Compare And Contrast The Handmaid's Tale

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

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

A dystopia is a common genre among many novels and all novels are able to capture the problems within the current society. These problems can vary and each different setting has different problems than the other. Margaret Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale in an effort to capture problems going on in real life: abortion and women’s rights. Another author that captures a similar essence to Atwood’s is Suzanne Young in her novel series The Program. Although both authors emphasize different problems that are going on in society, they both have a correlative narrative style. While Young discusses the stigma around people who have a mental illness and how they should be separated from society, both authors use a similar voice in their writing.

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.

Can human live without love? The answer is evidently no. Love can be defined as: the most spectacular, indescribable, deep euphoric feeling for someone. Margaret Atwood, the author of the outstanding dystopian fiction the handmaid 's tale (1985) had once in her book said: " nobody dies from lack of sex. It 's lack of love we die from.” In this novel, Atwood specifically depicts a society where relationships have been altered, undermined and in many ways forbidden. The key word in the issue of relationships is love. In the Republic of Gilead, a form of theocratic government, women had lost their ability to love. The protagonist Offred is a handmaid whose sole purpose in life is to reproduce a child. Gilead expects its handmaids to have faith in its commandments, but has removed love and hope from them. Women became objects and sex slaves to men. Therefore, the relationships of the protagonist Offred are unhealthy as well as abnormal, yet they are source of hope for Offred to survive from this theocratic form of government. Her relationship with the commander is strained but profitable, her relationship with Serena Joy has lots of tensions and conflicts; and her relationship with Nick is subtle as well as controversial.

For my ISP I have chosen to cover the topic of men and women being reduced to political objects or instruments by the misuse of power. From the first chapter of The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood makes it clear to the reader each character introduced has a distinct role in the society the novel is set in. Gender roles seem to play a major part in the class division of the totalitarian government style of The Handmaid’s Tale and although our government style is very different, class division and gender roles still present major issues in our world today. Throughout the beginning of the novel language is used as a tool to oppress peoples rights and freedoms leading to class division and specific gender roles.

Serena Joy is the most powerful female presence in the hierarchy of Gileadean women; she is the central character in the dystopian novel, signifying the foundation for the Gileadean regime. Atwood uses Serena Joy as a symbol for the present dystopian society, justifying why the society of Gilead arose and how its oppression had infiltrated the lives of unsuspecting people.

“How are the two female protagonists Offred from “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Magaret Atwood and Celie from “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker oppressed by men, in what ways are their situations similar and how do they deal with the pressure and abuse?”

In an all too familiar world of the speculative fiction novels of Margret Atwood best known for The Handmaids Tale and Oryx and Crake ,Which lead to the discovery that these tales of a dystopian world and one of love and adventure seem to hit a little too close to home and bring out emotions that may have been dormant. There is no doubt that she is a brilliant writer, but the question that runs through my mind is, which one is superior. Some say that The Handmaid’s tale was all around controversial and that Oryx and crake lacked depth in its characters, but in all the speculation and glorification one stands above the rest The Handmaids Tale. Don’t get me wrong Margret Atwood is no one hit wonder by any means it’s the fact that The

My topic is a comparison on the ideals of obedience and self-subordination in the handmaid's tale and Like water for chocolate. I would be choosing a passage from each novel that will reflect on one or both of these ideals. After fully analyzing those two passages, I would be write a compare and contrast essay on the the ideals of obedience and self-subordination in the handmaid's tale and Like water for chocolate

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 Handmaid’s Tale explores how individuals and society will interpret sources based on their own agendas and beliefs leading to a manipulation of the source for their own advantage. Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale in 1984 where conservatism was on a rise and women were in danger of losing the rights they had been granted just a decade before. Thus in the novel she

Summary of Argument: For my IOP topic, I will write an epilogue of sorts for The Handmaid’s Tale that mimics the style and structure Atwood uses in the novel. My epilogue will include key literary techniques that are prominent throughout the book such as stream of consciousness, flashbacks, biblical allusions, and the use of second person.

“All the Chilling Parallels Between 'The Handmaid's Tale' and Life for Women in Trump's America” explores the idea that women’s roles in society are being limited in a way that provides a current analytical perspective of women’s oppression by the men involved in the government in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Women’s economic independence being controlled by the government, which consists of predominantly males, is strikingly similar to the way men regulate women’s economic autonomy in The Handmaid’s Tale. In today’s society, discrimination against women involved in the workforce is obvious considering “the median income of women working full-time, year-round in the U.S. was just 79 percent of what men earned” and the wage gap is