Colors of Gilead : Color-coding as a Means of Power in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments

Abstract

Colors are an integral part of how we perceive the world. Our eyes detect colors automatically, which makes them efficient communicative devices. If you see a text, you can decide not to read it. Contrastingly, if you see a color, you have already perceived it and connected it to your previous knowledge about the functions and meanings it has. A systematic use of colors can therefore act as a powerful tool for subjugation, which is what I found in Margaret Atwood’s novels The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and The Testaments (2019). In this thesis I study how the systematic use of colors turns into color-coding that labels, distinguishes, and controls people and entities in the fictional Republic of Gilead. Together with other suppressive and restrictive policies, color-coding is a vital part in the creation, execution, and maintenance of theocratic power structures. I examine Gilead’s most important colors and their meanings through Western connotations and explain how these colors are used for color-coding in these novels. Finally, I examine how protagonists with different social statuses perceive the color-coding and analyze how the level of suppression applied to them affects their perspectives. Despite the dystopian echoes these novels have, the main events have a historical background. Together with the interconnectedness of the color palette and the subjugated groups this offers a rich ground for further research, which I propose in the last section.