The Handmaid's Tale And 1984

Uniformity and Resistance: An Exploration of Identity Under Oppressive Government In her work, The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt claims that identity can be discerned through speech and action, as it is perceived by others. However, in dystopian societies such as the ones depicted in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale and George Orwell’s 1984, where even though it is a form of rebellion, individuals are robbed of this experience. Atwood and Orwell employ different narration styles and protagonists to emphasize the same point—that individual identity and totalitarian government can not coexist. Through pervasive surveillance, propaganda, and forced uniformity, oppressive governments control and diminish the individual identity of their subjects, assigning them one collective identity. The

What I must present is a made thing, not something born” (Atwood, 58). By conforming to the collective identity of Gilead, Offred is suppressing her individual identity and merely playing a role in society. As Arendt states in her essay, Truth and Politics, the main effort of oppressive regimes is “...directed toward keeping the propaganda image intact, and this image is threatened less by the enemy...than by those inside the group itself who have managed to escape its spell and insist on talking about facts or events that do not fit the image” (Arendt, 14), and this is eradicated ”by the conversion of language and culture into mental barriers...” (Feder, 3-4). Through a collective identity, governments are able to unify their citizens under their ideology and legitimize their rule. By creating this feeling of belonging, totalitarian governments can brainwash their subjects into “an absolute refusal to believe in the truth of anything, no matter how well this truth may be established” (Arendt,