In her 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, author Margaret Atwood created a chilling vision of the future that she calls “speculative fiction”. The story is set in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian and deeply religious society that has violently overthrown the United States government. Faced with a catastrophic decline in birth rates due to pollution and disease, this new regime has built its entire social structure around one goal: controlling reproduction. To do this, it has stripped women of all rights and created a class of fertile women known as Handmaids, whose only purpose is to bear children for the ruling class. Gilead is more than just a fictional setting; it is a powerful symbol, a warning constructed from layers of meaning. By exploring the symbols that define this dark world—from its ironic name and color-coded society to its twisted use of religion—we can understand what Gilead truly represents.
Gilead symbolizes a terrifying warning against the dangers of religious extremism combined with absolute political power. It represents the most extreme form of patriarchal oppression, a society where women are stripped of their names, their jobs, and their freedom, and their bodies are treated as nothing more than political tools for the state. Their individuality is systematically destroyed to make them obedient servants of the regime. Ultimately, Gilead is a symbol of how a society, in a desperate search for order and a solution to a crisis, can sacrifice freedom, humanity, and love, showing how easily the world we know can slide into tyranny.
The Irony of a Name: Healing and Sickness in “Gilead”
The name of the new republic, “Gilead,” is the first and most powerful symbol in the story, and its meaning is deeply ironic. In the Bible’s Old Testament, Gilead was a real region east of the Jordan River known for its fertile lands, prosperity, and a famous healing ointment called the “balm of Gilead”. This balm became a powerful metaphor for both physical and spiritual healing. The prophet Jeremiah famously asked, “Is there no balm in Gilead?” as a poetic cry for hope and restoration for a society that was spiritually sick.
Atwood’s choice of this name is a deliberate and bitter twist. The Republic of Gilead, despite its name, offers no healing or restoration. It is a society that is spiritually sick, built on a foundation of fear, violence, and the ritualized rape of women. The regime was created to “cure” the problem of infertility, but in doing so, it created a world that is emotionally and morally empty. The leaders of Gilead chose the name to project an image of purity, strength, and a return to a blessed, fertile past, just as the Bible describes the ancient land. However, the reality is a corrupt and polluted dystopia.
This choice of name is not just ironic; it is a calculated act of propaganda. Totalitarian governments often use positive and hopeful language to hide their brutal intentions, much like the “Newspeak” in George Orwell’s novel 1984. The founders of Gilead needed to justify their violent takeover of the country. By choosing a name associated with biblical healing and God’s blessings, they created a powerful brand that made their actions seem righteous and necessary. The name “Gilead” itself symbolizes the fundamental lie at the heart of the regime: it promises to heal a dying world but instead poisons it with oppression.
A Society Dressed in Meaning: The Symbolism of Color
In Gilead, a person’s place in society is instantly recognizable by the color of their clothes. This strict, color-coded system is a powerful tool of control, especially for women. It strips them of their individuality and reduces them to a single function, making them symbols of their role rather than unique people.
The Red of the Handmaid: A Contradictory Symbol
The most striking color in Gilead is the deep red worn by the Handmaids. This color has several layers of meaning.
- Fertility: First and foremost, red symbolizes fertility. It is the color of the blood of the menstrual cycle and of childbirth, a constant reminder of the Handmaids’ one and only purpose: to have babies. As the narrator Offred says, they are seen as “two-legged wombs”.
- Sin: At the same time, red has long been a symbol of sexual sin. It recalls the scarlet letter worn by Hester Prynne in the story of Puritan America, a woman punished for adultery. This reflects the Handmaids’ strange and contradictory position. They are performing what the state calls a sacred duty, but they are also forced into a form of adultery with their married Commanders, a fact that causes the Wives to hate them.
- Powerlessness: Historically, red was a color of power and wealth, worn by kings, cardinals, and other powerful men. In Gilead, this symbolism is turned completely upside down. The state understands the power of symbols. By forcing the Handmaids—the most controlled and powerless group in society—to wear red, the regime performs a constant, public act of domination. It visually demonstrates its ability to take a symbol of male authority and transform it into a brand for female servitude. The red uniform, therefore, doesn’t just symbolize the Handmaid’s role; it symbolizes the regime’s absolute power to define and control reality itself.
The Blue of the Wife: Purity and Power
The Wives of the Commanders wear blue. This color is traditionally associated with the Virgin Mary in Christian art, symbolizing the Wives’ high status as the pure, respected, but infertile matriarchs of their households. However, the cool blue also suggests sadness and coldness, reflecting the miserable and often powerless lives of women like Serena Joy, who helped create the system that now traps them in a domestic prison.
The Green of the Martha: Service and the Domestic Sphere
Marthas, who work as cooks and housekeepers, wear a dull, modest green. This color connects them to the world of domestic service. Their name is also a direct biblical reference to Martha, the sister who served Jesus while her sister Mary sat and listened to his teachings, reinforcing their role as workers.
The Drab Colors of Control and Non-Existence
Other colors in Gilead are used to signify authority or a complete lack of status.
- The Aunts, who train and discipline the Handmaids, wear a drab, military-like brown, reflecting their role as enforcers of the regime’s harsh rules.
- The Commanders wear black, a color that symbolizes their ultimate power, authority, and their severe, almost priest-like status in this religious society.
- The Unwomen, who are sent to die in the toxic Colonies, wear gray. This color symbolizes their complete lack of status, their invisibility to society, and the slow decay of their bodies.
Table: Gilead’s Color Code
This table summarizes the color-coded social structure for women in Gilead.
| Social Class | Color | Symbolic Meaning |
| Commanders | Black | Authority, Power, Clergy, Fear |
| Wives | Blue | Purity (Virgin Mary), High Status, Sadness |
| Handmaids | Red | Fertility, Menstrual Blood, Childbirth, Sexual Sin, Powerlessness |
| Aunts | Brown | Drab Authority, Complicity, Military-like Control |
| Marthas | Green | Service, Domesticity, Envy |
| Unwomen | Gray | Invisibility, Decay, Social Death |
The Weaponized Word: Religion as the Foundation of Control
Gilead is a theocracy, a government where the church and the state are the same thing. Its entire system of power is built on a twisted and selective reading of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament.
The Rachel and Leah Story: Justifying Sexual Slavery
The main justification for the Handmaid system comes from a story in the book of Genesis. In Genesis 30:1-3, a woman named Rachel is unable to have children with her husband, Jacob. In her desperation, she gives her servant, Bilhah, to Jacob so that Bilhah can have a child in her place. Gilead takes this ancient story and uses it as a literal blueprint for its society. This biblical passage is used to justify the “Ceremony,” a monthly ritual of state-sanctioned rape where a Commander has sex with a Handmaid while she lies in the lap of his wife. To make sure the Handmaids accept this role, they are brainwashed at training centers named after the biblical figures, called “Rachel and Leah Centers”.
This is a key example of how the regime manipulates religion. The Bible is kept locked away, and only the Commanders are allowed to read from it during official ceremonies. This prevents anyone, especially women, from reading the text for themselves and questioning the regime’s interpretation. The leaders of Gilead edit, twist, and selectively quote passages to make their cruel laws seem like the will of God.
Language as Law: Greetings, Shops, and Censorship
Religious language is woven into every part of daily life in Gilead, constantly reinforcing the government’s control. Normal conversations are replaced with scripted greetings taken from the Bible, like “Blessed be the fruit” and “Under His eye”. Even the names of shops are biblical, such as “Milk and Honey” or “All Flesh,” though these phrases are often twisted from their original meaning. This creates a world where every word and every sign reinforces the state’s ideology. Gilead also creates its own special vocabulary, with words like “Unwomen” (for women who are considered useless), “Salvagings” (for public executions), and “Particicution” (where Handmaids are encouraged to kill a man as a group). This use of language to control thought is a classic tool of dystopian societies, similar to the “Newspeak” in 1984. By controlling language, Gilead attempts to control reality itself.
The regime’s use of religion serves an even darker purpose: it is a tool to shut down human empathy and make people accept horrible things. The actions required by the state, like the Ceremony, are cruel and dehumanizing. For the society to work, people must find a way to participate without being destroyed by guilt. By framing everything as a sacred, biblical duty, the regime elevates abuse to the level of religious ritual. This allows characters to become complicit, or involved, in their own oppression or the oppression of others because they are told it is “God’s will.” Offred herself shows this when she thinks about the Ceremony and refuses to call it “rape,” because under the new rules, it is something she has “signed up for”. The most dangerous function of Gilead’s religion is that it short-circuits people’s natural sense of right and wrong, turning ordinary citizens into willing participants in a brutal system.
The Architecture of Fear: Symbols of State Surveillance
Gilead maintains its power not just through religion, but through constant fear. The society is filled with symbols designed to remind citizens that they are always being watched.
“Under His Eye”: The All-Seeing State
The secret police in Gilead are called the “Eyes of God,” or simply the “Eyes”. Their symbol, a winged eye, is painted everywhere. This name and symbol are designed to merge the idea of God’s divine watchfulness with the reality of state surveillance. In Gilead, there is no difference between being watched by God and being watched by the government. This creates an atmosphere of intense paranoia, where any neighbor, shopkeeper, or even another Handmaid could be an Eye. The common greeting, “Under His eye,” is not a comforting blessing but a constant, chilling reminder that every move is being monitored.
The Wall: A Brutal Reminder of Disobedience
The Wall, an old brick wall in the center of town, is where the bodies of executed traitors are put on public display. These public executions, called “Salvagings,” are given religious-sounding names, but they are acts of political terror designed to crush any thought of rebellion. The Wall serves as a constant, silent warning to all citizens of the brutal consequences of disobedience.
Inverting Knowledge: The Symbolism of Harvard
In a powerful symbolic act, the Gilead regime has transformed Harvard University—once a world-famous symbol of knowledge, truth, and free thought—into a secret police headquarters and execution center. Bodies hang from the Wall that runs around the old university, and mass executions take place in Harvard Yard. This transformation symbolizes the complete reversal of values in Gilead. A place that was created for enlightenment and learning has become a center of torture and oppression, physically demonstrating the regime’s war on knowledge and truth.
A Ghost of the Past: The Palimpsest of History
Gilead is a society that tries to erase the past, but the memory of the world before still haunts its citizens and its landscape.
Cambridge and the Puritan Link
The main setting of the novel is Cambridge, Massachusetts. Atwood chose this location deliberately because it was a center of the strict and intolerant Puritan society of 17th-century America. By setting her story there, Atwood draws a direct historical line from America’s own past of religious extremism to the fictional world of Gilead. She suggests that the foundations for a society like Gilead are not so foreign, but are already present in American history and culture.
Gilead as a Palimpsest
Offred often thinks of her world as a “palimpsest.” A palimpsest is an old piece of parchment that has been scraped clean so it can be reused, but where faint traces of the original writing still remain underneath. This is a powerful symbol for all of Gilead. The new, brutal world of Gilead has been written over the top of the old United States, but it has not been able to completely erase it. Remnants of the past are everywhere—in old buildings, in half-forgotten words, and most importantly, in the memories of people like Offred.
This idea of the palimpsest is not just about loss; it is also a symbol of hope and resistance. A palimpsest proves that the current reality is not the only one that has ever existed, and therefore it is not permanent. For Offred and others who remember “the time before,” these memories are their main form of internal rebellion. They are a constant reminder that Gilead is not normal and that a different world is possible. The physical remnants of the past, like a university turned into a prison, are painful, but they also fuel the desire for change. The palimpsest, therefore, symbolizes the hope that just as Gilead was written over the past, it too can one day be erased and a new, better future can be written in its place.
From Fiction to Reality: Gilead as a Modern Symbol of Protest
The symbols of Gilead have escaped the pages of the book and entered the real world. The Handmaid’s costume—the blood-red cloak and the white, face-hiding bonnet—has become one of the most powerful symbols of protest in modern times. Around the world, from the United States and the UK to Argentina and Poland, women have worn the Handmaid’s uniform to protest against laws that threaten their rights. They use it to fight against restrictions on abortion and reproductive freedom and to stand up to the rise of political movements that seek to control women’s bodies.
The power of the costume lies in its silent, visual impact. Groups of women dressed as Handmaids can stand silently in front of government buildings and make a powerful statement without saying a word. The image is instantly recognizable and forces onlookers to ask a terrifying question: “Do we want to live in a society that treats women like this?”.
This real-world use of the costume is perhaps the ultimate act of rebellion, perfectly mirroring the themes of the novel. Within the story, the Handmaid’s uniform is a symbol of oppression, designed by the state to erase individuality and enforce obedience. But in the hands of real-world protestors, this very same symbol has been re-appropriated and turned into a weapon of empowerment and resistance. This transformation shows how the central struggle of The Handmaid’s Tale—the fight for freedom and meaning against a controlling power—has moved beyond fiction and become a living, breathing part of our modern political world.