In Chapter 32 of The Handmaid's Tale, we get a sort of explanation from the Commander for the reasons behind Gilead's society having been designed the way it is. He explains that Gilead has given meaning back to men's lives, and that while this has come at the expense of women's rights, the Commander lays out his belief that better never means better for everyone and means worse for some. As a bonus, he adds in the omelette analogy, which is largely trying to convey the same concept by saying that some "eggs" need to be sacrificed for the greater good (the omelette).
I hold the position that having a utopia is practically impossible, largely due to people having differing definitions of what is good. I think that if you hold this position, which doesn't seem to be a super uncommon one, you also likely agree with the statement that better pretty much never means better for everyone, as one person's happiness is often at another's expense. This is different from saying that happiness is a zero-sum game. Even something that would overwhelmingly benefit more people than it would hurt, such as the overthrow of an oppressive regime, hurts the select few in charge of the regime. While we can accept the Commander's premise that the betterment of society will involve some people being worse off, it would seem that the goal of any well-meaning society should be to maximize the "better" and minimize the "worse", whatever that means (definitely open to interpretation).
We know that Gilead is not coming close to doing this, as basically every character we meet in the book is miserable. But if we look at most societies whether throughout history or in literature, we would also be hard pressed to find any society coming close to doing this (though most come closer than Gilead). This is because of another reason explaining why utopia is such an unfeasible concept, which is the tendency of people to be either selfish or to look out for a group of people that doesn't include everyone. The more people there are within a society that have an agenda above the best interests of all people, the further that society will stray from from maximizing the "better" and minimizing the "worse". In The Handmaid's Tale, the Commander plainly tells us that the architects of Gilead's society were more than willing to sacrifice women's rights for the sake of giving men meaning back to their lives, and this inability to see one group's humanity as at the level of another group makes Gilead pretty hellish.
The Commander is being selfish and callous to Offred's situation during this conversation, but he isn't wrong about better never meaning better for everyone, which exemplifies the impossibility of utopias.
- Tim Cho
I agree with you that Utopias are impossible. Perfection, in general, is unattainable. I think you make an important point in this point. There are some people that are acclimated to such a ridiculously high standard of living that setting everyone to “equal standards” would undoubtedly lower theirs. The commanders comments on bettering men’s lives at the expense of women’s is somewhat valid. However, I feel like Gilead has gone way too far in that aspect as women are much too oppressed to justify their suffering for making someone’s life better.
ReplyDeleteI also believe that utopias are impossible. I think you'd need to somehow "train" out bad human qualities like greed. I agree that a well-meaning society would try to maximize the amount of people that were living better. Gilead strays far from that. Even though they say that they sacrificed women's rights for men's, it seems like a lot of men still aren't happy and basically all of the women aren't either. Gilead doesn't seem to be really trying to create a utopia.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with your point that utopias are impossible and that Gilead is far from one. Although I agree with you that neither the men or the women of Gilead are truly happy, I think a big difference is that the men (or at least the rich men) are "allowed" to do things that only benefit their happiness, like Jezebel's, where women aren't allowed to really do anything that makes them happier.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with your statement that utopias are practically impossible. I definitely understand the Commander's argument explaining the necessary trade off of better and worse. The Republic of Gilead is especially worse for so many people because of the people at the top who refuses to place interests for all the people. Brave New World is also similar in that the World Controller grants no power to the majority of people.
ReplyDeleteYour post raises the question of what exactly is the greater good of Gilead? As you pointed out, pretty much everyone is miserable. So who exactly is benefiting from this world order? It doesn't exactly seem like the commander is entirely happy in the system and obviously not Offred or Serena Joy. If the metric for a better society is to minimize the bad and maximize the good, I think Gilead is doing very poorly. Why hasn't anything been changed though?
ReplyDeleteAlbert,
DeleteTo me, Gilead seems to be a direct and reactionary response to underpopulation. Although they try to use religion and happiness as a justification, the underlying goal of the society is to produce as many people as people. On those grounds, it is okay for everybody to be unhappy as long as the society meets the end goal.
Hey that's an interesting point. I guess it would make more sense if we were able to understand the severity of underpopulation before the remake of Gilead. Perhaps the public sentiment is not so much that this is an overall not-so-happy society, but one that is necessary to keeping the society running. Maybe that's why there hasn't been any push to change the world order.
DeleteI totally agree that better never means better for everyone. In general, the more decisions that are made, the more upset people will become so it's practically impossible to please everyone. The problem with the Republic of Gilead, is that their society pleases nobody and the higher ups definitely could have done a better job when creating their society. At least they could have considered some form of happiness for their citizens.
ReplyDeleteGood points. I just can't get past the egg analogy. for some reason it seems sort of comedic and such a strange choice for me.
ReplyDeleteGreat analysis. A utopia is trying to reach perfection, but we as humans can never be perfect and aren't all the same. We don't think the same way and often times differ and argue on a lot of points. But as you said, I think the closest we can get to a utopia is "to maximize the 'better' and minimize the 'worse'". And Gilead already oppresses 90% of its population, so they could do a lot better.
ReplyDeleteI agree. The only problem with maximizing the better and minimizing the worse is that people disagree over what is better and what is worse.
DeleteUtopias are impossible to attain because they cannot cater to everyone's idea of 'good'. Gilead is definitely far from one, because women were so oppressed and abused that it does not justify the 'greater good' explanation. DJ raised a good point that Gilead is a response to severe underpopulation, but even so, I wonder if it was really necessary to dehumanize women to achieve the desired population goal?
ReplyDeleteI agree, better is not better for everyone. You can see this in our own American Society. Donald Trump tries to make society best for white males, but this obviously isn’t better for EVERYONE. People only care when their lives are the ones being bettered.
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree. Utopias are impossible in real life because everyone's definition of happiness is different. In Gilead's case, it caters to a select few individuals who seem to promote the 'happiness of the society' or something like that.
ReplyDeleteThere’s no way to create a utopia unless everyone’s values are considered and upheld, which is impossible since people have contrasting opinions on many issues. Even though a utopia is impossible, as I was reading The Handmaid's Tale, I couldn’t imagine what person would have created the Gileadean society out of an attempt to create a utopia. In addition, after seeing that even the top commanders were miserable, why wasn’t anything drastically changed? It seems that an increased birth rate was their only criterion for their utopia.
ReplyDeleteVery true. I was a little confused about why make a society like Gilead in the first place? It doesn't seem like a Utopia at all -- no one is happy and everyone is forced to do things they don't want to do. I agree that what the commander said was true, it is always good to try and help improve society, but it is impossible to make it so that everyone is happy.
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