Analysis Of The Handmaid's Tale

From very early on in the book, the significance of gender roles is set out in order to allow the reader to comprehend the idea of the castes in this patriarchal society. The transition between the “time before” and what Offred describes as “now”, is essential in order to realize the changes that occurred. After the “Sons of Jacob” start the revolution, people’s rights are put in limbo as the constitution is suspended. Women’s rights become almost non-existent, and the division begins. Since her attempted escape, Offred is brought back into Gilead and do her duty as a fertile woman, and become a handmaid. She is very limited in what she can do, and in order to not be sent away to the

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 Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale she explores the concept of a not-so-distant future where toxic chemicals and abuses to the body have left many men and women alike sterile. The main character, Offred, gives the reader a first person account about her submissive life as a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. A republic that was formed after a coup against the U.S. government. She and her fellow handmaids are fertile women that the commanders of Gilead ‘enslave’ to ensure their power and to repopulate their ‘society’. While the laws that govern the people of Gilead seem outlandish and oppressive, they are merely

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

There wasn't a lot of choice, but there was some and this is what I chose’’ (Atwood 105). This quote from The Handmaid’s Tale shows that Offred is becoming convinced that it was her own choice to conform to her social role and that she starts to accept the system and the violations that are being committed against women. However, there is no actual choice for Offred, because if she would refuse to accept her social role it would have severe consequences. ‘’The social requirement to conform to gender norms […] often reinforce women’s inequality and powerlessness and limit the capacity for individual autonomy’’ (Anleu

The Handmaid's Tale is set in the early twentieth century in the futuristic Republic of Gilead, formerly the United States of America. The Republic has been founded by a Christian response to declining birthrates. The government rules using biblical teachings that have been distorted to justify the inhumane practices. In Gilead, women are categorized by their age, marital status and fertility. Men are categorised by their age. Women all have separate roles in society, and although these roles are different, they all share the same theme: Every woman is confined to the home and has a domestic duty. Marthas are cooks and housekeepers, and handmaids have one duty, which is to reproduce, growing and giving birth to babies to the childless

The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood describes the story of Offred, a Handmaid, that is a woman ascribed a breeding function by society, and who is placed with a husband and wife higher up the social ladder who need a child. Through Offred's eyes we explore the rigidity of the theocracy in which she lives, the contradictions in the society they have created, and her attempts to find solace through otherwise trivial things. The heroine is never identified except as Offred, the property of her current Commander, she was a modern woman: college-educated, a wife and a mother when she lost all that due to the change in her society. The novel can be viewed from one perspective as being a feminist depiction of the suppression of a woman, from another

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.

In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood tells of hardships endured by Offred, a young woman, whose only task in life is to bear children. In this dystopian world, the government has fallen, the world is plagued in nuclear waste, and the population has substantially dropped due to infertility. As a result, individuals are grouped into classes based on their bodies and its functions completely disregarding education, lifestyle, and personality. The novel is told through Offred’s point of view, a handmaid, who’s given to a commander to have his children. Ultimately, stripping individuals of their identity lead to rebellious actions as shown through those of the men in Gilead. Throughout the novel, the author depicts men as superior

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.

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

In the novel “The Handmaid’s Tale”, written by Margaret Atwood, the author details a futuristic dystopia where women have been subjugated and dehumanized to serving the purpose of bearing children in order to equalize the disproportion in declining births due to the effects of the nuclear pollution. The authors in depth analysis conveys the notion of the atrocities women throughout history consistently find themselves enduring through with a male-dominated patriarchal system. Within the Republic of Gilead, women have been denounced as being seen as pure objects of reproduction not as actual beings. The agenda of Gilead has completely disrupted the order of society and refers back to a biblical order of existence. The creators of Gilead aspired to create a regime where women would no longer be

The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel which work is a speculative fiction written by Margaret Atwood. It is set in the near future, written in the 1980s where the Republic of Gilead’s only success will be to increase birth rate by gaining control over reproduction. However, the Handmaids were fertile women whose role was to bear children for the commander's wives. Handmaids, as well as other classes of women rights, were taken away, leaving them off controlled by men in the Gilead where they must serve men. The author uses symbols and themes to demonstrate women's oppression as victims, where their bodies are controlled through political subjugation and interpreted by the societal trends.

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

Margaret Atwood’s novel ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ takes place in a fictional distopian society named ‘Gilead’ which was errected after the president of the United States of America was assassinated and the army therefore declared a state of emergency (Atwood 177). The society changed subtly but devastatingly. The Constitution was suspended and many rights, particularly women’s, were reduced or taken away. In the newly found patriarchal state Gilead the severely reorganized society was strictly partitioned into males and females. Focussing on the females, they were subdivided into Wives, Daughters, Econowives, Marthas, Handmaids, Aunts, Jezebels and the Unwomen. Persons who refused to accept these new circumstances were sent to the colonies, radioactive