Totalitarian Thought Control

Josh Tate
Cline
ENG102
4/10/11
Research Topic Proposal Blog
The topic I plan to explore that relates to Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” is totalitarian thought control. This is something that can be used to explain as to how the theme in “The Handmaid’s Tale” would be thought up. Margaret Atwood often writes of worlds where modern women are the heroes and men are the enemy and this is again the case in this story. Mind control is a good explanation as to why our society would let itself get to the far fetched point as which it did in Margaret Atwood’s book.
The guiding question for “The Handmaid’s Tale” that I have is how a society would ever let itself get to the point of turmoil as it did in the book. I believe that totalitarian thought control is the very topic that will help me better understand Atwood’s text. It will do so by answering many questions as to why a world like the one in the book would ever come into existence. There are many different forms of mind control that are theorized to be taking place and since this story is based in the future that would be something that is a good explanation for this new way of life that Atwood bases her book off of. Religion, government, and media is all said to be participants in totalitarian thought control. If these were to be true then it would explain how an entire society could be transformed into one such as the one in “The Handmaid’s Tale”.

http://www.notablebiographies.com/An-Ba/Atwood-Margaret.html

Here is a link to a biography of Margaret Atwood.