Trauma, Emotion, and Dystopia:
Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and The Handmaid’s Tale
Student: Jetty Bergsma | s1985167 Supervisor: Dr. I. Visser Date of Completion: 30 May 2014
Word Count: 15.364
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Abstract
In this paper, I discuss trauma, emotion, and social context in three dystopian novels: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1951) and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). The foundations of this thesis are definitions regarding individual and collective trauma, mainly as posed by K. T. Erikson and J. C. Alexander; Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and its symptoms as defined by The Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5); theory concerning emotions, mainly as
posed by Keith Oatley and P. C. Hogan; and each novel’s respective social context at the time it was published.
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Contents
Introduction 4
Chapter 1 – Trauma 10
Chapter 2 – Trauma and Emotion 22
Chapter 3 – Trauma, Emotion, and Dystopia 34
Conclusion 46
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Introduction
The field of trauma studies has been around for several centuries, yet only in the last several decades has it flourished. Trauma originates form the Greek word for ‘wound,’ and was first used in English in the seventeenth century, related to the field of medicine (Luckhurst). Early editions from the Oxford English Dictionary cite entries related to ‘trauma’ only from sources connected to physical wounds, but for one exception in 1895, which, in retrospect, was the first clue that it would later shift towards the domain of mental instead of physical health, a shift that began in the late nineteenth century (Luckhurst). Trauma theory slowly expanded throughout the nineteenth century; only in 1980 did the American Psychiatric Association first include the symptoms for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in their official manual of diagnoses for mental disorders, and there was a “boom in cultural trauma theory in the early 1990s” (Luckhurst). Presently, the field of trauma studies has expanded so far that it can occur in many more disciplines than just medicine or psychology; as LaCarpa stated, “[n]o genre or discipline ‘owns’ trauma as a problem or can provide definitive boundaries for it” (qtd. in Luckhurst). Currently, trauma is still being extensively researched with regard to the field of social and cultural studies, concerning the sphere of collective trauma, whether trauma can occur in communities or even in whole societies.
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trauma; does this unite or divide a community; how does this affect the emotional lives of citizens; how does the social context of a society tie into this; are all these elements the same in three novels of the same genre, or are there striking differences; and so on. For this project, I have chosen to research Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1951) and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985).
Aldous Huxley definitely left his mark on twentieth century literature, as he is known for having published over forty books, and has also written poetry, essays, adaptations for both plays and films, and many more (Birnbaum 3). Although he received a small number of literary prizes, some of his works were banned because of their supposed obscenity, glorification of drug abuse, or having generally been perceived as offensive (Reiff 103). Huxley was often seen as a “disturbingly accurate prophet who became steadily more disillusioned with the uses to which science was being put in his time” (Murray 2). Huxley’s most significant theories and warnings for mankind featured in Brave New World are against dangers such as overpopulation, too-fast advancing technology and science, consumerism, and brainwashing by advertising (Murray 2). Brave New World’s dystopian society is situated in futuristic London, which is now called the ‘World State’. Here, human life is regulated by factories instead of people, as humans are factory-bred and ‘conditioned’ to fit the caste system. All World State inhabitants are emotionally numb, addicted to the drug ‘soma’, and have been taught to be overly promiscuous.
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Christian fundamentalist state where Handmaid’s have been assigned to bear children for older couples of high status. Handmaids are very restricted in their daily routines and exist only for the purpose of having regular, impersonal sex with their commander in order to conceive a child and stabilize reproduction rates. Everyone is under continuous scrutiny from the Eyes of God and runs the risk of being hanged or sent away to environmentally hazardous colonies.
To carry out my research, I chose several theorists and the specific theoretical concepts they introduce in their works to apply to the aforementioned novels. In terms of individual and collective trauma, I mainly use theory posed by K. T. Erikson and Jeffrey Alexander. I use K. T. Erikson’s book A New Species of Trouble for its definition of trauma, as he discusses its relation to different fields, and how different types of events can be traumatizing, in the sense that they can either be sudden, fast events, or chronically induced trauma. He further specifies a distinction between ‘individual trauma’ in contrast to ‘collective trauma’ (233); concepts which are useful to my discussion. J. C. Alexander, in his Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, poses interesting notions regarding trauma, including the social circumstances that can inflict trauma. He also formulates a layman concept of trauma that is related more closely to the opinion of the public; this definition allows the term ‘trauma’ to be applied to much less severe cases, which is interesting to compare to the academic definitions. Similarly to Erikson, Alexander also refers to collective trauma and its specific features (10).
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one of his works, Emotions: A Brief History, Oatley gives multiple explanations with regard to how certain emotions work and how they can be caused.
My second source is Patrick Colm Hogan. In his book What Literature Teaches Us about Emotion, he makes claims similar to those of Keith Oatley, for example by connecting emotions to our expectation of life and our goals. Since this paper is concerned with dystopian societies and trauma, I will mainly be focusing on negative emotions, such as anger, desperation and sadness. Hogan also formulates another additional concept which he calls ‘mood repair’ (115), which is useful for my brief analysis of positive emotions in the dystopian societies.
In addition to examining what kind of experiences cause trauma, it is also relevant to examine what trauma can cause within people, in addition to specific emotions, such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) specifies what sort of matters can cause PTSD and what symptoms it can evoke, ranging from less severe issues, such as having trouble sleeping or controlling your emotions, to more serious problems including flashbacks of the traumatic event, emotional numbing and depression (Keane et al. 2). I examine whether these symptoms can be found in main characters of the three key novels, which enables me to conclude that, if their circumstances qualify as traumatic, these characters also show the supposed accompanying symptoms, but that the characters from different novels do not necessarily share the same symptoms.
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therefore hope, are still possible” (qtd. in Howells 161). Indeed, in each novel, the respective author poses criticism towards certain facets of their society at the time of writing – the 1930s for Aldous Huxley, the 1950s for Ray Bradbury, and 1980s for Margaret Atwood – including matters such as the fast-paced development of technology, censorship and oppressive gender roles. With this, the authors warn their readers for what society could become if nothing changes; therefore the social context of each novel is very relevant.
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Chapter 1 – Trauma
In this chapter, I apply several definitions of both individual and collective trauma as posed by theorists of social and cultural trauma K. T. Erikson and J. C. Alexander, including a layman notion and diagnostic symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). By doing so, I present that Brave New World’s World State citizens are traumatized on both levels; that main characters such as Bernard, Helmholtz or John the Savage are more individually traumatized, but that the word ‘trauma’ is applied too easily for such a severe concept.
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onset is likely to have been in the early twentieth century, since “[t]he introduction of Our Ford’s first T-Model [was] [c]hosen as the opening date of the new era” (Huxley 56), which occurred in 1908 (“Automotive”) – meaning that the narrative, set in “A. F. 632” (Huxley 20), takes place in 2540 in our calendar years. The World State community is definitely human-made; the shifting to the new order commenced when the A.F. calendar started, although the government only really began controlling society after the Nine Years’ War, which began in A.F. 141 (Huxley 53), which is 2549 in the Western calendar. After the Nine Years’ War, people “were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. [The government has] gone on controlling ever since” (Huxley 191). The main elements in this new order were mass production, uniformity, mass media, creating a consumer society, and eliminating religion. As Mustapha Mond states: “[o]ne can’t have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for” (Huxley 192), which is done by discarding truth, beauty and knowledge, for example by giving up science, art, and literature.
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policies before and during the Second World War (Wallace). As Huxley himself once put it eloquently: propaganda “[tries] to bypass the rational side of man and to appeal directly to these unconscious forces below the surfaces” (Wallace), which could in a sense be seen as another form of brainwashing. This brainwashed state is what keeps the World State inhabitants continuously happy, and what makes the society potentially traumatic for those who wake from their indoctrinated state of blissful ignorance, such as Bernard and Helmholtz, who realize what they have to give up to be World State citizen and the large degree of control the government actually exercises over their lives. The rest of society is unaware as to what degree their freedom is actually not freedom, since it lacks the opportunity to “claim (…) the right to be unhappy” (Huxley 200), as Mustapha Mond expresses it.
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height, and skinnier in comparison, which makes it harder for him to profess his authority over lower castes. Additionally, this often causes him to be mocked by his Alpha peers, making him feel like an outsider. He admits to being in a sort of vicious circle: “feeling an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects” (Huxley 66-67). This causes Bernard to withdraw into himself, as he feels so very excluded from everyone else, which in turn causes him to feel emotions he does not understand, resulting in Bernard withdrawing still further. We see a similar situation with regard to John the Savage: he also feels very much an outsider in a society he does not comprehend. He withdraws in the psychological sense, but near the end he even withdraws physically, separating himself from society by moving into an abandoned lighthouse.
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water are cheap commodities, [which e]ven the poorest government is rich enough to provide”, thereby providing a “substantial measure of death control” (15-16), meaning that people were living increasingly longer than they did in the past, causing the population to grow even larger. What is more, “birth control is achieved with great difficulty” (Brave New World Revisited 16), so whereas “[d]eath rates have (…) fallen in recent years with startling suddenness, (…) birth rates have either remained at their old high level, or, if they have fallen, have fallen very little and at a very slow rate” (16). Huxley foresaw the problem, as he stated that this would lead to the human numbers “increasing more rapidly than at any time in the history of the species” (16).
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paradoxical: the citizens of the World State are all taken care of; however, as soon as they start questioning any of these matters, they realize how their life is limited by the government, and thus run the risk of being removed from society. This begs the question: can their limited, drug-induced happiness really qualify as happiness? I believe that this conundrum may point to something deeper: the World State citizens’ lack of displaying more complicated emotions or trauma could either indicate that they are simply not traumatized or, more likely, that they are so indoctrinated that they actually believe they are happy and that the trauma is not present, meaning that the trauma can only surface when characters awaken from their brainwashed state.
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for some people “this sense of difference can become a kind of calling, a status, where people are drawn to others similarly marked” (231). Within the World State, there is no opportunity for this; however, when a citizen realizes their misfortunate fate, they are likely to be sent away to an island where all other misfits and free thinkers live. This can be seen as the place where similarly marked individuals can stick together and form their own sense of – traumatized – community. More specifically for Bernard, he feels quite alone in his suffering, and we can safely state that he does not feel a part of a community that is unified by trauma; he actually prides himself by wanting to feel “[n]ot just a cell in the social body” (Huxley 85). Yet interestingly, he does have a kind of mental break down when he hears he is going to be sent away to an island; he neither wants to be part of the prestigious World State society, nor become part of a new community of like-minded people – he seems traumatized into feeling in between communities.
These academic definitions of trauma have proven to be dissimilar to the layman notion trauma; the former only seem to be applicable in the more serious instances of trauma, whereas in the mind of the public, the term ‘trauma’ is applicable in much less severe cases. Micale and Lerner confirm Alexander’s simpler definition which embodies the public’s opinion, namely that in “everyday culture and popular parlance, trauma has become a metaphor for the struggles and challenges of late twentieth-century life” (Micale & Lerner 1). Additionally, Alexander has also attempted to define the concept of a traumatic or traumatized society, but he begins by stating what does not qualify a society for these terms. He states that:
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basic protections and may undergo severe crises of delegitimation. Economic systems may be profoundly disrupted (…). Such problems are real and fundamental, but they are not, by any means, necessarily traumatic for members of the affected collectivities, much less for the society at large. (10)
In other words, this also proves that in laymen terms, the label ‘trauma’ is used too fast in society; indeed, events such as those presented above can be traumatic on an individual level, but Alexander is of the opinion that these do not qualify “at the level of collectivity” (10), thus for a whole society. However, it is interesting to examine whether this can be applied to the society in Brave New World after all.
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can definitely be said that Bernard, Helmholtz and John the Savage question themselves, their own identities, and where they wish to go in their lives. Yet aside from ringing true on an individual level, this theory does not apply to the community as a whole.
When considering Erikson’s and Alexander’s definitions of trauma, Bernard, Helmholtz and John the Savage can be considered as having been individually traumatized. When a person is the victim of trauma, they are likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is accompanied by a wide variety of origins and symptoms, which do not all have to present themselves in one person. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) “defines PTSD as stemming from an event in which one is exposed to serious threat of injury or death and then experiences extreme fear, helplessness, or horror” (Keane et al. 2). The DSM-5 presents an extensive list of the criteria that must apply to someone for them to legitimately suffer from PTSD; for example, there must be a stressor of some kind; intrusion symptoms such as intrusive memories or intense, prolonged distress; avoidance of trauma-related thoughts, feelings or people; negative alterations in mood; changes in behavior and reactivity, such as aggression or recklessness, and so on (American Psychiatric Association). This gives an indication that what is considered ‘real’ trauma – thus causing PTSD or some of its symptoms – is more severe than what we see in Brave New World. Nevertheless, it is interesting to discover which PTSD symptoms can be recognized in the characters Bernard, John, and Helmholtz, to discover to what degree they are traumatized with regard to the clinical definition.
PTSD used to be considered a more rare condition, that only very extreme
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3). This means that the circumstances, which as I have established, are less severe than they initially seem, may still be sufficiently severe to cause trauma and PTSD symptoms. For example, what could cause trauma for Bernard is his lacking physical appearance, which causes him to be mocked and ridiculed by his peers, making him feel excluded and alone. Some of the seemingly less severe PTSD symptoms apply to Bernard; he suffers from prolonged distress, has trouble concentrating at work, and struggles with controlling his anger. Additionally, Bernard shows signs of “emotional numbing, described as an inability to feel any positive emotions” (Keane et al. 2). Bernard is constantly angry and frustrated, first by his peers and his limited life, then by the government; when he does get the chance to gain some recognition from his peers, he still only acts out of spite and greed, and dismisses his only real friend, Helmholtz. Finally, when he gets the opportunity to go elsewhere and make a fresh start, he panics and remains depressed – in short, there does not seem to be anything that can satisfy Bernard and make him feel better. Helmholtz, on the other hand, does not display any PTSD symptoms. Initially, he feels unhappy and confused, as he is too intelligent for his own good, and he feels an excess of creativity that he finds difficult to express; nevertheless, when he is provided with the opportunity to move away from the oppressive society and live with likeminded people, where he will be allowed to write whatever he wants, he is satisfied. It is therefore safe to say that Helmholtz is not traumatized.
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shock. However, when he is in the World State, we see PTSD symptoms in John that were already present before he arrived, but were under the surface. John has suffered abuse in his childhood; both mentally and physically by his mother’s many suitors, and having been tormented by these men and his peers for being so odd – as he is a kind of hybrid of two societies. During his visit in the World State, he experiences typical, more severe PTSD symptoms, such as “flashback episodes in which an individual experiences a recurrence of at least a portion of the trauma” (Keane et al. 2), and also severe problems with controlling his anger and the “inability to feel any positive emotions” (Keane et al. 2). He experiences intrusive memories of his traumatic events, which later on mix with his new traumatic experiences in the World State: here, too, he is an outcast, and he is very disturbed by common matters in the new society, such as its brainwashed soma-induced state, the backward values including ‘everyone belongs to everyone’, and how there can be more than ninety identical people originating from one single embryo. After a while, John feels so disturbed that he feels the need to separate himself from society completely and live in an abandoned lighthouse, after which he lives by starving and flogging himself. This, however, backfires as much as coming to the World State in the first place; the citizens see him as a source of entertainment, and his place of solace is stormed by large crowds of people. In the end, John becomes so distressed that he sees no other option than to take his own life.
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Chapter 2 – Trauma and Emotion
In this chapter, I explore Fahrenheit 451 in relation to negative emotions such as anger, desperation, and sadness, and claim that there is no room for any positive emotions. Subsequently, I draw comparisons to the emotions in Brave New World, and claim that there is a coherent emotion pattern to be determined from this, which can perhaps be applied to many dystopian novels. Consecutively, I explore the trauma in Fahrenheit 451 – including collective and individual trauma, and potential PTSD symptoms in the main characters – and compare this to my findings from chapter 1.
Similarly to Brave New World, the society in Ray Bradbury’s novel appears very happy – at least on the surface, since the people are too brainwashed to even ask themselves whether they are, in fact, happy. Besides Montag, Faber, and Granger and his men, there are not many characters that experience much emotion apart from mindless contentment. Interestingly, for Montag, the first step to more profound emotions is not exploring his anger or some other feeling, but rather the mere realization that he feels dissatisfied: “[h]e felt his smile slide away (…). Darkness. He was not happy. He was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as the true state of affairs” (Bradbury 9). Only after his meeting with Clarisse, when she inquires whether he is happy, does Montag start thinking about this and does he realize that he is not. From this moment onwards he develops more complex emotions, such as anger, desperation and sadness, and only later do we meet other more emotionally sophisticated characters.
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certain expectations and goals – may they have been subconscious, these goals existed nonetheless – and his negative emotions are sparked as he grows more aware that his expectations were inaccurate and inaccessible. Indeed, in What Literature Teaches Us about Emotion, P. C. Hogan states that emotions are connected to our goals in life and to our likeliness to succeed (53). Hogan has written several theoretical books related to his fields of expertise: literary theory, and postcolonial and world literature (“Faculty: Hogan, Patrick”). His notion corresponds to theory posed by Keith Oatley in his book Emotions: A Brief History. He states, similar to Hogan, that “emotions are most typically caused by evaluations (…) of events in relation to what is important to us: our goals, our concerns, our aspirations” (3). Additionally, Oatley presents a more comprehensible explanation of how emotions work, namely that they occur “when the appearance of the world as we assume it to be is pierced by reality” (4); this is exactly what happens when Montag comes to the realization that his life is not what he assumed it to be.
Moreover, this notion is similarly applicable to Brave New World; its motto is “everybody is happy now” (Huxley 74), yet upon closer examination of characters such as Bernard, Lenina or John, deeper and more negative emotions will become apparent, which may correspond to the earlier-presented trauma. The director states that “[n]o pains have been spared to make [their] lives emotionally easy – to preserve [them], so far as that is possible, from having emotions at all” (Huxley 50). This becomes evident when inhabitants from the World State start to feel more defined emotions, which leaves them very confused; they are not conditioned to handle anything but happiness, and therefore do not know how to cope with their feelings when their assumed happy lives are pierced by reality.
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for what they are, nor does he understand the reason for it: “[n]o, I don’t want to, this time. I want to hold onto this funny thing. God, it’s gotten big on me. I don’t know what it is. I’m so damned unhappy, I’m so mad, and I don’t know why” (62). As demonstrated, emotions are evoked when something unexpected happens, which can be negative and painful; Oatley states that, with anger, “the world narrows the plans” (5) of our expectations in life. Montag’s subconscious assumption is that his life will continue as it always was: peaceful and unexciting. By waking out of his brainwashed stupor, he first realizes he is unhappy, which interrupts his assumption of an uneventful, content life and ignites his anger as a result. From this point onwards it is a vicious circle: the more he grows aware of his dissatisfaction and anger, the more he realizes that his assumptions of life were incorrect and that his goals – living an uneventful life with Mildred, remaining a fireman, being generally satisfied – are unattainable, the further his anger increases. Interestingly, Granger’s group of outcasts, whom Montag joins near the end, who are also dissatisfied with their societal situation, have wearily accepted their faith: “[w]e’re not out to incite or anger anyone yet (…) When the war’s over, perhaps we can be of some use in the world” (146). They have adjusted their expectations of life, and by doing so they know that, if they wait patiently, their goals are potentially attainable for the next generation. In Brave New World we see anger for different reasons, but as an effect of the same theory, as Bernard fails to achieve his most significant life-goal. Due to his physical and social quirks, Bernard’s dearest desire is to be treated with the respect he deserves from his peers. Since he will never be equal to his fellow Alpha’s, he will always be treated differently, and can therefore not achieve this goal, resulting in dissatisfaction and perpetual anger against his peers, and indirectly the World State.
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Montag’s desperation is connected to his newfound goals, which were formed when his anger flared up when he became aware of his situation and the accompanying dissatisfaction This can be seen clearly near the beginning of the story, when Montag is still trying to figure out these new emotions, and he yells at Mildred: “[l]et you alone! That’s all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?” (Bradbury 49). Here, Montag is struggling with his newfound anger with his situation, and he is desperate to do something, to make a change, but he does not know how to express this – an inability which leads to still more desperation.
In Brave New World we find desperation in two main characters: Lenina Crowne and John the Savage. Lenina is perfectly content with her life until she meets a peculiar ‘savage’ at the Reservation, whom Bernard insists on bringing back to the World State. What begins as confusion soon becomes desperation for Lenina when she starts falling for John but realizes that her feelings are unrequited; for her, John is the goal that she cannot obtain. John the Savage is a hybrid of archaic and World State values, due to being raised by a World State inhabitant inside the Reservation. His desperation stems from isolation and loneliness, because the other ‘savages’ think him odd, and the inhabitants of the World State see him as an entertaining attraction
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after she has attempted suicide; he feels panicked because, as Oatley states, “[t]he world suddenly intrudes through the layers of [his] assumptions” (5), as he thought that Mildred was perfectly happy and he never expected her to want to end her own life. However, later on he admits: “[i]t’s strange, I don’t miss her, it’s strange I don’t feel much of anything (…) Even if she dies, I realized a moment ago, I don’t think I’ll feel sad” (Bradbury 148). By now, it seems, Montag has adjusted his assumptions and his prospective goals to such a degree that he subconsciously already knew that Mildred would not be a part of his future and his attempt to change society.
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that Lenina is holding her hands on her heart, possibly indicating that she wished to make one final attempt at showing John that she loves him. However, she realizes he will never accept her – thus knowing that she will not achieve this goal of being with him – and she is overcome with sadness. This is the only moment that we see an inhabitant of the World State cry.
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processes” (Seed 231). Indeed, technology and mass exploitation were a danger to society according to Bradbury, as there was such a “boom” in the “postwar developments in television” in America (Seed 228). This is reminiscent of Brave New World, and according to David Seed, Bradbury drew on Huxley’s novel with his description of the media, likewise making them “non-stop distractions of the most fascinating nature (…) [which] are deliberately used as instruments of policy for the purpose of preventing people from paying too much attention to the realities of the social and political situation” (228). This is what Bradbury feared with regard to the quick development of television, that people would start to “spend a great deal of their time (…) in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera” (228), and that the political awareness would plummet to below zero.
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aforementioned traumatic elements, and therefore have a chance at mood repair – although of course we do not witness this in the novel.
There is even less room for positive emotions and mood repair in Brave New World. The few characters that are able to see through the numb contentedness do not have much reason to feel anything resembling hope. They do not have a chance to form any kind of rebellion against the oppressing order, allowing no hope that society will change. However, as his fordship Mustapha Mond states, there deliberately is no room for change in the World State, and it becomes evident that matters such as progress in science are even more controlled than the inhabitants realize (Huxley 189). Mustapha Mond explains that some matters and ideas have to be sacrificed in order to maintain stable society and the so-called freedom. As Aldous Huxley himself once said in an interview: “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance” (Wallace), which is exactly what Mustapha Mond describes; all the Controllers have to be vigilant and restrict developments in different fields that could endanger the freedom that the World State inhabitants think they have. Moreover, as soon as people do start to realize the degree of which their lives are controlled, they are shipped off to an island where other intellectuals, religious and emotional people can freely live together and not infect the ‘normal’ people with their ‘free thinking’, in this case literally. In short, these people do not have the opportunity to rebel against the oppressive government, and therefore have little chance at mood repair.
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followed by a kind of resolution or a return to the previously brainwashed state. This seems a fairly set pattern, which leads me to believe that this pattern could potentially be applied to other novels of the dystopian genre as well.
Moreover, I previously presented that the emotions in these novels correlate to their levels of trauma, which implies that the narrative of Fahrenheit 451 is similarly traumatic as the one in Brave New World. According to Alexander’s notion that the undermining of basic human needs leads to trauma, the society that is presented in Fahrenheit 451 does not seem to be traumatic; the government provides security and the people can feel loved and connected – however, this only stands for those who do not question these matters, for if they do, their house is likely to be set on fire or they mysteriously disappear. Here, we see a similar paradoxical situation as with Brave New World’s World State; Montag is surrounded by everything he could possibly need, but he nevertheless realizes that he is missing something in his life.
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created long before Montag was born – although its specific advent is not mentioned – and by now its brainwashed state is so normal that the inhabitants do not question it. Additionally, even though it was created by society, this state of unawareness has grown into being enforced by the government to keep society stable.
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under the influence of brainwash-television again, she is convinced of her own happiness, which proves that there is some much deeper ache hidden inside her. Therefore it is likely that the people in Fahrenheit 451 are actually traumatized, but that this is repressed by external forces.
However, since the trauma within these people is on a subconscious level, they cannot communicate these feelings to each other, which impedes them from elevating this trauma to a collective level. With regard to collective trauma, Erikson states that it can cause people to be “drawn to others similarly marked” (232), which in itself can create a sense of community – but this evidently does not occur among Mildred and her fellow brainwashed. Nevertheless, I argue that Erikson’s notion of collective trauma can be found elsewhere in Fahrenheit 451: when Montag joins Granger and the other outsiders, he enters this societal group – it can fairly be called that since they are with thousands of people (Bradbury 146) with the same aims and standards – allows him to “share the sufferings of others” (Alexander 1), which creates a bond between these men who have all been harassed and chased by firemen and the government. Granger states: “[w]hen we were separate individuals, all we had was rage” (Bradbury 143), but now that they are with so many, they can form a united front and slowly, patiently, attempt change society for the future generations.
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Chapter 3 – Trauma, Emotion, and Dystopia
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is very similar to, yet in many ways distinctly different from Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451. In this chapter I explore The Handmaid’s Tale’s social context and Atwood’s social criticism of the 1980s by focusing on the matters she was most concerned with: the environment, fundamentalism and the rising infertility rate at the time. Consecutively, I examine Atwood’s gender criticism in the narrative, concentrating on stereotypical female roles, women’s deprivation of individuality and their indoctrinated passivity. I argue, by exploring trauma and emotions in the dystopia of Gilead in comparison to the dystopias presented in Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451, that these social circumstances in The Handmaid’s Tale have a more significant influence on the nature of the dystopia, and are directly linked to the trauma that is present, which, due to this fact, will prove some major contrasts with the other two respective novels.
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and yet another form of society has emerged. David Ketterer states that Atwood has deliberately made Gilead a transitory dystopia, meaning that she is not only concerned with what preceded this society and how it originated, but also what “led, over time or abruptly, away from dystopia” (213). Whereas Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451 are both open ended, implying that there is hope for a better future, in The Handmaid’s Tale it is made clear that Gilead’s fundamentalist patriarchal society does not survive, and in the Historical Notes, we are introduced to Professor Pieixoto, who “serves as an example of male intellectual control over history” (Wisker 87), making it clear that sexist attitudes have survived that far into the future.
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By fabricating The Handmaid’s Tale’s society, Atwood mainly emphasizes a social criticism towards the social and environmental circumstances of 1980s America. For example, the narrative criticizes the decreasing environment. Gilead itself is situated in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the climate appears to be somewhat regular; however, the Handmaids live under the constant threat of being sent to ‘the Colonies’ (Atwood 71), where the environment is horrible and harmful to human beings. Not only Handmaids can be sent here, but any childless or infertile woman, after which they will only be known as ‘Unwomen’ (71). The Unwomen at the Colonies spend most of their time cleaning up; for instance, removing dead bodies after a battle to prevent plagues from happening, burning these bodies, cleaning up toxic dump sites and radiation spills (260). For this, no protective gear is provided, and it takes approximately three years “before your nose falls off and your skin pulls away like rubber gloves” (260). The circumstances at these Colonies are meant as a warning with regards to the 1980s American environmental situation. In the 1970s and 1980s, new agricultural chemicals were brought into usage, which were “environmentally deleterious” (OECD 173); additionally, there were and still remain other causes of environmental pollution, including acid rain (OECD 183) and the increasing industrial fumes produced by the growing number of machinery replacing human workers at the time (OECD 173).
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popularity, especially “from 1940 to 1960” (Philips), and later, at the time The Handmaid’s Tale was published, an “aggressive political conservatism” (Philips) was embraced. As D. S. New puts it in his book, there was a “resurgence of conservative Christianity, especially in its more extreme manifestation – Christian fundamentalism” (3). This strong religious element in politics, which both Philips and New discuss in their books, is reflected in The Handmaid’s Tale’s regime. The political powers that are governing Gilead are mostly using the Bible for their newly installed policies: “[u]nder this new regime, scripture is altered to fit the regime’s purpose, and familiar sayings become new scripture, often with their original meanings destroyed or removed” (Macpherson 54). For example, at the Red Center, and later at the Ceremony with the Commander, the Bible passage of infertile Rachel and her maid Bilbah, who would give Jacob children instead (Epigraph; Atwood 99), is utilized as a means of justifying this new form of society and for the indoctrination of citizens.
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chance at an “Unbaby” is one in four (Atwood 122), which can be caused by various agents:
The air got too full, once, of chemicals, rays, radiation, the water swarmed with toxic molecules, all of that takes years to clean up, and meanwhile they creep into your body, camp out in your fatty cells. (…) Not to mention the exploding atomic power plants, along the San Andreas fault, nobody’s fault, during the earthquakes, and the mutant strain of syphilis no mould could touch. Some did it themselves, had themselves tied shut with catgut or scarred with chemicals. (Atwood 122)
The causes of infertility in the narrative are mostly unintentional, for example the environment, although some women choose to become infertile. Atwood expresses concern for the infertility rate in the novel by emphasizing how Gilead’s government goes inhumanely far in penalizing anything that could prevent children from being born: infertile women are banned from the prosperous society, doctors who used to perform abortions – this is now illegal, but the punishment for it is retroactive (Atwood 42) – and people that perform “Gender Treachery” – acts of a homosexual nature (Atwood 53) – are publicly hanged.
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Wisker states in her book that “[t]here is a tendency for dystopian novels [to] explore connections between state repression of its subjects, and that of their thoughts, through the perversion and oppression of language” (95). Indeed, we see similar situations in Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451, in which limited freedom of speech and censorship are greatly emphasized. For example, Ray Bradbury places major emphasis on government-imposed censorship in his novel, as an answer to the so-called “climate of fear” (Eller & Touponce 164) that was felt at the time Fahrenheit 451 was published, and which is present in much American dystopian fiction of the 1950s (Seed 225). This climate of fear refers to the fact that, in the 1950s, “some of the most important things that [were] happening to [society were] not talked about because people have been made afraid” by the government, to talk about significant, controversial matters (Eller & Touponce 165). In the context of Gilead, where the Handmaid’s are forced to “remain silent, or speak to each other only in a limited, religiously inflected code, there are clear relationships between language, power and sexuality” (Wisker 95). Indeed, if a Handmaid speaks out of turn, or mistakenly responds with the wrong ‘coded’ message – such as “blessed be the fruit”, “may the Lord open”, or “praise be” (Atwood 29) – she can end up imprisoned or executed. All women in society are under constant surveillance; the Martha’s also by the Commander’s Wives, who, in turn, have to mind their language in front of their husbands, and literally everyone is constantly watched by “the Eyes of God” (Atwood 203), a civilian police.
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frustration at their situation; desperation at wanting to change their situation; followed by sadness when they realize they cannot; and finally either the return to their brainwashed state or another type of resolution, such as being separated from society or patiently waiting for action. Offred does not follow this pattern of emotional states, which is mostly due to the fact that she was present at the change in regime, and she remembers what she is missing. Due to this, she more or less passes over the stage of confusion; she may have experienced some confusion when the new regime was implemented and her privileges and freedoms were taken away, yet this emotion turns to anger almost immediately. She becomes mad and frustrated with her oppressors, including the Aunts, the Commander and his Wife and even the Marthas. All these people are a constant reminder to her that she, along with them, has been forced into a stereotypically female role. The change in society, which led to her becoming ‘Offred the Handmaid’ was most certainly not included in her life-goals and as Oatley stated, this was a narrowing of her assumption of her world (5), which evoked her anger. Subsequently, Offred does follow the logical next emotional step and grows very desperate to change something about her situation, but she does not know what, as she does not have much opportunity without running the significant risk of being incarcerated or hanged. Within this new society, Offred is forced to form new life goals, since there is no chance to return to her previous life.
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Otherwise you live in the moment. Which is not where I want to be.” (Atwood 153). Offred keeps her mind constantly occupied so she does not think about the traumatic events surrounding her family too much. This is a major contrast between The Handmaid’s Tale and the other two novels; in Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451 the constant occupation of mind is involuntary and awakening is rare yet somewhat desirable, whereas Offred willingly chooses to be distracted from her circumstances.
While in Brave New World, the main characters either return to their state of blissful ignorance or are shipped off to a different society, and in Fahrenheit 451 the main character patiently waits to make a difference for the next generation, there is no real resolution for Offred. Her narrative ends when she is taken away by the Eyes of God, and we are left to guess whether she has managed to escape or make any difference in her oppressive society; only in the Historical Notes of approximately a century later do we learn that Gilead has since ceased to exist. It is not specified what kind of society has replaced Gilead, and although the future society seems slightly more civilized than Gilead (Ketterer 214), it becomes fairly clear that similar sexist attitudes still exist in the future; even in the new, hopefully better society, Atwood still places great emphasis on gender inequality, which was one of her main concerns while writing this novel.
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“breakdown of all artificial barriers premised on gender/sex characteristics” (Ryan 89) was being fought for – for example, stereotypes or the question of whether submitting to sexual fantasy and desire was “heretical to feminism” (Coward 33); and the general empowerment of women and “a raised valuation of female values” (Ryan 89). Most of these issues are emphasized or mirrored in The Handmaid’s Tale; much of this gender criticism may partly be enforced by Atwood’s interesting choice for a female narrator, which “turns the traditionally masculine dystopian genre upside down” (Howells 164) – indeed, in Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451, both narratives are told from a male perspective. Presenting The Handmaid’s Tale from a female perspective simultaneously provides insight in the main character experiencing the influence of a strict political regime against a minority, and Offred’s private struggles, thus “allowing Atwood to reclaim a feminine space of personal emotions and individual identity” (Howells 164).
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Although Offred herself is individually traumatized by the experiences of her husband being shot, her daughter being taken from her, and being forced into a position she does not want to be in, most effects of Gilead’s oppressive regime operate on a collective level. All women are collectively affected when they are forced into these stereotypical female gender roles. Collectively, these forms of oppression are definitely traumatizing, since it distinctly changes the community’s sense of identity (Alexander 10). The women’s sense of community is impaired (Erikson 233) as they do not have the opportunity to draw together, as a group of people suffering the same unfortunate fate (Erikson 232), since they feel the constant surveillance of Guardians and The Eyes of God. Erikson’s notion that individual trauma causes a person to feel afraid, vulnerable and alone (232), will be experienced by most Handmaids. Thus it can be said that the women are all similarly traumatized on an individual level, but since they cannot communicate this trauma to each other, Gilead does not allow a real collective, shared trauma to exist – potentially to keep the women separated mentally as well as physically and perhaps even to avoid rebellion.
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have theorized about this as well. In the first chapter, Offred mentions a number of names of fellow Handmaids: “Alma. Janine. Dolores. Moira. June” (Atwood 14); it has been argued that all names are encountered as belonging to other women throughout the narrative but one, “June”, which could thus be the narrator’s own name – although these names could of course also be mere pseudonyms (Ketterer 210). This could mean, according to David Ketterer, that Offred chose the name “June” for herself deliberately. This name is mentioned in a different context: “[l]ove, said Aunt Lydia with distaste. Don’t let me catch you at it. No mooning and June-ing around here girls” (Atwood 232, second italics mine); her – potential – pseudonym can refer to love, which has become superfluous in Gilead’s society, thus symbolizing another small act of rebellion against deprivation of individuality and identity. Additionally, the mere act of remembering their own names can be a small act of protest by which the Handmaids can silently hang on to their individual identities.
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Handmaids are also encouraged to give up their freedom of speech. At first this seems very extreme for the characters, yet a little later on when Offred’s friend Moira escapes from the Red Center and defies all the imposed rules, the mere idea of this made the other women “dizzy” of fright (Atwood 143), showing how effective the indoctrination of the new regime works.
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Conclusion
In the previous chapters I have found that the particular kinds of individual and collective trauma and emotions presented in the Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 and The Handmaid’s Tale, and each novel’s relation to its respective contemporary social context, indicate that all three dystopian novels share similar emotions in differing circumstances; even if the trauma does not appear to be present on the surface, and how, with regard to social context, this can reflect concerns about real societies.
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continuously kept occupied by the governing forces and hardly wakes up to actually live, Offred actively tries to distract herself from her present circumstances. Whereas characters such as Montag, for example, awake from their stupor and realize that they have actual new goals, thus something to live for, they start looking towards the future, whilst Offred is the only one who lives for her past, reliving it, and hoping against hope that her daughter and husband are still alive; she has nothing in her future to work towards. I conclude that The Handmaid’s Tale, being the only novel that is oriented on its past instead of its future, is even more bleak and less hopeful in prospects than Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451.
Indeed, whereas Offred would like to go backwards, the select few who awaken from their stupor in Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451 start looking to the future – especially Montag, who, at the end, really seems to have a chance at making a difference for the next generation. He realizes this after he joins Granger and the other outsiders, which is the first time when we see a small sense of community arise. A similar situation is implied in Brave New World, when Bernard and Helmholtz hear that they will be sent away to an island; especially Helmholtz, who is open to this new opportunity, has a chance to feel part of a regular, like-minded community. Apart from these two instances, I conclude that according to Erikson and Alexander’s definitions, there is not much sense of a coherent, connected community in any of the three novels. Indeed, the communities in all three novels are much divided as a result of the individual trauma that all inhabitants suffer from, but that they either cannot communicate or are too indoctrinated to notice.
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more so. All the people are affected when they are forced into this new form of society – the community’s sense of identity is definitely changed, which is one of the features qualifying it as traumatizing – yet because they do not have the chance to draw together as they are under constant scrutiny from the Eyes of God, which prevents the Handmaids from forming one cohesive, traumatized unity. Therefore I conclude that this type of trauma is impeded from evolving to a collective level of shared suffering, which in turn intensifies the individual trauma, as the women are destined to suffer alone.
Upon closer examination of the societies in Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451, I conclude that both societies lacked visible effects of trauma, since most of the people of both communities live in a similarly flat, brainwashed state; contrary to those select few main characters, they do not have anything to live for, but merely exist. These people are in fact traumatized, but that their suffering is kept under the surface: these people display PTSD symptoms such as emotional numbing. Combined with the fact that the government is actively trying to keep their minds occupied, this results in their behaving like automatons – they have completely lost touch with their emotions. This feature makes them less human than the handful of main characters; they have no will or reason to continue living. This is another element of what makes us human: something to live for, such as family and friends; the people in both Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451 lack these matters, as they know of no family – in the ordinary sense of the word – and have the most superficial relations possible. The people in these two novels may be even more traumatized than the inhabitants of Gilead, due to their incapability of feeling any meaningful emotions.
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as they brutally interrupt the characters’ expectations of life. After applying several theoretical concepts, I distinguish a coherent pattern of emotions, which I believe can largely be applied to many novels of the dystopian genre. The pattern starts with a main character usually having a feeling of discontent; they are unhappy in their current situation and feel a strong urge to do something about it. Anger and frustration follow as they feel the growing desire to change their situation. Subsequently, most characters grow very desperate as they realize they are incapable of bringing about such a change. In the end, there is either a continued discontentedness or a rare sense of hope that change may be possible after all. I conclude that this pattern literally occurs in both Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451; however, The Handmaid’s Tale is slightly different. For example, for Offred the anger is already there at the opening of the novel, since she recalls the change to this horrible new society. Additionally, after her situation escalates, there is no resolution whatsoever, since her narrative is open-ended. Nevertheless, The Handmaid’s Tale also more or less follows the pattern, leading me to conclude that this is a general emotion sequence of confusion, anger, desperation, and sadness that can be applied to many a dystopian novel; think for instance of George Orwell’s 1984, in which Winston Smith can also be found to follow this pattern.
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resolution of Fahrenheit 451, when Montag decides to stay with Granger, and he has a minor chance at changing the future; however, this is less a happy feeling and more a resolute determination. In The Handmaid’s Tale, there is no such hope for change; the only times these women feel hope is when they might be pregnant, as this will mean their salvation of not being sent to the Colonies. Yet in this situation, there is also no speaking of a ‘happy hope’ – here it is likewise a sort of desperate determination to save themselves, although being a successful Handmaid is also not a coveted role. I believe that this lack of hope and happiness in all three novels is connected to the aforementioned pattern of emotions. I conclude that, since in most novels there does not occur a proper resolution for the better, happiness cannot bloom – which, I believe, can also be applied to many novels of the same genre.
Furthermore, I conclude that this pattern of emotions is what inherently links the presented trauma to the social context. The dystopian context of each respective novel is what causes the societies or the main characters to be traumatized to a higher or lower extent. This trauma brings about a specific set of emotions felt by the characters almost without exception. However, other characters, such as most of the people of the societies in Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451, have gone completely numb and are incapable of feeling meaningful emotions, which is caused by their social circumstances. In other words, these elements cannot be regarded as separate matters in these three novels; when considering trauma, emotions and social context will automatically have to be considered as well, and vice versa.
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