Unveiling Power Dynamics: The Role of Knowledge and Ignorance in The Handmaid’s Tale and Blindness

Abstract

This essay offers an insightful comparison of Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Saramago’s Blindness. This analysis particularly focuses on the relationship between power and knowledge, where Atwood establishes an exploitation and weaponisation of societal structures  Saramago presents a chaotic world in which a lack of knowledge creates disparity. This is further explored through highlighting the use of ignorance as a mechanism of oppression, thereby also revealing memory as a form of resistance, as it actively allows a preservation of identity and humanity which is, not only foreshadowed by the narrative style choice by each respective author, but mimicked.