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Comparing A Clockwork Orange 'And The Handmaid's Tale'

1504 Words7 Pages

Although the novels are set in very different worlds, ‘A Clockwork Orange ‘(ACO) and ‘The Handmaid’s tale’ (THT) both explore how punishments create a climate of fear and how this is necessary for both dystopian societies to maintain order and deter individuals from transgressing. However, Burgess and Atwood portray the enforcement of punishments in different ways. Atwood presents Gilead as a radical regime that uses its public displays of punishment like the salvaging as a means to indoctrinate the citizens, creating a climate of fear which stimulates conformity. While Burgess choose to explore how a society imposes its punishments on a more subjective base: he focuses on the idea of Classical Conditioning and Aversion Therapy as means to rehabilitate rather than punish the ultra-violent protagonist Alex. However, it …show more content…

Atwood frequently alluded to different parts of the Bible, the most striking reference being from Genesis 30: 1-3 where the infertile Racheal told her husband Jacob that he could have intercourse with her handmaid. This was incorporated in first epigraph of THT were it stated “Give me children, or else I die”. This acted as biblical justification for the leaders in Atwood's fictional state, with the use of the ‘Handmaids' to bear children in the dystopian society where, for a range of reasons, infertility and genetic defects are prevalent. It was her intent to place this all at the beginning of the novel in order to plunge the reader in what they would presume is an extreme change in society. Margaret Atwood intentionally extracted this trivial quotation from the Bible to spark debate and by using it as the bases of Gilead’s radical regime; it is understandable, how it was perceived as religious mockery. As many fundamentalist take these small passages to justify their horrific nature of punishments when ultimately, it wasn’t supposed to be apparent that way. However, structurally the theme of punishment develops from physical

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