Analysis of Complicity in The Handmaid's Tale

Surviving and Bearing Gilead

Complicity in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

The Problem of Binary Morality

<ul><li style='margin-bottom:20px'><strong>Traditional Readings:</strong> Offred as Victim vs. Rebel (Good vs. Evil).</li><li style='margin-bottom:20px'><strong>The Reality:</strong> Offred mostly complies, adapts, and benefits from small privileges.</li><li style='margin-bottom:20px'><strong>The Contrast:</strong> Moira (rebellion) vs. Offred (caution/inward-focus).</li><li style='margin-bottom:20px'><strong>Goal:</strong> Survival, not the downfall of Gilead.</li></ul>

Defining Complicity: Legal & Intentional

<h3 style='color:#b71c1c; font-size:32px;'>Legal Definition (18 U.S. Code § 2)</h3><p>Whoever aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures the commission of an offense.</p><p><em>Implication: Requires agency/choice.</em></p>

<h3 style='color:#b71c1c; font-size:32px;'>Philosophical Approaches</h3><p><strong>Vogler:</strong> Indirect involvement in wrongdoing that could be avoided by adhering to principles.</p><p><strong>Gardner (2007):</strong> Requires a causal contribution.</p><p><em>Limitation: Difficult to apply under structural coercion/totalitarianism.</em></p>

Structural Complicity: Hannah Arendt

"Whoever participates in public life at all is implicated in one way or another in the deeds of the regime as a whole."

<ul><li>Moral responsibility persists even when legal systems collapse.</li><li>Structural Responsibility (Young/Mihai): Complicity shaped by social conditions.</li><li>Resistance and complicity exist on a <strong>continuum</strong>, not a binary.</li></ul>

Proposed Heuristic: Functions of Complicity

Analyzing what functions complicit acts serve for Offred, rather than assigning moral guilt.

<strong>1. Complicity to Survive</strong><br>Acts necessary to remain alive (Basic conformity, Rituals).

<strong>2. Complicity to Endure</strong><br>Making life bearable (Privileges, Relationships, Psychological escape).

<strong>3. Participatory Complicity</strong><br>Active participation in harm; ambiguous utility (Particicution, Public shaming).

1. Complicity to Survive

<p style='margin-bottom:25px;'>Directly linked to continued existence. Alternative is death/colonies.</p><ul><li>Accepting imposed name ('Of-Fred').</li><li>The Ceremony: 'Nothing is going on here that I haven’t signed up for.'</li><li>Framing non-resistance as choice.</li></ul>

"Kissing is forbidden between us. This makes it bearable."

2. Complicity to Endure: The Commander

<ul><li>Moves beyond structural role to personal interaction.</li><li>Exchange of power/privilege for 'normalcy'.</li><li>Ignoring the source of power: 'I want to know what he wants.'</li></ul>

"This is freedom, an eyeblink of it... This is like being on a date."

2. Complicity to Endure: Nick

<p><strong>Shift in motivation:</strong> From coerced survival (Serena's order) to emotional safety.</p><p>The relationship becomes a 'Cave'—an escape from reality that drains rebelliousness.</p><p>Comfort leads to stasis: <em>'I have made a life for myself here.'</em></p>

"I no longer want to leave, escape, cross the border to freedom. I want to be here... where I can get at him."

Rejecting Resistance: Ofglen & Mayday

<ul><li>Active decision to ignore resistance options.</li><li><strong>'The fall was a fall from innocence to knowledge.'</strong></li><li>Values personal safety/endurance over collective action.</li><li>Refusal to spy on the Commander: 'I’d be no good at that.'</li></ul>

CONTENT WARNING: Discussions of violence and ritual abuse.

3. Participatory Complicity

<strong>Janine’s Testimony</strong><br>Instruction to blame the victim.<br><em>'We meant it, which is the bad part.'</em><br>Internalized guilt involves the self in the abuse.

<strong>The Particicution</strong><br>Violence as 'freedom' and emotional release.<br><em>'There is bloodlust; I want to tear, gouge, rend.'</em><br>Ambiguous function: Does not aid survival, but helps release tension to endure.

Conclusion: Ambiguity as Human Reality

<ul><li>Offred stands on a continuum between resistance and complicity.</li><li>'Complicity' functions as a survival mechanism, not just a moral failing.</li><li>The danger of 'making a life' in dystopia: Normalization leads to implication.</li><li>Final question: Does surviving justify the cost of bearing Gilead?</li></ul>