Lotso From Toy story 3 Vs. Gilead

Lots-O'-Huggin' Bear (the strawberry scented bear, determined to keep full control of the Sunnyside Daycare center) shares some common interests with many totalitarian leaders throughout history' and his actions are similar to those of the highest command in Gilead. Lotso perpetually has other toys, his underlings, monitoring aisles and hallways night and day. Such proceedings illustrate to the other toys that he was monitoring their every move and that if they were to break the law they would be brutally punished. These other toys serve the role of   secret police for Lotso very much like the Eyes and the Guardians. The Guardians who are used for "routine policing and other menial functions and the eyes that are essentially the internal intelligence agency (30). 

In Gilead those who break the law are sent to the colonies where they most probably will starve to death. In Toy Story 3, if you break the law you are sent to a sandbox, where you remain in isolation. In Gilead the fear of action is predominately prevalent. In Off red’s and Nick's initial encounters, when Nick winks at Offred, Offred simply "drops [her] head and turns so that the white wings hide [her] face..."(28). When contemplating her decision afterwards she thinks it was "perhaps a test, to see what I would do. Perhaps he is an eye"(28). In Toy Story 3, the toys display great fear when approached by Lotso's toys, or are even seen by one of his toys.

Furthermore the act of brainwashing takes place in both stories. In Toy Story 3, Lotso persuades two other characters that their owner replaced them and that he was not the only one. However this is not true. In contrast, Offred was pulled apart from her husband and daughter and was sent to a brainwashing centre where she is trained to become a Handmaid. Aunt Lydia reminds me of Lotso in the way that she gives advice to the Handmaids. "Sometimes the movie she showed would be an old porno film, from the seventies or eighties...Women tied up or chained or with dog collars around their necks...women being raped...(128)". Then she would ask the Handmaids to "consider the alternatives"(128). When Offred is contemplating the effects of an autonomous society, "does each of us have the same print the same chair, the same white curtains, I wonder? Government issue" (17)? Aunt Lydia replies by telling them to "think of it as being in the army"(17). Throughout the novel Aunt Lydia seems to give comforting remarks and advice to the Handmaids despite the stern and oppressive circumstances they are in. "Where I am is not a prison but a privilege", Aunt Lydia said. When confronted with any kind of dilemma, whether from the past or present, Aunt Lydia always seems to use words to ameliorate it. When Offered talks about women who where allowed to make up their minds in the past, she recalls Aunt Lydia saying, "We were a society dying of too much choice"(35). This proves that she has been brainwashed to think of the favorable conditions that this cruel and subjective society holds.