Begining Relationship and Effects of Technology

In the beginning, Offred starts to slowly lose her identity. This isn’t her real name and I am thinking the handmaid’s are named after their Commanders. Her credit card, which she uses all the time, stops working. The new government froze her account because they made a new law that women couldn’t work or own property. This is the first of many withdrawn access to technology. With no job, she and her family decide to run away, but they were caught and split up. She ended up at several different houses in order to reproduce for the Commanders and their wives. For the first few years, she lets them rule her and doesn’t fight back. The only access she does receive of technology is the television. On rare occasion, she is allowed to watch the news. This seems to happen in order for her and the other handmaid’s to see that there is no way out. The new government uses the media and television to show the handmaid’s and other weak people of the society that you can’t try to go against them or you will be hanged. An incident that happens on the way to go shopping for the household’s meals involved cameras. Tourists from Japan wanted to take pictures of Offred and Ofglen, her partner, but they are not allowed to take pictures as if this is an offense to the handmaids. All of these encounters with technology are used to suppress Offred and the other handmaid’s into being subservient to the new government.