Paranoia Is Real

     For our English Literature class, we are reading the Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. This book is set in a dystopian society where there are very few fertile women, so the few women who can bear children that are left have to repopulate the Earth. Rich commanders and their wives use these women to make babies, but have religion and rules controlling all of them so no one has the pleasure of sex, because it isn't necessary. In class, we did an experiment with the whole class to demonstrate the every day reality that the handmaid's (the fertile women)  have to deal with.
     The way we did this was by putting up everyone's school ID on the board and there was an indication of your position by your name. You could either be a regular hand maid, a rebel who was trying to get out and rescue the rest of the handmaids, or an eye, who is a spy for the government who are trying to catch the rebels and keep the handmaids down. During the "day" period, everyone is a handmaid and no one knows who is a rebel or an eye because no one knows any one else's school ID. At "night" though, everyone keeps their head down. Rebels can quietly communicate and rescue a handmaid. If they mistake an eye for a handmaid, then they are "killed". Every day, the handmaid's choose someone to kill off, in order to prevent a violent out break. The handmaid's must try to figure out who is an eye so they can kill them and who is a rebel so they can save them.

    By the end of the project, everyone was very paranoid and some people even got very emotional and hurt. It was crazy to see how people acted in a tense situation. Some people stayed quiet. Others tried to lead, and generally that made them look suspicious. I was always thinking about how did I look. There were very obvious sides and groups and if you didn't associate yourself with one group, you became a target. Sometimes the rebels were trying too hard and pushing too hard, which made them look like an eye because their actions were suspicious. In our class, and in mostly every other class, the Eyes won, which is very disconcerting. It definitely gave me perspective about the book. I understood why the made were very careful and paranoid. I saw how someone have that much control over you and knowing so little information about your safety can make you very skittish. I could never let my guard down because my life depended on it. There was no easy way to go about it. Once some one thinks you are suspicious, for any reason, it's very easy for them to substantiate why they should kill you off. Group mentality came out to play during this experiment, too. We often ganged up on the person we were going to kill. We technically didn't have to kill anyone for three days in a row, but almost everyday someone was killed. The craziest experience was when one girl was going to be killed and we all pointed to her and she was so confused, she said, " What? NO! Who?!" And another girl shouted out her name even louder, expecting the group to follow suit, but no one did. She shouted out the other's girl's name alone. The other girl turned the mob around and pointed every one towards killing the girl who shouted out the first girl's name. This happened in a matter of seconds and I still don't quite understand how it happened. After the experiment everything looked sketchy and I was still very paranoid. We were all laughing from the nerves. I felt trapped, even after I left.