Throughout various works of literature, authors have often revealed the values and assumptions of a society through a character, who is alienated from this society. Margaret Atwood demonstrates this in her novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, through the character of Offred. Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitario9an and theocratic state that has replaced the United States of America. Because of dangerously low reproduction rates, Handmaids are assigned to bear children for elite couples that have trouble conceiving. Richard Wright also reveals the values of a society through an alienated character in his novel, Native Son. Bigger Thomas, a poor, uneducated, twenty-year-old man in 1930s Chicago is the focus of the novel and the embodiment of the main idea, the effect of racism on the psychological state of its black victims. Having grown up under the climate of harsh racial prejudice in the 1930s white America. Bigger is burdened with a powerful conviction that he has no control over his life and that he cannot aspire to anything other than menial, low-wage labor. Anger, fear, and frustration define Bigger’s daily existence, as he is forced to hide behind a façade of toughness or risk succumbing to despair.
Throughout Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, the character of Offred, who is alienated from her society, is used to reveal the true values and assumptions of that society. Offred is the handmaid of the Commander and his wife, Serna Joy, a former gospel singer and advocate for “traditional values.” Every month, when Offred is at the right point in her menstrual cycle, she must have impersonal sex with the Commander while Serena holds her hands. Offred’s freedom, like the freedom of all women, is completely restricted. She can leave the house only on shopping trips, the door to her room must be left open, and the Eyes, Gilead’s secret police, watch her every move. Throughout Offred’s story she often slips into flashbacks, from which the reader can reconstruct the events leading up to the beginning of the novel. In the old world, before Gilead, Offred had an affair with Luke, a married man. He divorced his wife and married Offred, and they had a child. Offred and Luke tried to sneak into Canada with their daughter, but they were caught and separated. Offred’s marriage was voided and she was sent to a school to learn to become a Handmaid. Aunt Lydia, the head of the school, said that such a social order, as that of Handmaid, offered women more respect and safety that the old-, pre Gilead society offered.
One prominent theme in The Handmaid’s Tale is that of using a woman’s body as a political instrument. The on prime goal of Gilead is to control reproduction. The sate tackles this problem by assuming complete control over the women’s bodies through their political subjugation. Women cannot vote, hold property or jobs, read, or do anything else that might allow them to become subversive or independent and thereby undermine their husbands or the state. Despite all of Gilead’s pro-women rhetoric, such subjugation creates a society in which women are treated as subhuman. In one of the major scenes in the novel, Offred lies in the bath and reflects that, before Gilead, she considered her body an instrument of her desires; now, she is just a mound of flesh surrounding a womb that must be filled in order to make her useful. One of the key motifs used by Margaret Atwood is that of rape and sexual violence. The prevalence of rape and pornography in the pre-Gilead world justifies to the founders their establishment of the new order. The Commander and the Aunts claim that women are better protected in Gilead, that they are treated with respect and kept safe from violence. Certainly, the official penalty for rape is terrible. The Handmaids tear apart with their bare hands a supposed rapist. Yet, while it claims to suppress sexual violence, Gilead actually institutionalizes it, as we see ate Jezebel’s the club that proves the Commanders with a read stable of prostitutions to service the male elite. Most important, sexual violence is apparent in the central institution of the novel, the Ceremony, which compels Handmaids to have sex with their Commander.
Throughout Richard Wright’s Native Son, Bigger Thomas, an alienated character, reveals the true values and assumptions of his society. Bigger Thomas had just acquired a job as a chauffer from Mr. Dalton, one of the richest men in Chicago. Mary, Mr. Dalton’s daughter, frightens and angers Bigger by ignoring the social taboos that govern the relations between white women and black men. On his first day of work, Bigger drives Mary to meet her communist boyfriend, Jan. Eager to prove their progressive, antiracist ideals, Mary and Jan force Bigger to take them to a restaurant in the South Side. Despite Bigger’s embarrassment, they order drinks, and as the evening passes, all three become drunk. Bigger then drives around the city while Mary and Jan make out in the back seat. Afterward, Mary is too drunk to make it to her bedroom on her own, so Bigger helps her up the stairs. Just as Bigger places Mary on her bed, Mary’s blind mother, Mrs. Dalton, enters the bedroom. Though Mrs. Dalton cannot see him, her ghostlike presence terrifies him. Bigger worries that Mary, in her drunken condition, will reveal his presence. He covers her face with a pillow and accidentally smothers her to death. Bigger tries to conceal his crime by burning Mary’s body in the Dalton’s furnace. He decides to try and use the Daltons; prejudice against the communists to frame Jan for Mary’s disappearance. Mary’s murder gives Bigger a sense of power and identity he had never known. Bigger writes a ransom letter, playing upon the Daltons’ hatred for the communists by signing his name as “Red.” Bigger eludes the massive manhunt for as long as he can, but he is eventually captured after a dramatic shoot-out.
One of the prominent themes used by Wright, in Native Son, is the effect of racism on the oppressed. Bigger’s psychological damage results from the constant barrage of racist propaganda and racial oppression he faces while growing up. The movies he sees depict whites as wealthy sophisticates and blacks as jungle savages. He and his family live in cramped and squalid living conditions, enduring socially-enforced poverty and having little opportunity for educations. Bigger’s resulting attitude toward whites is a volatile combination of powerful anger and powerful fear. He conceives of “whiteness” as an overpowering and hostile force that is set against him in life. Throughout the novel, Wright illustrates the ways in which white racism forces blacks into pressured and therefore dangerous state of mind. Blacks are beset with the hardship of economic oppression and forced to act subserviently before their oppressors, while the media consistently portrays them as animalistic brutes. However, Wright emphasizes the double-edged effect of racism, though Bigger’s violence stems from racial hatred, it only increases the racism in American society, as it confirms racist whites’ basic fears about blacks. Another prominent theme used by Wright is that of the effect of racism on the oppressor. The effects of racism extend to the white population, in that it decides whites from realizing the true humanity inherent in groups that they oppress. Many whites in the novel, such as Britten and Peggy, fall victim to the obviouspitfall of racism among whites, the unthinking sense of superiority that deices them into seeing blacks as less than human. Wright shows that this sense of superiority is a weakness, as Bigger is able to manipulate it in his cover-up of Mary’s murder. Finally another theme present in Native Son is that of the hypocrisy of the Justice System. An important idea that emerges from Wright’s treatment of racism is the terrible condition of the American criminal justice system. The outcome of Bigger’s case is decided before it ever goes to court, in the vicious cycle of racism, a black man who kills a white woman is guilty regardless of the factual circumstances of the killing. However, Bigger is indeed guilty of Mary’s murder, as well as of Bessie’s. Nonetheless, the justice system still fails him, as he receives neither a fair trial nor an opportunity to defend himself. With the newspapers presenting him as a murderous animal. Bigger is not a traditional hero by any means. However, Wright forces us toe enter into his mind and to understand the devastating effects of the social conditions in which he was raised. Bigger was not born a violent criminal. He is a “native son”, a product of American culture and the violence and racism that underlies it.
Religion is a prevalent motif in both books. Both society’s try and offer the alienated character religion in order to make up for what they are missing. Gilead is a theocracy, a government in which there is no separation between state and religion, and its official vocabulary incorporates religious terminology and references. Domestic servants are called “Marthas” in reference to a domestic character in the New Testament. The local police are “Guardians of the Faith” and soldiers are “Angels.” All the stares also have biblical connotations, such as Loaves and Fishes, All Flesh, and Milk and Honey. Using religions terminology to describe people, ranks, and businesses whitewashes political skullduggery in pious language. Religion appears in Native Son mostly in relation to Bigger’s mother and Reverend Hammond. Bigger’s mother relies on her religion as a source of comfort in the face of the crushing realities of life on the South Side. Bigger however sees religion as a mere construct that calls only for peace in the afterlife, and compares his mother’s religion to Bessie’s drinking, an escapist pastime with no inherent value.
