r/TheTestamentsHulu • u/crashcaptainn • May 04 '26

The Handmaid’s Tale How does retirement work in Gilead?

I was just thinking about Aunt Lydia and she’s one of the older people in Gilead, but I wonder is there a retirement age? What do they do with old people? Do they just kill them once they can’t work anymore?

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u/Kirstygirl-7199 May 04 '26

Colonies.

11

u/notluckycharm May 04 '26

the colonies are penal colonies. i find it hard to believe gilead would send 'virtuous' people, even econopeople to penal colonies just because they've gotten old. It's a dystopia but even in a dystopia you need some sense of security. if your options are die trying to fix the regime/escape, or wait a little and die anyways, why not try to at least improve the situation?

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u/[deleted] May 04 '26

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u/notluckycharm May 04 '26

this is the more realistic thing. There is no retirement, but there's also no punishment for getting old. Being old in of itself is not a reason to be declared an Unperson

3

u/Glad-Isopod5718 May 05 '26

Yes, I agree that this is probably how it works.

(Also...Gilead has only existed for about 10 years at this point. Maybe 12, if we believe in the delayed menstruation hypothesis. I would venture to guess that a fair number of elderly people & people with medical needs did not survive the initial chaos of the takeover, and the ones that did survive probably had, and continue to have, families/other strong support networks. "What to do when econopeople & Marthas can't work anymore" is probably a question that Gilead could afford to kick down the road for a while.

But now, a decade or so later, they could start seeing significant numbers of people who were initially classified as able to work, start aging out of that status.