The President's Day Massacre

The President's Day Massacre was the decisive, violent event that destroyed the existing U.S. government and cleared the path for the totalitarian Republic of Gilead. It was a coordinated attack in which the president was shot and Congress was machine-gunned, an act of such sudden and overwhelming force that the nation was thrown into a state of shock and paralysis. The massacre was not a spontaneous uprising but a carefully orchestrated coup, suspected to have been planned by B. Frederick Judd, one of the architects of Gilead, who drew up the early hit lists of prominent Americans and is believed to have orchestrated the infiltration of the security system surrounding Congress. Without this massacre, the suspension of the Constitution would never have been possible.

The Attack and Its Immediate Aftermath

The massacre occurred with brutal efficiency. The president was shot, and members of Congress were machine-gunned in their chambers. The army immediately declared a state of emergency, and the surviving government, or what was left of it, urged calm. On television, officials said, "Keep calm. Everything is under control." The entire government was gone "like that," as Offred recalls, and it was hard to believe. The official narrative blamed the attack on "Islamic fanatics," a convenient scapegoat that deflected attention from the domestic forces behind the coup. The Constitution was suspended, with the promise that it would be only temporary. There was no widespread rioting in the streets; people stayed home at night, watching television, looking for direction. There wasn't even an enemy one could put a finger on.

The Suspension of Rights and the Rise of Control

In the weeks following the massacre, the regime consolidated its power through a series of incremental but devastating measures. Newspapers were censored and some were closed down for "security reasons." Roadblocks began to appear, and Identipasses were introduced. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious one couldn't be too careful. New elections were promised, but it was said it would take time to prepare for them. The official instruction was to continue on as usual. This period of "suspended animation" lasted for weeks, during which the regime systematically dismantled the old order. The Pornomarts were shut down, and the Feels on Wheels vans and Bun-Die Buggies disappeared from the Square. Many people, like the woman behind the counter at a newsstand, felt it was "high time somebody did something." The regime's strategy was to first concentrate on those it deemed the most threatening—the "others"—before turning on the general population.

The Economic and Social Enslavement of Women

The massacre was the catalyst for a swift and total reordering of society, particularly for women. Within a short time, women's bank accounts were frozen. Any account with an "F" on it instead of an "M" was cut off. Women could no longer hold property; it was a new law. Husbands or male next of kin could take over a woman's Compucount. Women were fired from their jobs en masse. Offred herself was told, "I have to let you go. It's the law." The director of the library where she worked was apologetic but helpless, and armed men in uniforms stood in the corridor. The simultaneous freezing of Compucounts and the loss of jobs was a deliberate strategy to prevent women from fleeing. As Moira understood immediately, "They don't want us going anywhere, you can bet on that." The marches that followed were small, and when the police or army opened fire almost as soon as they started, the marches stopped. The President's Day Massacre was thus the single, irreparable rupture that made the world of The Handmaid's Tale possible, a moment of such concentrated violence that it shattered the old world and allowed a new, far more oppressive one to be built on its ruins.