Essay on Handmaids Tale

One of the many prevailing themes in literature is that power is gained and can be manipulated when restraints are placed on natural desires of the individual. This passage is significant because it is an example of this theme, for it shows how power and manipulation have completely changed and restricted the people, especially women, of Gilead. Due to this, the passage reveals the shared anger that the Handmaids possess, and the cruelty that has been brought upon the society. The use of similes, diction, syntax, and illustrate the impact that this event had on Offred, for she feels such anger towards the unknown man and the crime he has supposedly committed. These literary and rhetorical devices additionally serve to make this event seem as

Then we also have the religious service prior to the Ceremony, with the biblical reference to Genesis 30:1-3 whereby Rachel is unable to have children and therefore commands Jacob to impregnate her maid who will then give them the child. The role of the Handmaid within this society is to bear a child for barren wives but there is no suggestion, in The Bible, of Rachel being present at the time of the conception between Jacob and her maid unlike the grotesque threesome prescribed by the founders of Gilead, known as the Ceremony.

In Gilead the social relationship that once existed between men and women is a thing of the past. In the former society women had value and felt good about themselves and how they looked. However, in the new society the men have stripped the women of their freedom and equality and lowered them to varying degrees of status. The young healthy women are labeled handmaids and are "issued" (24) by the government to various high-ranking officials in order to offer them the opportunity to create offspring. Getting pregnant is their only hope of survival. Females who are not of childbearing age are called Marthas because their purpose is to work and serve the men. A third category of women is labeled Unwomen because of their worthlessness in this male dominated society. All three categories are divided into colonies to prevent their rebelling against the system. Also, within each colony communication is limited and higher education is denied. In order to enforce this kind of oppressive social structure, the government uses various forms of intimidation.

Control dominates all aspects of Gileadian society, from minor, seemingly petty normalities such as the clothes allowed, all the way up to how and who to have sexual relations with. Unimaginable in this day, Atwood represents modern society gone sour, something which is chillingly

In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Offred recounts the story of her life and that of others in Gilead, but she does not do so alone. The symbolic meanings found in the dress code of the women, the names/titles of characters, the absence of the mirror, and the smell and hunger imagery aid her in telling of the repugnant conditions in the Republic of Gilead. The symbols speak with a voice of their own and in decibels louder than Offred can ever dare to use. They convey the social structure of Gileadean society and carry the theme of the individual's loss of identity.

Margaret Atwood's, The Handmaid's Tale, constructs a near-future dystopia where human values do not progress and evolve, but instead become completely diminished and dominated under the Republic of Gilead. This powerful and secure new government gains complete political control and begins to abuse their power by forcing fertile women to reproduce. The Gileadean society is enforced by many Biblical laws, morals, and themes, yet the Gileadian religious ideologies are based on only a few specifically selected Biblical passages that are taken literally. The selection of certain passages in the Bible helps control and manipulate the women that are being enslaved by giving them a false sense of justification and security for the treatment they

In her book, “The Handmaid’s Tale”, Margaret Atwood describes a dystopian society in which all of the progress in the feminist movement that was made during the twentieth century is reversed and the nation is reverted back to its traditional patriarchal ways. The story is told from the point of view of Offred, a woman who was separated from her husband and child and forced into the life of a handmaid. In this book, Atwood explores the oppression of women through her use of literary tools such as figurative language, symbols, and literary allusions.

Jezebel’s is the most obvious setting of prostitution in “The Handmaid’s Tale”. Jezebels is an abandoned hotel in which women dress in revealing clothing from the pre-Gilead times. It essentially is a forbidden strip club. Jezebels is an obvious example of prostitution because of the clothing the women wear and the fact that their job is to have sex with men. When the Commander brings Offred to Jezebels, he acts as if he owns Offred while treating her as a sexual object. He brings Offred to Jezebels and takes her up to a private room to seduce her. Offred thinks, “He’s stroking my body...It means ownership. I remind myself that he is not an unkind man; that, under other circumstances, I even like him” (Atwood 254). Offred realizes that in this moment she is owned. Offred, as a woman, is the Commander's object. The Commander is “stroking [Offred's]

This place disfigures the whole concept of everything Gilead has built, allowing the men in order, the Commanders, to abandon their duties for “a little excitement,” (Atwood 276) and letting the group of people there commit everything forbidden in Gilead, such as sexual freedom, including Gender Treachery, and even reading. The spoiled nature of this place displays the importance of the freedom of emotion. This demonstrates that since the society considers such a place that denatures all of its values to be necessary solely due to the unforeseeable nature of human emotion and its lengths, the society isn’t so perfect after all. There will always be a harbinger of chaos present in even the most structured societies. Similarly, Orwell’s 1984 also has a place of escape: the place where the Proles live; however in contrast to The Handmaid’s Tale, this society can’t do anything about it.

In Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaids Tale’, we hear a transcribed account of one womans posting ‘Offred’ in the Republic of Gilead. A society based around Biblical philosophies as a way to validate inhumane state practises. In a society of declining birth rates, fertile women are chosen to become Handmaids, walking incubators, whose role in life is to reproduce for barren wives of commanders. Older women, gay men, and barren Handmaids are sent to the colonies to clean toxic waste.

Give me children or else I die. Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? Behold my maid Bilhah. She shall bear upon my knees that I may also have children by her (Atwood 114)--

As the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, comes to an end, the main character, Offred, says, “Tonight I will say my prayers.” The irony of religion in the novel is astounding to me because it focuses on religion so much to actually be so wrong about what the Bible says. The story takes place in Gilead, which is a city that used to be in the United States, that is now a theocracy— a government in which there is no separation between state and religion. In this future setting, after the democratic government is overthrown, it becomes almost dictatorial. As Offred tells her life story in the Republic of Gilead, many references from the Bible, mostly from the books Jeremiah, Genesis, and Job, run through every aspect of daily life.

The central social hierarchy within the novel is the gender hierarchy, placing men in a position of extreme power. This is evident in every aspect of the book, as the entire Gilead society is male dominated. The Commander is at the top of the hierarchy and is involved with designing and establishing the current society taking control of a nation of women, and exploiting their power by controlling what is taught, what they can teach themselves and the words that they can use. Soon all of the women will become brainwashed, simply because it is made nearly impossible to defy the rules

This is the conversation where Ofglen tells about her part in the resistance. Ofglen is an important character in Awood's creation of dystopia because she is the one who adds the idea that there are multitudes of people who hate the way the republic is handling things. She is the one who says that there is an underground resistance and that by trying to make a better world, Gilead has actually made things a whole lot worse.

The Gilead society is hypocritical and don’t truly follow the religious beliefs because even though the whole society is shaped by religion, many Gileadians secretly broke rules and punished rapists due to religious believes when every single handmaid was trained to be fertilized against their desire which is considered rape in a way.