Have you ever felt like you were losing your identity? Personally not literally. What do you do? How do you hold on to the parts of you that make you, you? Keeping one’s identity is the only way to remain true to an individual’s foundation. Identity resides with background, family, personality, friends, etc. It is important to cherish little details of one’s life and to establish them as a remembrance of one’s identity. In Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid's Tale, Offred continuously reminisced about her past. This guided her through an oppressive society that tried to strip away her identity. Offred connects to her true identity when she visits her life before being a Handmaid, with Moira and with Luke. The memories that she holds contributes …show more content…
Offred realizes that before she was forced into the oppressive society of Gilead, she was a regular girl, a girl with a real name. Offred expresses,“My name isn’t Offred, I have another name which nobody uses now because it’s forbidden… I keep the knowledge of this name like something hidden, some treasure I’ll come back to dig up, one day” (84). Offred recognizes that she is not the girl the Commanders, the Wives and the Marthas are trying to make her. She is not Offred but also she is not the girl she used to be. She understands that the person she is now is just temporary and that one day she will obtain her name again. Holding the knowledge of her birth name preserves her apprehension of her true identity. Offred knowing that she is a human and not something that can be labeled helps her stay close to true identity and preserve through in the …show more content…
Luke was one person that treated Offred like an actual human being. He loved her, respected her and believed in her. Living in Gilead, Offered started to believe that she was just a shadow, a body that was used for sex, she was broken. Luke was the only person that could make her feel again. She cried, “I want Luke here so badly. I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable” (97). Offred longs for genuine affection that Luke gave to her when she was free. He made her feel like a human. She was happy and loved. Offred holds on to these emotions of love and value and what it used to feel like. It adds to her identity of being a free person, a person that could once feel pleasure. She strives to be with Luke one day again. Her strong love for Luke assists the strive to survive in Gilead. Luke, as well as their daughter, constitute as sense of support living in the society. Offred constantly wonders about her daughter, “Is she dead?” “Is she not?” “Does she remember her mother?” These are the questions that are constantly running through Offred’s mind. She thinks “about a girl who did not die when she was five, who still does exist”(64). She continues to agree with the people who said that it would be easier to think her daughter was dead. She said, “They were right, it’s easier, to think of her as dead. I don’t have to hope then, or make a
Offred is the protagonist and narrator of the “The Handmaid’s Tale”. As one of the rare fertile women in this dystopian world, she is put at the bottom of the social hierarchy as a Handmaid, where her sole purpose is to provide children for the Commander and his Wife. Despite being the protagonist, Offred is a passive character who generally conforms to the social stereotypes in Gilead due to her cowardice. Despite this, there are some moments where the reader is able to acknowledge the degree of power she holds within this society.
In the novel Atwood writes how Offred the main character transitions from her life before to a Handmaid. Offred wasn’t her real name but the name that was given to her when the Gilead society formed. Prior to the Gilead forming Offred lived with her husband and
Offred, within the novel, is seen as being in one of the lowest classes within the hierarchy of women only putting her above the women who are sent to the colonies. Unlike the handmaids, the Martha, who are helping ladies to the Wives, talk about Offred like she is not in their present but viewed her as “a household chore,one among many”(Atwood 48). Although the Martha are women too, they have more control than Offred. By viewing Offred as a household chore conveys that Offred is an inconvenience but still a necessary part of Gilead. Speaking about Offred like this emphasizes that she is below them in the status of society and they are not seen as equals. In addition, Offred, being a handmaid, wasn’t allow to talk to the Wives in a direct manner (Atwood 14-15). By Offred not being allowed to talk to the Wives illustrates that the Wives authority over the handmaids. Furthermore, the handmaid’s are viewed as less and “[reduced]... to the slavery status of being mere ‘breeders’” (Malak). By conveying the handmaids are slaves shows are they force without consent to have sex with men and that the handmaid focus is to breed, unlike the Martha, aunts, and Wives. Moreover, the class system within the female hierarchy of Gilead is utilized as a political tool thus adding to the assumption
Imagine not being able to go out, all you do is just stay inside doing nothing, and when you are able to go out they send you to do errands. Offred is a handmaid for a new society that took over a part of the United States. Her world consist of having sexual intercourse or a ‘Ceremony’ with a specific male once a month in order to reproduce and give birth. She also isn't able to communicate with others. In the novel if handmaid’s get pregnant they aren’t allowed to keep the child, they eventually give it to the Wife, the partner of the Commander, who then cares for it and acts as if it’s one of her own.
Offred narrates by describing her daily routine, in which she talks about her new life in Gilead. Often times she slips into flashbacks and glimpses of what her life once was. In the society previous to Gilead, Offred had engaged in a situation, in which she had an affair with a married man by the name of Luke. As their affair continued on, Luke left his wife in order to marry Offred. Once Luke and Offred were together they had a child together. Offred reveals the events that led up to the society of Gilead through her flashbacks. From the narrative unveiling of events, Offred explains to the reader that prior to Gilead, the society was one in which pornography was readily available, pollution and other hazardous waste spills affected fertility rates, and prostitution was prominent. Then a group of people were able to get the
Offred never fully encompasses the life of a handmaid, because she has the hopes of being united with her husband and daughter. Even when Offred was sent to the Rachel and Leah Center, where all fertile women were sent to denounce their former lives and accept their new roles in society, she still tried to find a way to escape with her friend Moira. Offred lets the viewers know that she is not going to conform to the society by some of the remarks she makes. For instance, Offred says, “We are two-legged wombs, that’s all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices” (Atwood, 1985, p.136). This hints to the audience that she knows her place in this society, and it is not the place she wants to be in for a long time.
Offred's memories are a way for her to escape a society riddled with hopelessness. The authoritarian society of Gilead prevents her from
Offred chooses to be a Handmaid rather than result to the unknown. Gilead is totalitarian and made Offred leave her husband and daughter to be a Handmaid.
Imagine a world where identity is stripped away, something as basic as your name is taken and replaced for another showing that you are no longer your own individual you are now property. 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.
Because of the immoral actions against women in the Republic of Gilead, rebellion groups such as Mayday are formed in order to overthrow the government of Gilead. Thus, the biggest conflict in The Handmaid’s Tale centers around Mayday’s attempts to rebel. Eventually, Offred, the protagonist, becomes associated with the rebel group Mayday and attempts to escape with them. However, the fate of Offred is unknown to the reader (The Handmaid’s
In the society we live in people celebrate the ceremony of birth. Birth is concerned a beautiful thing, and females are given the choice of who they want to reproduce with. However, in Gilead, Offred is a handmaid, which means she must reproduce with The Commander to keep Gilead populated.
Her belief gives her a false sense of security as well as her unwillingness to rebel due to fear of the Eyes. Her conversations with others are "Praise be," "Blessed be the fruit," and "May the Lord open" it is difficult for Offred or any women to really have a meaningful conversation for fear that anyone is a spy. Everything that Offred does is now part of the norm of society. She doesn't question her duties just does what is expected of her. As Offred begins a secret relationship with Nick she believes she has reclaimed a tiny piece of her past. She becomes addicted to the small amount of companionship from Nick, causing her to turn a blind eye to the injustices going on around her. She feels empowered because it was her own choice. When in reality she did what was expected of her. Using her body in order to produce a child.
Although Offred accepts the standards and criterions of her society, she keeps her individuality and refuses to forget the past. She remembers having had an identity of her own and strives to hold on to it as best as she can. She puts a claim on her temporary room in her Commander's house; it becomes a sanctuary for her true self. Her room becomes a place of
Offred's character is required because she gives flashbacks to the time before Gilead, giving the reader an idea of the events leading up to the beginning of the novel. How bad the world before Gilead sounds, the world of Gilead is much worse.
As the female narrators reads the story to the audience we realize that she often has flashbacks to former times, when the United States was still a nation. She recalls the happier times she had with her mother, her close friends, and her lover and husband Luck. In the Pre-Gilead period, she also had a little daughter, June, with Luck. Offred's mother was a single mother and feminist activist. Her best friend was Moira, who was also fiercely independent.