Two visions of dystopian society

Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale is frighteningly reminiscent in so many ways of perhaps the most famous dystopian novel, George Orwell’s 1984; many of the hallmark elements of dystopian societies are prevalent—obscuring of language and propaganda, restriction of civil liberties, constant warfare and surveillance and a rigid hierarchy. There do however, seem to be some key differences that I would like to point out, particularly in the instruments each ruling class uses to subjugate others in the respective novels.
The first mechanism by which the state seeks to manipulate its subjects in both novels is through a distortion or reallocation of identity. In the case of Orwell this is achieved by and large by conflating personal and social identities; the Party as described in 1984 ties the identities of its subjects to the state. Through this they come to view themselves as something larger than they truly are, thereby convincing them to accept party rule. Atwood’s ruling caste takes a much more bluntly instrumentalist approach; people come to view themselves as mere instruments of the state: women become no more than wombs with legs, and the men nothing more than weapons for crushing all resistance.
Indeed Atwood’s society is much more outwardly brutish and repressive than the one Orwell describes. Public executions, beatings in the handmaid training center and the institutionalized right of commanders’ wives to strike handmaids are all notably prevalent. In Orwell’s 1984, the state’s use of violence against its own people is much more subtle and occurs underground, in both a figurative and literal sense. The novel’s climactic scene, in which Winston Smith is tortured takes place a deep sub-basement of the ironically-named Ministry of Love.
The final instrument by which each society controls its populous is, quite appropriately, the distortion of language, and in this sense the differences between the two novels are largely indistinguishable. Both societies adopt their own vocabulary to make sense of the events transpiring around them, though in one subtle respect Gilead’s language structure is much more insidious. Whereas the state of Oceania, described in 1984, uses its language to blatantly promote the party ideology, Gilead couches its propaganda in religious terms. As the many real life examples of theocratic societies (and even in the case of would-be theocrats in this country) exhibit, people by and large tend to be much more passionate about religious ideologies than political ones. This makes Atwood’s vision of the future much more frightening, and also much more realistic.