Analysis Of The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

In a society where women are completely oppressed they have two choices: To conform and survive, or to rebel and risk execution. Conformity would entail suppressing their morals and their personal rights to adapt to Gilead’s social standards. Would one choose self-inflicted isolation by disassociating oneself as a human being to survive, or gain more rights and disregard all morals by working for the government? This society is represented in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaids Tale. The novel is set in the Republic of Gilead, a dictatorship, formerly known as the United States of America. The government controls all aspects of the lives’ of its citizens, with its harshest regulations directly affecting women.

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

A genuine identity and individuality is not possible in an oppressive environment especially when one’s daily life, actions, and thoughts are dictated by domineering societal expectations. Oppressive environments such as regimes controlled by a dictatorship and that run off a totalitarian government system strip an individual of their civil rights as a human being in order to gain ultimate control over its citizens. A government such as the Republic of Gilead in Margaret Atwood’s work, The Handmaid’s Tale, controls their citizen’s lives to the extent to where they must learn to suppress their emotions and feelings. In the Republic of

In The Handmaid’s Tale, the Gilead regime oppresses women in many different ways; they take complete control over their bodies, they

Within the totalitarian society created by Margaret Atwood in the Handmaid’s Tale, there are many people and regimes centred around and reliant on the manipulation of power. The laws that are in place in the republic of Gilead are designed and implemented so as to control and restrict the rights and freedom of its inhabitants.

The Handmaid's Tale, a film based on Margaret Atwood’s book depicts a dystopia, where pollution and radiation have rendered innumerable women sterile, and the birthrates of North America have plummeted to dangerously low levels. To make matters worse, the nation’s plummeting birth rates are blamed on its women. The United States, now renamed the Republic of Gilead, retains power the use of piousness, purges, and violence. A Puritan theocracy, the Republic of Gilead, with its religious trappings and rigid class, gender, and racial castes is built around the singular desire to control reproduction. Despite this, the republic is inhabited by characters who would not seem out of place in today's society. They plant flowers in the yard, live in suburban houses, drink whiskey in the den and follow a far off a war on the television. The film leaves the conditions of the war and the society vague, but this is not a political tale, like Fahrenheit 451, but rather a feminist one. As such, the film, isolates, exaggerates and dramatizes the systems in which women are the 'handmaidens' of today's society in general and men in particular.

The definition of freedom depends entirely on how the phrase “freedom from…” ends. Perhaps a most straightforward understanding of freedom is the laissez-faire emphasis on limiting the power of government to interfere in economic and social matters. In this state of absolute freedom, however, inequalities exist between people, so that freedom from a controlling government does not imply individuals’ freedom of contract, movement, legal protection, equal rights through citizenship, or political voice. In light of the persistence of slavery in the US through the 19th century, freedom as an individual’s legal status separated people who could be citizens from people who were lifelong slaves. Even among legally free people, economic

The freedom of speech is one right that is stated in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. The handmaid’s have certain greetings and words that they can say to each other. Like; "Praise be", "May the Lord open", and "Blessed be the fruit" (19). These words are initially exchanged between Ofglen and Ofwarren when they meet and go to town together. They need to be careful of what they say because The Eyes are always watching. The Eyes assist in the removal of the freedom of speech because, if they are always watching everyone, then no one can assemble, and if no one can assemble, then they cannot challenge the government. Therefore, helping the government contain absolute control over the society. If they say the wrong thing, then there are extreme consequences inflicted upon you. Usually, the rulebreaker is killed and their body is hung on the wall for everyone to see. This contributes to the theme of absolute power because, the government uses intimidation to keep people in check so they won’t rebel. The Gilead Regime preserves its absolute domination of the society by removing the First Amendment rights, starting with the removal of the freedom of speech before moving on to the removal of the freedom of the press.

It is necessary for the government to impose a certain amount of power and control of its citizens in order for a society to function properly. However, too much power and control in a society eliminates the freedom of the residents, forbidding them to live an ordinary life. In the dystopian futuristic novel, The Handmaids Tale, Margaret Atwood demonstrates the theme of power and control through an oppressive society called the Republic of Gilead. The government established power and control through the use of the wall, military control, the salvaging, the particicution, and gender.

They have "freedom from" things like sexist catcalls and potential abuse from strangers. They would argue that the women of Gilead should be grateful for such freedoms, rather than mourning the other freedoms they've lost, but in reality they really have not freedom for nothing, and none looks at them with intentions of ever liking them. Over the years education has changed people now have the right to learn and plan their future, either going to school and getting their education or work to provide for their family. As mentioned before getting education is not an option the handmaids have. Not only were the handmaids not able to get their education but also they were forced to follow the commander's rules and orders.

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

Psychological criticism has roots as far back as the fourth century BC, when Aristotle “commented on the effects of tragedy on an audience, saying hat by evoking pity and fear, tragedy creates a cathartic of those emotions” (Dobie 54). More recently, however, psychological criticism has been shaped and influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud. He developed theories concerning “the workings of the human psyche, its formations, its organization, and its maladies” that, while further refined by other theorists, are still the basis of the modern approach to literary criticism (Dobie 54). Freud’s theory of the tripartite psyche is used to classify and define the conscious and unconscious mind into the id, ego, and superego. When examined using this theory, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian novel about a patriarchal totalitarian government that has replaced the United States of America, is particularly interesting.

“There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from,” (Atwood 24). The Handmaid’s Tale, written by Margaret Atwood, is a novel set in the near future where societal roles have severely changed. The most notable change is that concerning women. Whereas, in the past, women have been gaining rights and earning more “freedom to’s”, the women in the society of The Handmaid’s Tale have “freedom froms”. They have the freedom from being abused and having sexist phrases yelled at them by strangers. While this may seem like a safer society, all of the “safeness” comes at a drastic cost. Atwood depicts a dystopia in The Handmaid’s Tale

We have seen it before. We have witnessed the corruption of governments before even if we didn’t even realize it. From communism to democracy, world wars to civil wars, genocides to religious upraises, government involvement has always been silently exalted. In Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaids Tale’, we see the fear of the Gileadian society caused by a régime government who practices its inhumane beliefs through everyday life in Gilead. The uses of military corruption, fear, and oppression are things that describe the everyday life of the defenseless citizens of this totalitarianism government.

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 were 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