Social Constructions

Most likely as an advertising ploy, the message on the back of my book proclaims “In rich, pure language, in a story so powerful it will move you to tears, Margaret Atwood has drawn a chilling portrait of a future that may not be so very far away.” I, in reading the novel, also had the sense that I was supposed to be drawn into this world and feel its pending arrival in our own. This notion, perhaps because of the great amount of tyranny and furthermore the world that existed before it, that was so real, made it difficult for me to buy into the story. And of course Atwood is going to exaggerate certain forms of oppression that the reader finds around them and place these in the Republic of Gilead, I expected that, but the cruelty of this place and the mystery that surrounded it as well as the world outside was almost too much to bear.
That being said, I did not see the epigraph when I began reading. And it was not until I read our assignment that I took any notice to it. This epigraph (and maybe only in the beginning of the novel, but I have a feeling throughout it) really changes the way that I am consuming this world. The quote from Genesis brings Mount Gilead back to the Old Testament. Although there are obvious religious tones present in the novel, this quote solidifies the relevance of this new life to one that existed, and the implications of that being made obvious by the second quote. A Modest Proposal being a satire, I feel like this quote is asking us not to so much believe in the world that will be presented to the reader, but to learn from those parallels that Atwood is creating.
Moreover, I really feel like this novel is about power. Atwood wants us to examine the power reigning over the characters of Mount Gilead and taste the struggle between those who remember how life was and those who understand the new ways as how it is. She really demonstrates the legitimacy of power’s constructions over how we view the world. By exaggerating the authority and oppression it distributes, one is asked to question the constructions they are faced with and perhaps accept as the way it is.