would be the large white canopy of Serena Joy’s outsized colonial-style four-poster bed, suspended like a sagging cloud above us, a cloud sprigged with tiny drops of silver rain, which if you looked at them closely, would turn out to be four-petaled flowers….Or the sail of a ship. Big-bellied sails, they used to say, in poems. Bellying. Propelled forward by a swollen belly….Above me, towards the head of the bed, Serena Joy is arranged, outspread. Her legs are apart, I lie between them, my head on her stomach, her pubic bone under the base of my skull, her thighs on either side of me. She too is fully clothed. My arms are raised; she holds my hands, each of mine in each of hers. This is supposed to signify that we are one flesh, one being. What it really means is that she is in control, of the process and thus of the product. If any. The rings of her left hand cut into my fingers. It may or may not be revenge. My red skirt is hitched up to my waist, though no higher. Below it the Commander is fucking. What he is fucking the lower part of my body. I do not say making love, because this is not what he’s doing. Copulating too would be inaccurate, because it would imply two people and only one is involved. Nor does rape cover it; nothing is going on here that I haven’t signed up for” (Atwood pg. 93-94).
For anyone to have to participate in an act like this is beyond humiliating. With the words just expressed shows that anyone under this type of control is belittling. No matter the amount of time one has been taken over by totalitarian thought control it never becomes something that is enjoyed, loved, or even sought as normal. It may become emotionless and even just another “ceremony” but never an individual’s own choice.
Margaret Atwood may be a writer that leans toward feminism but her message in “The Handmaid’s Tale” is an eye opener to what has happened in the past and can very likely occur again. Points in the book make me believe that Atwood wants everyone to be aware that things are ever changing and freedom may and can still be taken. Atwood’s outlook on women’s freedom is shared through the handmaid’s and gives the reader an idea of what is to come. Our ways of freedom are coming to a halt and that is something each individual needs to think about. Atwood is using her writing to provide a sense of caution in a mysterious way to give women an idea of what this country can and may come to.