The Handmaid 's Tale By Margaret Atwood

The novel is set as a taped interview with Offred, one of the few fertile women left. Offred’s story "provides a view of a frightening future in which racism and homophobia run rampant, personal freedom is lost, sexual practices are ritualized, and the earth has become polluted beyond reclamation” (Sova 101). In Gilead, all women have become slaves. Handmaids exist solely to become pregnant by the Commanders. Pornography is outlawed.

As the novel continues, the narrator paints a picture, emerging in small recollections of how Gilead slowly choked off the old world and put itself in its place, showing the relative ease with which women’s freedoms were given up and taken away, and how simple it was to remake the United States’ society. Women, including Offred’s mother, helped the process by burning pornography and, eventually, becoming Aunts in exchange for a little power or being spared the Colonies. The old United States died with the President’s Day massacre, where the Gileadean revolution is said to have simply, “shot the President and machine-gunned the Congress” (174). Gilead uses fear of death, of torture, and of reprisals as its main weapon, as Offred faces either reckoning or salvation at the hands of the Eyes, “They can do what they want with me. I am abject. I feel for the first time, their true power” (286). Atwood attributes a sense of vulnerability and fragility to

Paula Hawkins, a well-known British author, once said, “I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head.” In Margaret Atwood’s futuristic dystopia The Handmaid’s Tale, a woman named Offred feels she is losing control over everything in her life. Offred lives in the Republic of Gilead. A group of fundamentalists create the Republic of Gilead after they murder the President of the United States and members of Congress. The fundamentalists use the power to their advantage and restrict women’s freedom. As a result, each woman is assigned a specific duty to perform in society. Offred’s husband and child are taken away from her and she is now forced to live her life as a Handmaid. Offred’s role in society is to produce a child

On a two-page spread a paragraph begins ‘I’m running with her, holding her hand, pulling, dragging her through the bracken,’ and the next paragraph begins ‘the bell wakes me; and then Cora, knocking at my door.’ In just two paragraphs Offred is in two mind-sets. The tension in the first paragraph is much greater than the second, especially due to the pace and countless use of verbs: ‘I think about her drowning this slows me down,’ and ‘dry branch snapping’ also ‘there’s breath and the knocking of my heart, like pounding.’ These actions of ‘drowning’ and ‘snapping’ are unheard of in Gilead which makes this an outrageous though, particularly of a handmaid. The instructions of a handmaid are to be impregnated by Commanders for ‘the population levels to increase’ and not much else. Atwood’s intention of putting this paragraph in would be to juxtapose the reality of what could happen on a normal day to a day in Gilead, by using time

Offred is aware that Gilead is manipulating them by selecting certain lines and perhaps even making it up. Manipulation is another tool that is used by the government to take away power from women by encouraging them that they will be rewarded in their after life.

Throughout the course of world history on Earth, humans have always worked harder and harder in order to improve society and make it more perfect, although it still hasn’t been done quite yet, because it is merely impossible to achieve perfection in a world with close to seven billion people. There is a very distinct difference between a utopia, which can also be known as perfection, and a dystopia, which can also be known as a tragedy; and the outcomes normally generate from the people in charge or the authority that sets up the foundation, the rules, and the regulations for a society. In the Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, The Republic of Gilead is created by a powerful authority group called the Eyes after a huge government take over and the assassination of the US president. It’s very strict rules and goals are set up to protect women, to increase childbirth, and to keep all violence, men, and powerful social media under control. The novel is set in a first person point of view and the narrator, Offred, tells her story to us readers about her experiences as a handmaid and how her life was completely turned upside down. Throughout the course of the novel Offred reveals many sides of herself; although her thoughts do not remain consistent, her personality and opinion tends to change revealing, that she is hesitant and strong because she learns to make the best of what she has and silently overcome the system of the Republic of Gilead.

Past events can affect, positively or negatively, the present activities, attitudes, and values of a character. In The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the main character, Offred, is approached by many past events that reveal the rules of the society versus the life she lost with her loved ones.

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.

Gilead is a society not far from the present and it based around one central idea, control of reproduction by using women’s bodies as political instruments. Handmaids are women who the state took complete control of through their political subjugation. They are not allowed to vote, hold property, read or do anything that can make them independent from their husband and the state. These handmaids are reduced to their fertility and treated like nothing more than a set of ovaries and a womb. They lose their identity and become an object of the state. The narrator of The Handmaids Tale is a handmaid by the name of Offred. The novel takes place in first person point of view and this allows the readers to see how she is treated and all the events that take place for her. First person point of view allows the reader a closer view as to how a central theme develops by giving the reader a firsthand experience from the mind of the narrator.

One of Atwood’s bestselling novel is The Handmaid’s Tale, a disturbing dystopian fiction novel. The Handmaid’s Tale is a complex tale of a woman’s life living in a society that endorses sexual slavery and inequality through oppression and fear. The female characters in Margaret Atwood’s novel demonstrates how these issues affects women’s lives. Offred is the individual with whom we sympathize and experience these issues. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood addresses her perception of the ongoing feminism issues during her time; reproduction rights, workforce inequalities and gender discrimination. Atwood uses her talent to write The Handmaid Tale to express her view on past, present, and future women’s issues.

Offred's memories are a way for her to escape a society riddled with hopelessness. The authoritarian society of Gilead prevents her from

The Handmaids Tale is a poetic tale of a woman's survival as a Handmaid in the male dominated Republic of Gilead. Offred portrayed the struggle living as a Handmaid, essentially becoming a walking womb and a slave to mankind. Women throughout Gilead are oppressed because they are seen as "potentially threatening and subversive and therefore require strict control" (Callaway 48). The fear of women rebelling and taking control of society is stopped through acts such as the caste system, the ceremony and the creation of the Handmaids. The Republic of Gilead is surrounded with people being oppressed. In order for the Republic to continue running the way it is, a sense of control needs to be felt by the government. Without control Gilead will

Throughout The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred recalls her past life before and during the creation of the Republic of

Throughout The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood utilizes various elements of fiction to develop and question the concept of power and control in the patriarchal society of Gilead. Offred, the main Handmaid, is the instrument of which Atwood delivers her message about corruption and power. Offred’s vague diction, unreliable characterization, and erratic tone illustrate the distress of this transitional society (Abcarian 1403-1404). In the beginning of Chapter 23, the role of memory in the novel expands, and the readers test the narrator’s creditability. Offred concludes that all of her memories are “reconstructions”, and that she will continue this practice even if she escapes Gilead. She continues to relate fluid memories to forgiveness and forgiveness to an unnaturally complacent and obedient population (Atwood 134-135). Identifying a powerful relationship between memories, forgiveness, and power, Offred suggests that the main source of Gilead’s totalitarian power is the regime’s ability to manipulate its citizens’ will to forgive past transgressions.

A Critical Analysis of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” In this dystopia novel, it reveals a remarkable new world called Gilead. “The Handmaid’s Tale,” by Margaret Atwood, explores all these themes about women who are being subjugated to misogyny to a patriarchal society and had many means by which women tried to gain not only their individualism and their own independence. Her purpose of writing this novel is to warn of the price of an overly zealous religious philosophy, one that places women in such a submissive role in the family. I believe there are also statements about class in there, since the poor woman are being meant to serve the rich families need for a child. As the novel goes along the narrator Offred is going between the past and