Dictatorship In Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid’s Tale has explored the disempowerment of individual power that is implemented by the society. Margaret Atwood demonstrates this through the main ‘protagonist’ of the story, Offred, with her minimal amount of visible power in society. Individual power can catalyse minor change but lacks the strength to impact upon large scale power regimes. While confined behind the “white wings of the Handmaids”, Offred and Ofglen “learned to whisper almost without a sound” to share information they had heard “through the grapevine” about what is withheld from them. Although the government has immeasurable power driven by fear of being taken away in the “black van”, they battle for what little individual power they can get.

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.

The doublespeak or propaganda is a significant manipulate language that has been used in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, especially in VIII. Birthday. This manipulate language is being used to persuade and encourage people by individual judgements and attitudes. The first significant circumstance that Aunt Lydia uses her personal judgement to blame other women that they are not good. In the novel, “Of course, some women believed there would be no future, they thought the world would explode.

In paragraph twenty nine of Handmaid's Tale the author explains that the influence of power and appreciation is a tool used in theocratic societies to gain control over the masses. Particularly Artwork is very intrigued by the relationship of society with men and women. In the book women are placed below men in every respect in society having no rights and being in a lower social caste than men. To conclude Margaret Artwork in her book Handmaid's Tale uses power and oppression to censor women and to keep the status quo.

This is in keeping with the founding purpose of Gilead: intervention over reproduction in the face of decreased birthrates. Using this crisis as its ostensible mission, the state government assumes complete control over women’s bodies through cultural, social, and political subjugation. Despite Gilead’s seemingly pro-feminist rhetoric, its subjugation of women sets them apart as an inferior class, reducing them to “two-legged wombs” (Atwood, 136). Waterford’s stated haven for female dignity and protection is exposed for its hypocrisy and falsity when Offred, in her internal reflections, reveal the many humiliations that women experience and are nonetheless expected to ignore, to brush off as the unintended small anomalies of an otherwise fair and just society: room doors that do not “shut properly” (Atwood, 8) by design, the constant possibility of being labeled “Unwoman” and sent to the Colonies where they would “starve to death and Lord knows what all” (Atwood, 10), and having their birth names taken away and forbidden from being used (Atwood, 84), to mention a few. Waterford’s ideological justification

Offred is a Handmaid in what used to be the United States, now the theocratic Republic of Gilead. In order to create Gilead's idea of a more perfect society, they have reverted to taking the Book of Genesis at its word. Women no longer have any privileges; they cannot work, have their own bank accounts, or own anything. The also are not allowed to read or even chose who they want to marry. Women are taught that they should be subservient to men and should only be concerned with bearing children. Margaret Atwood writes The Handmaid's Tale (1986) as to create a dystopia. A dystopia is an imaginary place where the condition of life is extremely bad, from deprivation, oppression, or

Imagine a world where our basic freedoms are taken away from us; a world where we are not free to say what we want; a world where we are bound by the chains of oppression, and are at the mercy of an elite ruling class government, where even the slightest negativity expressed towards them is strictly prohibited. In this world we would have no identity, no names, and no communication. This obscene idea would ultimately be the dystopian world from our worst nightmares. Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale paints a vivid picture as to the nature of such a dystopia, a world which is ruled by a small wealthy ruling class, and where everybody’s rights have been stripped away from them. This dystopian society is situated in what was once the

It is necessary for the government to impose a certain amount of power and control on its citizens for a society to function properly. However, overuse and misuse of power and control in a society eliminates the freedom of the residents, forbidding them to live an ordinary life. In the dystopic futuristic novel, The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood demonstrates the idea of power and control through the oppressive society Gilead. The government establishes power and control with the Wall, the Salvagings, and military control. As well, the government’s unique use of the Aunts and “Red Centres” demonstrates the unfair oppression and indoctrination of the women and potential Handmaids within the society. This type of control can be compared to

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 poems, My Parents Kept Me from Children Who Were Rough by Stephen Spender and Mother Who Gave Me Life by Gwen Harwood, and the novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood use language as a mechanism to effectively convey aspects of power, including personal, authoritative and feminine power. The attainment of an individual’s personal power can have consequent impacts on other individuals. Dominant individuals in society can express authoritative power over those with less by stripping them of their identities in order to empower themselves. Fertility and the ability to procreate equip women with feminine power; however it is this power which dehumanises them.

It is hard to perceive Offred as a rebel. However if Offred is at all

In “The Handmaids Tale”, author Margaret Atwood vividly illustrates the repulsive society of Gilead, that is strictly regulated by a Theocracy. In a Theocracy both religion and the government is one entity that rules under the teachings of the Bible and God. In Gilead, every inhabitant has an occupation based on gender and class that they must entirely devote themselves too. The authoritarian rule of Gilead disciplines many characters into being docile, obedient and submissive in consequence of modified communication. Gilead is able to drastically change and maintain order in this society by the manipulation and alteration of phrases. Through the perception of color, defined phrases and biblical ceremonies is that Gilead is able to suppress an entire society. Gilead imposes compliancy to a Theocracy by the use of the colored uniforms, defines freedom, biblical references and objects such as a wall.

In The Handmaid’s Tale, the author, Margaret Atwood, creates a dystopian society that is under theocratic rule. From this theocracy, each individual’s freedom is, for the most part, taken away. The Handmaid’s Tale creates a dystopia by placing restrictions on the individual’s freedom, using propaganda to control its citizens, and by having citizens of Gilead live in dehumanized ways. Furthermore, the creation of a hierarchal system in Gilead caused its citizens to lose the ability to feel empathy towards one another. In the search to create a perfect society, Gilead caused more harm and problems than expected which created a dystopia rather than a utopia.

The Handmaid’s Tale is a distillation of the real-world events that were happening before the book was published. In this novel, she talks about a handmaid living in the Gilead Republic, newly formed republic that is controlled by a theocratic dictatorship government. Theocratic dictatorship is a type of government in which laws are based on a particular religion. One leader, a dictator, rules the government, and there is neither power nor person above the leader. In the Gilead Republic, the system forces its citizens to obey its laws, and follow its agendas absolutely. Thus, the theocratic dictatorship changed the ordinary ways of life because it forced its people to live with in a patriarchal system

“The Handmaid’s Tale shares with many futuristic dystopias, certainly ‘1984’, an interesting mode whereby our time in retrospect is heavy with nostalgia” Bernard Richards (3). ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ belongs to this genre of anti-utopian (dystopian) science fiction. It is set in the late twentieth century when democratic institutions have been violently overthrown and replaced by the new fundamentalist Republic of Gilead. In the novel the majority are suppressed using a “Bible-based” religion as an excuse for the suppression.