In The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and Psychosis 4:48 by Sarah Kane, both protagonists are trapped in a way in which they cannot be heard, then monologue internally in the form of writings that lead instead of simply addressing an audience. Throughout this analysis, the protagonist of 4:48 Psychosis will be called "Protagonist" and will use he/her pronouns. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In The Handmaid's Tale, Offred is a handmaid, or a legally enforced concubine of the Commander. The Commander's wife is unable to bear children, but since Offred had an unnamed daughter, she is fertile and is forced to have sex with the Commander to have a child with him. Repopulation seems to be important to this dystopian regime, so Offred's life is heavily regulated, firstly to protect her from harm, secondly to keep her subservient to the regime. As a character, Offred is nostalgic, often "pausing" the narrative to talk about her childhood and previous life. There is little significance to the change between the narrative's past and present, perhaps reflecting a confusion Offred feels about the regime, but nowhere in the narrative does Offred explicitly question the regime, making it unlikely that this interpretation was the one expected. . Alternatively, it reflects how loosely put together the narrative is, as the narrative is a transcript of Offred's life in Gilead found on some tapes. Here, we gain freedom from Offred's boredom in her past. Offred is bored, leading a mostly empty life sitting in her room waiting for a ceremony or her daily chores. This boredom may be what leads to his nostalgic "habits"; he has nothing better to do. He extends simple things like searching his room because he "wanted to make it last." He delights in small pleasures, such as gossiping and eavesdropping on the Marthas, or using butter to try to keep his skin soft. It also has a dark and dry humor, just like Protagonist. However, the Protagonist had a much more frank and morbidly sarcastic humor, describing it herself as "gallows... freshly dug grave humor". Both women achieve freedom from repetitive ways of living with humorous comments to each other to avoid boredom and make aspects of their lives more enjoyable. In 4:48 Psychosis, the protagonist talks to a therapist on multiple occasions, takes medications and suffers from side effects, and takes part in destructive behaviors such as alcoholism and self-harm. The narrative is very vague, with no captions, indication of who is speaking, or even character names, leaving the entire work completely open to interpretation. Because writer Kane committed suicide between the publication and first production of 4:48 Psychosis, this is commonly interpreted as Kane's suicide, although her family and friends argue that this should not be the case and critics argue that assuming that the The work is a suicide note leaves the reader overlooked Kane's lyricism. The protagonist suffers from an unnamed mental disorder, mostly suggested as depression by the drugs he takes; “sertraline… lofepramine… citalopram… venlafaxine… seroxat”. The show is choppy and disorganized much like The Handmaid's Tale, perhaps reflecting how abstract and scattered the protagonist's mind is, caused by the disorder or the range of medications he takes. This also reflects how disorganized human consciousness is, as it often struggles tostay focused on one thought, especially when under the influence of drugs. The regime of Gilead in The Handmaid's Tale is imposed by the Eyes. Offred and her walking companion Ofglen, since the Handmaids are not allowed to go out alone, see someone attacked and arrested by the Eyes, who ties the arrested man in the cell.back of a black van as a kidnapping. When the Eyes go to arrest Oglen for taking part in the Mayday movement, Diglen hangs herself to escape them. Ultimately, Offred is arrested by the Eyes' black van, but whether it is the Eyes or the Mayday movement is left open to interpretation. The regime is also imposed by the Handmaids who are resocialized by the Aunts in the Rachel and Leah Institute, nicknamed the Red Center. They are kept in line mainly by cattle prods hanging from their aunts' hips, giving a direct comparison between the women and the cattle. The aunts also use psychological punishment, Aunt Lydia's favorite victim seems to be Janine, who encourages the other handmaids to sing that Janine's rape was "her fault, her fault...teach her a lesson, teach her a lesson" and not it will. allow her to use the bathroom as long as she doesn't get dirty in front of the other Handmaids. Moira, a feminist lesbian friend of Offred's from before, receives the main physical punishment presented; after her first escape attempt, her feet are whipped until she can no longer stand. After this resocialization, the Handmaids are often presented with death to scare them and keep them in line, as "a reminder to [them]" (said by the second Ofglen). There are bodies hanging on the Wall in public view, with placards around their necks to show what their crime was, there are live hangings at Prayvaganza where spectators are forced to pull a rope to show their support for the regime and the killing regime deviants, and the Handmaids are encouraged to beat a man to death while being told he is a rapist. This regular violence is used to scare the public into disobeying the regime, depriving them of their freedom. This fear is what prevents Offred from speaking, leaving her with only her internal monologue with which to express her thoughts. The nature of captivity is very obvious and explicit in The Handmaid's Tale, but in 4:48 Psychosis the nature of captivity is much more abstract. . The protagonist's imprisonment is not physical and some argue that it is entirely mental. The protagonist understands that she has a mental disorder, but her imprisonment is that she cannot get help. He feels that doctors generally don't help, they just “write it down… [and] attempt a sympathetic murmur.” She is “stuck by that psychiatric voice of reason that tells her that there is an objective reality in which [her] body and mind are one.” This leaves her the freedom to express her monologue externally, but this is useless. He also has a resentment towards the use of drugs to 'balance' the chemicals in his brain to treat his depression, referring to it as "[turning off] the higher functions of [his] brain" and "chemical cures for the congenital anguish". It could be argued that the Protagonist's escape, her own conscience, is also her own entrapment. This entrapment has been in place since birth, the Protagonist describes it as "congenital anguish", congenital being defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as an adjective meaning "existing from birth". At the same time, it has been shown that depression is caused by one chemical imbalance in the brain and not simply from "feeling down" as is commonly believed. This raises the question of whether there really is a "cure" and, by extension, a "freedom" from the disorder. However, in The Handmaid's Tale, Offred has memories of the transition to the Gilead regime, starting with the lossof work and the freezing of her virtual money and passed on to her husband. She attempts to escape but is captured and given a "choice"; to be sent to the Red Center or to be sent to the Colonies to clean up nuclear waste. The government tries to argue that the Handmaids made the choice to be Handmaids, but most readers and critics argue that this choice is too narrow to be considered a "choice", as very few people would choose to be literally worked to death. death. in the Colonies. The only character of interest in the Colonies is that of Offredmother, and it is never mentioned whether the mother was given a choice in the matter, but since she was a feminist, and a radical one at that, the reader can assume that she was labeled Non-woman and sent to the world. Colonies without choice. There doesn't seem to be much chance of physical freedom from Gilead, leading Offred to exercise the only power she has, the power to think, in her constant internal monologue. Offred's speech in The Handmaid's Tale is very limited and she is only allowed to use a few select phrases when greeting people she can speak to. The few times he speaks freely are all illegal situations; in the Commander's office, to the first Diglen during their walks and to Moira in the bathroom. He's comfortable talking to Moira despite the illegality of it, probably because of the history they share. At first he is afraid to talk to Diglen and the Commander, for fear of repercussions. However, as she gets to know the Commander, she loses her fear and is able to act more comfortable around him and speak to him in a flat and flippant manner, especially after finding out about one of Offred before committing suicide. He demands to "know... everything there is to know", but this is not included in the novel, leaving the question of whether Offred left it out, Professor Pieixoto cut it, or the Commander didn't tell him. If it were Offred, questions are raised about whether she has the freedom in her internal monologue to express what she wants. If it was Professor Pieixoto, then Offred's freedom of internal monologue was taken away from her after the collapse of Gilead as she is now being censored by someone with access to her monologue. 4:48 psychosis is almost the downside; The protagonist is free, even encouraged to speak, but he is not listened to. She states that doctors “ask questions, they put words in her mouth”. There's an entire scene where someone, suggested as her therapist, asks her if cutting relieved the tension, repeating the question even after she answers "No," then says "A lot of people [cut]. It relieves the tension." ”, clearly demonstrating that they hadn't listened to her at all. Therapist later tells the Protagonist "No ifs or buts", to which the Protagonist replies "I didn't say ifs or buts, I said no". lack of listening, but also a distortion of the words of the Protagonist; the doctor presented is no different from the doctors mentioned, but since this is useless he retreats into the internal monologue first-person perspective, with Offred often explicitly interrupting the narrative, making him very self-conscious More than once he says that "I'd like to believe this is a story [he's] telling" "it's... a story [he's] telling." telling in his head" and once refers to the reader as You, comparing a story to a letter to You because "you don't just tell a story to yourself. There's always someone else." This, especially when combined with the instability, jumps in time and interruptions and gaps in the narrative, makes the narrative read almost like a stream of consciousness, jumping between thoughts and memories without no apparent reasoning.The play 4:48 Psychosis could be read almost as the protagonist's soliloquy, interrupted by scenes in which the protagonist speaks to the doctor. In this interpretation, the work could be presented as self-conscious. However, in most interpretations, she is not seen as self-conscious as the Protagonist never mentions being aware of her character's transcription or even openness; it's more as if the reader has been transported into the protagonist's mind than as if the protagonist has emptied his mind onto paper for the reader. In both texts, the work is read as if reading someone's mind, making it explicitly internal, but since the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines monologue as a soliloquy or "a conversation that monopolizes a long speech", it can be argued thatonly The Handmaid's Tale is a monologue, as 4:48 psychosis is interrupted by conversations with her therapists. Whether or not "freedom" is achieved in literary works is very open to interpretation, especially when considering the vague endings of both works. As Professor Pieixoto writes in The Handmaid's Tale Historical Notes, there is no way to know for sure what happened to Offred after the end of the tape, a major data destruction early in the Gilead period that caused Pieixoto and her partner had difficulty tracking down who Offred and the other characters supposedly were. One interpretation is that Offred was "smuggled across the Gilead border into...Canada, and from there made her way to England." Others may interpret this as her having actually been arrested by the Eyes due to her ties to the Mayday movement. If one follows the previous more optimistic interpretation, Offred is therefore the only character to achieve her freedom. Moira is the only other character to actually try, twice. However, this only ends with his admission to Jezebel, a brothel for commanders and other high-class men. The only other escape route offered is suicide, committed by the first Ofglen and one of the former Offreds, both by hanging themselves. Offred states that "there were incidents" in the early period of Gilead, purported to be multiple Handmaid suicides, which led to measures being taken to ensure that the Handmaids could not harm themselves, including removing all glass from their rooms, forbidding them to use razors or knives. and dismantling the chandeliers. Atwood's use of Professor Pieixoto at the end of her novel raises questions about Offred's reliability as a narrator, as Pieixoto said she had to guess what order the tapes were supposed to be in and there may have been errors due to her accent, and he may have made other changes to the transcript, depriving Offred of her freedom by censoring and/or editing the monologue she produced. In 4:48 Psychosis, the obvious 'freedom' would be to find a cure for the protagonist's disorder, but as already made clear there may not actually be a 'cure', and if there is there is no mention of the fact that the protagonist take, then it can be argued that not only does the protagonist not achieve freedom, but there is no freedom to be achieved. Morbidly, the final phrase “please open the curtains” can be interpreted as the death of the protagonist, the opening of the curtains being a metaphor for death perhaps linked to the convention of seeing a light when one dies. There are very few other interpretations, other than a cry for help left hanging, for lack of a better phrase, with no clear recipient. It has been interpreted even by the most religious readers as a cry for the return of Christ as it was written in Advent. But the general consensus seems to be, however much the interpretation may be.