Offred lived a normal, American life when all of the sudden, her family was taken from her so she could go have somebody else’s baby. The Handmaid’s Tale is about a woman’s tale of her life, her story, and her struggles in a new society and how she got there. This story by Margaret Atwood tells the life of Offred, a handmaid for a wealthy couple and her daily struggles trying to adapt to her new world. Offred tells how she makes deals with her Commander and his Wife with hope of getting out and how that changes her life. The progress in this book is not as one would probably describe progress, but it is as follows: the government and society had to make major changes in order to bring about the new system and laws, Gilead is thinking of and executing ways to raise the birthrate in their country, and handmaids and women in general are protected at all costs.…
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.…
The issue that has been persistent for as long as one can remember is Misogyny in the society. The belief that women are inferior to men has been contaminating the human mind. The issue can be commonly seen in the society in form of domestic abuse, violence, objectification in name of advertisements, and especially in the music industry where the lyrics are filled with hateful messages towards women. Even though the governing laws consider men and women as equal, but the mistreatment of women continues to be the headline of every newspaper.…
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood are two significant pieces of literature that, when read together, have many identifiable similarities. One similarity between the two novels is the motif of the suppression of power among women. Throughout Pride and Prejudice and The Handmaid’s Tale, the men within these novels suppress the power of women through the abolition of a woman's ability to possess anything physical or to move upward in class.…
Despite Congress representation being increased to an all-time high in the 2012 election, women represent only 18.5 percent of Congress. While feminism has brought forward more power than imaginable for women, men still have more power over the daily lives of women than possible. Although women’s rights laws have dramatically increased in the past few decades, especially in third-world countries, generally men still possess nearly all of the political and governing power. While the Wives of the Commanders have power over the household and all its residents, excluding the Commander, in The Handmaid’s Tale, offering women remnants of power do not conceal the real deal: Men have dominion over women.…
All throughout history women and men have been seen differently. Men have always been seen as strong, smart, tough, and natural leaders. Women have been seen as weak, timid, nurturing, and always following a man’s lead. As you can tell they are very different. Less than 100 years ago women didn’t have rights in America. They weren’t allowed to vote, own property, or pretty much do anything without a man’s approval. The group “ United Society of Believers in Christ second coming” were adovocating for women’s rights a century and a half before women had the right to vote, according to news wise .com.…
Offred saw several women whose “skirts reach just below the knee and the legs come out from beneath them” and she was in shock at first but then she thought to herself, “I used to dress like that. That was freedom” (Atwood 28). Ofglen sees other women with “their heads are uncovered and it’s darkness and security,” Offred is shocked seeing women exposing themselves (Atwood 28). It shows how the handmaid’s have been brainwashed to cover everything to not attract any men because they belong to their…
“The Handmaid’s Tale,” written by Margaret Atwood is a fictional book that takes place in the near future when all of women’s rights were taken away. The book is from the point of view of a girl who just lost her family, all her money, her possessions and is later taken away to be a handmaid. This all took place because of the overthrow of the government. As a handmaid it is her duty to obey all new laws and to reproduce children for the “higher class” or she will face the wall (be hung).…
But the women in this story are so much more than just child-bearers, servants, prostitutes, or barren. They have identities, personalities, and feelings of their own. And even in this strict totalitarian state, they still find ways in which they can express themselves. They resist what they have been told to do, one small action at a time. For example, Serena Joy and her gardening.…
The novel was written to liberate the objectification put on women during the time. The society of Gilead is constructed where women are defined solely by their gender roles as Wives, Handmaid’s or Marthas, they have been stripped of individual names, but instead are recognised by the name of their commander. Gilead is able to remain in control over the women’s bodies by maintaining control over their bodies and what they wear. The protagonist; Offred, is placed in a situation that restricts her extensively compared to the freedom her former life gave…
Atwood combines the use of literary techniques and form in her novel The Handmaid's Tale to effectively display two main thematic concerns - rebellion and the place of an individual. Offred's first evening with the Commander is one in which these two thematic concerns are exceptionally prevalent.…
The doctrine that all societies have a fear of social breakdown has led to the common desire in Literature to construct idyllic and prosperous societies. Manifestly, these ideas have also been of great interest to Atwood and Huxley as seen with their novels The Handmaid's Tale and Brave New Word. This is closely related to concepts of utopia and dystopia. Utopianism, coined by Thomas More in 1551 etymologically equates to nowhere; this was semantically ameliorated however, to any perfect place by 1610s. Dystopianism, coined by J.S. Mill in 1868 refers to an antithesis of utopia, usually characterised by oppressive social control such as an authoritarian or totalitarian government.…
Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, written in the 1980s, is a highly complex post-modern dstopian text that explores the issues of feminism. The dystopian genre attacks the myth of a utopia, bringing all possibilities to an extreme while the term post modernism explores the consequences of monocracy on modern society and the dynamics of language. Atwood’s use of a female perspective on a hypothetical dystopian society enables her to pursue the controversy of feminism, the impact of power play in a patriarchal society on individuals and the subjective nature of narrative. A better understanding of the text can be gained from the study of Atwood’s execution of language to portray meanings and the role language plays in the narrator’s to survival oppression.…
“The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood takes place in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian and theocratic state where women are seen as an object. Because of low reproduction rates, the Handmaids are assigned to bear children for elite couples. Atwood wrote this novel based on a dystopian society to warn the reader about the dangers of a theocratic and oppressive society. She creates a dystopia with the elements such as; the oppression of women, the perversion of religion and the anti-feminist ideologies.…
Plot is defined as “an author’s selection and arrangement of incidence in a story to shape the action and give the story a particular focus” (Meyer, 2011, p.1666). The Handmaid 's Tale portrays a scary world following an epidemic of infertility. A religious, totalitarian state, the Republic of Gilead, has taken over control after assassinating the president along with all members of Congress. There is no separation of church and state within Gilead and women are stripped of their identity and made to be solely submissive to their husbands and other men.…