Why Does The Handmaids Tell The Value Of Title

Most connections between people begin with learning the other person’s name. When exchanging names doesn’t occur then it usually means that either one or both of the people want to keep things impersonal. Keeping things impersonal can have its advantages but it can also create risks. Names make a connection and without that connection people become objects, titles, or ideas.
When a person is given a title in place of a name they become the title instead of a person. In The Handmaids Tell this happens to almost everyone. Even the main character never reveals her real name, but instead she only goes by her title, Offred (Atwood 305). Going by titles allows the world they live in to operate, because it limits the value that people would place upon one another if they formed a personal relationship. The titles allow everyone to become their title and to be valued as that title.. Offred realizes the true power of a name and she doesn’t share it with anyone besides Nick (Atwood280). She doesn’t even let the reader know her name. This shows that she doesn’t want a personal relationship with anyone besides Nick. She allows to be damaged,
It transfer the source of the emotion from the connection between the to people to a persons opinion of the object or idea that the other person has become. For example the Guardian accused of rape became an “It” (Atwood 280). He became rape itself. The handmaids took out their anger and emptied their emotion onto this man that had ceased to be a man, but instead he was an idea that they saw as evil. He was dehumanized and because of that it was easier for the handmaids to do what they did, because they did not see his value as a human. Without that value he was reduced to the value of the idea he had become. What happened to him shows one extreme that can occur when a person is no longer treated as a