1984 and The Handmaid's Tale: Theme Of Control

As a general common thread and the overall theme, both texts have a big overarching theme of control which traps everyone in a world and a certain mindset, the government in Handmaid's Tale and thought police in 1984 both control the population by enforcing their mindset onto the population to control them.

One way in which both Atwood and Orwell show control is through their use of their respective protagonists Winston and Offred, their relationships and their rejection of the control of their thought police and government.

Winston and Offred have a similar character principle, the two protagonists both are rebellious outside thinkers in a world otherwise full of following 'sheep' but they realise something is wrong and as such want a revolution, differences occur though as while Winston rebels against Big Brother, Offred is more complicit but still rebels such as her having a love affair with Nick. However, while Winston had never known a world different from the dystopian one he's currently in Offred has and also lived in a time when she could get away with all the things that were now considered obscene for her to do, this is a way Gilead is weaker than Big Brother, in 1984 we don't see any characters that remember the old society barring Mr Charrington who doesn't count for anything given he was actually a member of the thought police, whereas the women in The Handmaid's Tale remember their rights and thus know what they could have to rebel and defeat Gilead, the people in 1984 don't know what they could have or any better and therefore don't tend to rebel.

Winston and Julia and Offred and Nick symbolise very similar things, both are showing feelings of love and passion in a society that does its best to shut out love, Winston and Julia are constantly performing little rule-breaking acts with them saying they "killed Big Brother" with each kiss, Offred and Nick are doing similar things, the society takes love out of everything, even sex is now business-like, so them showing that love is breaking the rules of the society. Winston and Julia's relationship suffered a much harsher fate, however, with Winston even telling O'Brian "DO IT TO JULIA" when being tortured and in their last conversation saying they don't feel the same to each other anymore after room 101. With Offred and Nick, it's more ambiguous with it showing Nick likely genuinely helped Offred and it seems those feelings stuck in place.

Both characters were modelled off of the author in some ways, Orwell fought in the Spanish civil war, he was shot in the neck by a sniper and he served as home guard and propaganda for World War II due to being deemed unfit for military service, through this Orwell saw a necessity of fighting in war for the greater good and rejecting idle standby this is shown by Winston in 1984 where he rebels against the thought police in hopes of an eventual future without Big Brother, we also see that Winston just like Orwell rejects idle standby we see this through Winston's narration on those taking part in the two minutes hate as he looked on at the chants "with horror" which was representative of Orwell's thoughts regarding the morning hates in the first world war in the Imperial German campaign which the British then copied mostly in satire but practised their own hate too. In the case of Atwood, Offred represents Atwood's political opinion as The Handmaid's Tale was written in response to the election of Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the USA, both of which were conservative which criticised the sexual revolution of female rights and had feminist like Atwood fear the future where women had no rights again as we see in Handmaid's Tale, Offred rebelling against the Gilead society represents Atwood rebelling against the politics of Reagan and Thatcher.

Control is presented through each protagonist's emotions at times feeling defeated by the dystopian society, contrasting against the types of oppression of the oppressors, Winston is often portrayed as feeling both of these at different points in the novel, at the beginning of the novel Winston isn't acting against Big Brother in any way but rather "suffering with the constant anxiety that the telescreen in his apartment will reveal his inner thoughts to the Thought-Police, it is perhaps not surprising that he questions his own sanity" (chapter one) opening with this shows the extent of the control through the mental effects of their control and the living conditions of this society, in the novel's second part we see Winston's emotions change from pure fear and anxiety after meeting Julia as he states "I hate purity. I hate goodness! I don't want any virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones" in chapter two which despite him being the narrator is what I consider to be his most raw emotion to this point as before here it had been almost entirely anxiety-based, the control is shown from the contrast of this to the values of the party and the lengths outside thinkers are forced into. Moving into part three of the novel we see a defeated Winston following "DO IT TO JULIA" and in the remainder of part three, by the end of the novel "he loved Big Brother" as critic Mike Peters states "the shock of realising that human beings can be made less than human, manipulated, brainwashed and tortured into losing the essential qualities that make you human, such as loyalty, trust, morality or even the ability to think" is what Orwell evokes in the reader through the defeat of Winston and finalises the display of control in 1984. In Handmaid's Tale the government control emotions through banning pleasure and love affairs, Offred, unlike Winston, didn't show many signs of rebellion in the start of the novel as she is complicit and complies with duties for the sake of survival however as the novel goes on like Winston she considers various forms of rebellion as her emotion grows towards Nick and her longing for the past she had with Luke that made her want freedom "I could set fire to the house, for instance. I could bundle up some of my clothes, and the sheets, and strike my one hidden match. If it didn't catch, that would be that. But if it did, there would at least be an event, a signal of some kind to mark my exit. A few flames, easily put out. In the meantime I could let loose clouds of smoke and die by suffocation" but as critic, Allan Weiss states "her ultimate solution is escape, via suicide, in the end, she does nothing".