Preview

The Handmaids Tale

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1103 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Handmaids Tale
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale takes place in a post Cold War society plagued by infertility. Atwood presents the reader with “The Republic of Gilead”, the Christian theocracy that overthrew the United States government. Narrated by a woman renamed Offred, the reader gets an idea of a future in which women are no longer women, but are solely needed for reproduction. Atwood uses a system of vocabulary established under the Republic of Gilead in order to manipulate and dehumanize women and men throughout the text.
Under this new society women are defined under their gender roles. No longer are women allowed to hold jobs, make an income, or have control over their body. Men on the other hand are referred to by their military rank. Women are then placed into the group in which the Republic of Gilead finds fitting. Some sent off to reproduce children, others to work and wait for a slow cruel death.
Offred is what the Republic of Gilead labels a handmaid. A handmaid’s sole purpose is to produce a child for elite families of the Republic. Handmaids are stripped from their own clothes and are forced to wear all red. A floor length dress that gives the handmaid no shape, red shoes, and red gloves. The color red is extremely symbolic towards their position in society. The red clothing could be interpreted in a multitude of ways. Red is the color of a women’s menstrual blood. Therefore the wearing of red deems the handmaids one of the few fertile women among society. However, in history red has been a marker of sexual sin. The handmaids are essentially having sex with married men.
All handmaids are immediately stripped of their birth name and put under possession of the commander. Offred receives this name because her commander’s name is Fred, and she is “of” Fred. This is the Republic of Gilead’s way of literally dehumanizing and stripping the handmaid’s from any personalization. I looked up the definition of the word “handmaiden”, and it

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    The Handmaid’s Tale written by Margaret Atwood and Push written by Sapphire are two novels narrated by two young adult women. Both stories take readers along the journey to find their happiness, after being mistreated and abandoned by others. The novels bring two completely different experiences, but very similar perspectives on their lives. Even though both novels are written in different eras and regions on the world, the similar life experiences for these two young women are related. The feeling of loneliness, sexual assault, and not being able to control your own body are some of the similarities that Precious and Offred have in common, but some differences include, the idea of pleasure and society involvement and it creates two different books that still correlate.…

    • 1125 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Handmaid’s Tale

    • 744 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The motif of time is very apparent in this section. Time, something are never thought much of before her new life, is now an object she thinks about frequently. “There’s time to spare. This is one of the things I wasn’t prepared for – the amount of unfilled time,” (Atwood 69). “In the afternoons we lay o our beds for an hour in the gymnasium…they were giving us a chance to get used to blank time,” (70). “The clock ticks with its pendulum, keeping time my feet in their neat red shoes count the way down,” (79). This motif shows how much the lives’ of the women, including Offred’s, has changed. They are restricted from doing so much that the amount of free time they have overwhelms them.…

    • 744 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Handmaid's Tale

    • 612 Words
    • 3 Pages

    But going back to the habits the Handmaids wear. In the beginning of the book when the Offred and Ofglen go to the market, they have to pass checkpoints; where they have to pass Guardians, men who get no sexually play. Offred describes how her red habit shows nothing, so it gives the Guardians a gateway to the imagination of what is under the habit. That red habit gives Offred power over something “They touch with their eyes instead and I move my hips a little, feeling the full red skirt sway around me... I enjoy the power; power of the dog bone.... I hope they get hard at the sight of usand have to rub themselves against the painted barriers... They will suffer...” (Atwood 22).…

    • 612 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale delves well into the horrid nature of extreme control and immoral limitations in defining the corrupt theocratic government at large, and more specifically the effect this control has on the society’s women. In an age in which a newly emerged and merciless governmental system called the Republic of Gilead has “put life back to the middle ages,” sparked by a widespread panic of infertility, personal freedom and individuality have become unimaginably reduced (Genny 1). Handmaids selected to live in the houses of wealthy, well-respected couples go through a life entirely designed by the government for the sole purpose of bearing children. Caught between following the strict rules made for women by the Republic and breaking them in secret for the sake of her sanity, the protagonist Offred essentially but not purposefully offers close to nothing for her society’s benefit. Not allowed to read, write, speak her thoughts or even look another in the eye, the most she can offer proves to be occasional, well-monitored grocery errands and the slight possibility of providing the gift of life for an elite Commander and his Wife. Parallel to a dystopia in which Offred has been stripped of the most simplistic allowances, women in today’s various Middle Eastern societies find relatively equal difficulty in utilizing their strengths due to the severe suppression and forced structure of their daily lives. Regardless of the varying context of these two scenarios, they both present themselves problematically in light of women’s personal struggle to contribute in society—in both Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and the modern Middle East, seemingly unethical yet extreme theocratic government exercises examples of such radically unformed control over its people that the exploitation and demeaning of the natural rights of women become prevalent. But on what grounds should the…

    • 1588 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    In her novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Margret Atwood uses symbolism to illustrate the handmaid’s role in the society of Gilead. The handmaids are the women who had broken law of Gilead, and were forced into the role of a surrogate mother for a higher ranking couple. The handmaids had no rights or free will. They were under constant surveillance and this caused them to be very cautious. The author characterizes most handmaids as a tentative and distrustful, which is perhaps why Offred never puts in words the magnitude of her discontent with her new life, because it’s possible she doesn’t truly trust the reader. The author uses symbols such as the handmaid’s dress-code, a pigs ball, and even the handmaids names to give the reader a sense of the handmaid’s imprisonment.…

    • 658 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The narrative structures are integral to portraying female oppression and are different for each text. The first person narrative of “The Handmaid’s Tale” uses a number of different techniques – distancing, flashbacks and reconstruction to effectively present an emotive view of female oppression. Offred’s first person account increases the emotion because the readers feel her pain more directly, “I can remember screaming.” The use of emotive language and short powerful sentences presents Offred’s unbearable pain of being separated from her daughter. Distancing is used, “thoughts must be rationed,” to reflect how Offred is coping within the repressed society as well as emphasising how torturous and difficult the society is to live in. The ‘Night’ sections are patterned throughout the narrative and they help to reveal Offred as an individual to the reader. The character’s isolation “Where should I go?” is both ironic and distressing because her reality is that she is trapped; this emphasises the only thing Gilead couldn’t take away from her old life was her memories and imagination. The reconstructed narrative allows the reader to question the reliability of Offred because it is all from her memory. Atwood uses the “Historical Notes” to provide a challenging voice “Some of them may have been filled by our anonymous author.” Pieixoto undermines the narrative by suggesting it is false, which could allow readers to doubt Offred’s construction even further. Alternatively, the contradicting male voice can be interpreted as an added male domination embedded into the narrative, agreeably this can be interpreted as Atwood emphasising…

    • 2082 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Handmaids Tale

    • 1986 Words
    • 8 Pages

    In the not so distant future, the story of The Handmaid’s Tale unfolds. Set in what seems to be a dystopian United States where various violations of human rights from around the globe are exposed. It is these violations that a patriarchal, authoritarian theocracy is created in the nation-state of Gilead. Oppression, status, and fear run rampant through the nation-state. Obedience is tantamount for the survival of women and the regime. Atwood exposes how building a utopia leads to a dystopia for those that are considered as being an “other.”…

    • 1986 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Margret Atwood uses language to show many factors in the novel the “The Handmaids Tale”. In the Gilead age power was wanted be everyone. Which lead people to do anything for power. Women were deprived of their freedom, making language the means of escape. This novel was portrayed from a young woman's life named Offred. Living in Gilead dealing with various restrictions towards women. With this mindset of society different roles were set for women. Offred was a handmaid who is the carrier of children. Language is limited and they are not allowed to use any words regarding freedom.…

    • 456 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Handmaid's Tale was a tale about women who live in the republic of Gilead, which replaced the United States. Which at that point was dangerously underpopulated and had low reproducing rates. The handmaids were assigned to bear and hold children for elite couples who cannot. They were given a certain amount of “trails” and an age limit permitting them to conceive a baby. In Gilead woman’s freedom is very restricted, you can never have your door completely shut, you can only go out on shopping trips, and he eyes watch your every public move. The concept of the society in Gilead was to reproduce and as they saw that it wasn’t happening they decided to restrict and be assertive to make sure that it happened. The way they would utilize woman…

    • 811 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Handmaid's Tale

    • 984 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Offred in the novel represents the complacency of women as before Gilead she didn't necessarily consider herself a feminist. She feared influencing her life with feminism would alienate her from men. Offred is a fairly passive character throughout the book and in my eyes it seems as though she actually started to see life in Gilead as almost bearable following her relationship with Nick. To me, it became clear that Offred began to understand that feminism simply forces women to recognize their own natural alienation from men, and it is the feminine itself who creates this…

    • 984 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Written by Margaret Atwood The Handmaids Tale explores the reversal of women’s rights in a society called Gilead. It is founded on what is to be considered a return to traditional values, gender roles and the suppression of women by men, and the Bible is used as the guiding principle. Women are not only tripped from their right to vote, they are also denied the right to read and write, according to the new laws of Gilead. The Handmaids Tale portrays the struggle faced by women living under this strict regime, and how these women have lost their individuality due to the roles forced upon them by society.…

    • 1191 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Handmaid’s Tale written by Margaret Atwood is about the feminist movement and how it would be if women were not equal to men. The book begins to describe where the women live. It takes place in the Republic of Gilead. Each women was assigned to a specific job and had no choice what to wear the color the commander said to wear. The narrator of this story's name is Offred. Offred is known as one of the Handmaid’s in this book. She is forced to wear a long red habit. Due to the low reproduction rates her job is to produce children for the elite couples that have trouble conceiving. Offred is the handmaid’s for the elite couple named the Commander and his wife Serena Joy. Serena Joy is a former gospel singing. In these camps they give…

    • 377 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Handmaid's Tale

    • 1818 Words
    • 8 Pages

    The Historical Notes are transcripts of the proceedings of a seminar about The Handmaid’s tale. Professor MaryAnn Crescent Moon and a Historian, Professor Pieixoto, held this seminar. Pieixoto’s presentation of The Handmaid’s Tale reveals his thoughts on the subject; he believes the tale to be a literal reconstruction of events. Although he…

    • 1818 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Handmaid's Tale

    • 753 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Throughout the novel, betrayal remains the over-arching theme, seen in men’s betrayal of women as well as the reason behind abandoning all sense of self and former relationships. Society’s betrayal of women as a whole leads Gilead to a power hierarchy which leaves handmaids no choice but to betray themselves by giving in to the society which strips them of identity and leaves them with no personal relationships and a constant trial to stay alive.…

    • 753 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Handmaid's Tale

    • 547 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The primary tool of control used by the ruling class in Gilead is the restriction of communication. As much as people disappear or are “salvaged,” the most powerful weapon of the men is their ability to control what women are told and, consequently, what and how they think. As women are not allowed to read or write, the only verbal communication they have (legally) is the excruciatingly ritualized little greeting ceremonies they go through with each other. Whenever Offred and Ofglen go for their shopping…

    • 547 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays