In The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, you will find a city, Gilead, whose people have brainwashed themselves into creating their own twisted truths about life. The people of this city are irrational; they tend to believe the things they hear. The people of Gilead then take it and twist it into half-truths and lies. Winston Churchill once said, “A lie goes around the world before the truth has a chance to sink in.” Their truths do nothing but harm others in the community. They bring people down, break trust and can lead to a tragic ending. For some strange reason, they stick to what they believe to be true rather than what the real truths, or facts, are. Gilead's leaders keep many secrets from their people. The leaders fear the chaos that could come from the city knowing the real facts that the leaders have kept hidden. The women in this book are forced to believe that “there is no longer such a thing as a sterile man” and it is the law that “There are only fertile women and sterile women” (Atwood 61). The city of Gilead references “the Old Testament in a reaction against abortion, sterilization, and what they see as dangerous forms of freedom in the modern welfare state” (Staels 455). This is a perfect example of one of Gilead's twisted ways of thinking. The people of the Republic of Gilead make only women feel responsible for their ability to reproduce or not reproduce when in reality men are just as important when trying to conceive a child. The aunts, who train the handmaids, along with everyone else in Gilead, make the women feel bad about themselves. If they cannot produce children, they are sent away to be killed. The women of Gilead go to... middle of paper... stable versions of the truth. The Republic of Gilead has set itself up for failure. They created their own end. Works Cited Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1986.Cooper, Pamela. "Sexual Surveillance and Medical Authority in Two Versions of the Handmaid's Tale." Popular Culture (n.d.): 49-66. How we learn a skill: The journey from beginner to master. March 20, 2013. November 13, 2013. Infertility and men. 2005. November 13, 2013. Staels, Hilde. “Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale: Resistance Through Narrative.” English Studies (1995): 455-467. Winston Churchill Quotes. 2001. November 13 2013 .