Homo Ludens in Gilead: the Handmaid’s Tale Revisited

This paper aims at looking into the concept of play and its manifestations in language and art in margaret atwood’s dystopian novel the handmaid’s tale by utilizing the theories of johan huizinga, who, in his study homo ludens, argues that civilization itself is an outgrowth of play. by examining the ways play subverts oppressive strategies, it offers a larger view of the disarming and overpowering potential of the ingenious and humorous usage of language and exercise of art as extensions of play. the handmaid’s tale is narrated by a woman whose function is reduced to the reproductive capacity of her body. every individual in this society has their assigned places and roles, and any deviation from them is punishable by no less than death. for the authorities of the republic of gilead committed themselves to return to a biblically ordained order in which the minimum suffices and there is no place for any forms of excess. however, as atwood demonstrates, life reduced to biological necessities alone goes against life itself. for that reason, gileadean regime inadvertently gives rise to subversive acts not only from the oppressed but from the oppressors themselves. under such severe oppression, subversion asumes a shape that at first sight appears harmless: the human propensity for play. as opposed to the stipulated order in gilead in which everything is defined by function, play is based on excess, a surplus of need and necessity. moreover, based on the voluntary participation of all participants, it is an equalizing arena in which one player can only be defeated by a more ingenious one. therefore, in this paper play will be examined as a platform on which socially-constructed categories based on power structures are fundamentally rejected.