Comparing Handmaid's Tale And Elysium

Utopian Vision Dystopian Reality
One of America’s Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson once said, “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery” (Andrew 99). Humanity should learn how history repeats itself as the past often has ironic relevances to the present and future. Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale and the director, Neill Blomkamp’s film Elysium both posit stories for the human race in the future of the oppressed, authoritarian societies, where the privilege enjoy a life of luxury and harmony while controlling and dehumanizing the much larger lower class. It is comparable to that of real world dictatorships and autocracies in certain countries as well as being conceivable to potentially happen in the future for the world’s

In both stories, civilization suffers from oppression and control. The handmaid protagonist in The Handmaid’s Tale along with others, are slaves, forced into producing babies at the hands of their rapists. In Elysium, there is less control, but the general population are considered to be savages by the elites. With less control, the characters in Elysium seem to be mentally stronger and aggressive if not rebellious in their actions against the aristocrats, whereas in The Handmaid’s Tale, the lower-ranking females are passive and though they hate the situation of being strictly held by invisible restraints with nowhere to go, albeit with the exception of a few attempts of predictably doomed escapes, they accept and adhere to their superiors as there is no other choice. Social problems in the supposedly utopian world in The Handmaid’s Tale, are more firmly rooted when it comes to the vast differences between the upper and lower classes because the characters of the latter lack freedom on their own to rebel providing them no hope for positive change in the future, whereas in Elysium, as dire as life is for the people, there is at least a sense of a better future in the

However, in The Handmaid’s Tale, the undesirables are more heavily scrutinized and monitored. The handmaids in Gilead, formerly part of Massachusetts, USA, from The Handmaid’s Tale, including the main character Offred, are forced to wear certain colours of clothing that symbolize not by who they are as people, but where they rank as females in their bizarre culture. When Offred is about to go shopping for the Commander of her household and his wife, she resentfully thinks to herself about being labelled: “Everything except the wings around my face is red: the colour of blood, which defines us.” (Atwood 8). Handmaids are required to wear red clothing, representing the ability to fertilize, with their leaders forcing them to bear babies. Gilead imposes sickening government sanctioned rape on fertile women for human breeding, switching from commander to commander, due to the shortfall in population growth. In addition, Commanders’ wives who have a higher ranking than handmaids, and “Marthas”, who are the among the lowest standing of women and not attached to men except for the ones they have affairs with, are required to wear blue and green symbolizing their standing. The rulers abuse women, taking away their rights and treating them inhumanely. The people in Elysium, where the Earth is overpopulated, are dehumanized but not to the extent of those in The Handmaid’s