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Propaganda In The Handmaid's Tale And Bitch Planet

1324 Words6 Pages

Imagine being prescribed a way of life. It seems inconceivable, but it is the life of the characters Moira from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Penelope from Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro’s Bitch Planet. The characters live in a totalitarian government that does not allow them to question the leaders and they take harsh measures to punish those who seem to go against the government. In Moira’s society, she is constantly monitored; she is assigned one job and that is to reproduce. Meanwhile, Penelope’s society has imprisoned her in another planet until she can see herself through the eyes of her fathers. Both governments use manipulative propaganda and the appearance of deliverance, to subjugate Moira and Penelope, resulting in different reactions from the women. Moira, in The Handmaid’s Tale, experienced manipulative propaganda during her time at the Red Center through the lessons taught by the Aunts who enforce the doctrine of Gilead on the Handmaids. The reader learns that Moira resides in an environment in which “The chances [of having a healthy baby] are one in four [and] the air got too full, once of chemicals” (Atwood, 112). The pollution in the air affects the Gilead birth rate and causes birth defects, resulting in the Gilead having to create and manipulate Handmaids through propaganda. The Gilead also forces them into believing that they are stripped of their free will because they …show more content…

Moira, from The Handmaid’s Tale, continually attempts to rebel resulted in her compliance. While Penelope, never stops fighting against the ideologies of her society resulting in her increase defiance. Though both totalitarian governments attempted to subjugate the characters through manipulative propaganda and the appearance of deliverance, the characters’ reaction differed in that one became compliant while the other remained

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