Identity In The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Over the past 200 years sexual liberation and freedom have become topics of discussions prevalent within western culture and society. With the recent exploration of sexuality a new concept of sexual and gender identity has emerged and is being analyzed in various fields of study. The ideology behind what defines gender and how society explains sex beyond biology has changed at a rapid pace. In response various attempts to create specific and catch all definitions of growing gender and sexual minorities has been on going. This has resulted in the concept of gender becoming a multi- layered shifting hypothesis to which society is adapting. Since the 19th-century, philosophers and theorists have continued to scrutinize gender beyond biological and social interpretation. Margaret Atwood 's The Handmaid 's Tale captures the limitations and social implications forced upon a set gender based on societal expectations. Gender is a social construct that limits the individual to the restrictions and traditions of a society, or if it’s an individually formed self-identification of sex and sexuality that is formed autonomously. Evidence of gender establishment can be seen within literary works and supported by various schools of gender and sexuality theory.

At first, The Handmaid’s Tale (1986) may purely seem like a reconstruction of events. However, when examined more closely the reader can see that Atwood has used many narrative and poetic techniques. Each of these devices develop the novel into so much more than just a simple reconstruction of events, it becomes a precise and planned piece of work; a documented life experience that slowly unfolds. The reader becomes involved in the story and in Offred’s life; they go through her pain, suffering and occasional joy and trusts what she is telling them to be the truth. Yet, when the novel

Margaret Atwood 's The Handmaid 's Tale analyzes human nature by presenting an internal conflict in Offred: acceptance of current social trends (victim mentality) -vs- resistance for the sake of individual welfare and liberties (humanity). This conflict serves as a warning to society, about the dangers of the general acceptance of social evils and boldly illustrates the internal struggle that rebels face in choosing to rebel.

Throughout history, the desire for power has lead once peaceful societies to war. The necessity to be in control of one's surroundings has ended with unnecessary bloodshed. Typically these battles occur over some sort of prize such as money, but when there is nothing to be gained other than one’s freedom, the same principals apply. In the novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale”, by Margaret Atwood, the desire for power in the form of freedom is the main conquest which all characters face, and how they overcome adversity to gain such power is what defines their character.

In “The Handmaid 's Tale” by Margaret Atwood, there is the addressing of freedom, abuse of power, feminism, rebellion and sexuality. The audience is transported to a disparate time where things normalized in our current society are almost indistinguishable. Atwood uses each character carefully to display the set of theme of rebellion within the writing, really giving the reader a taste of what the environment is like by explaining detailed interactions, and consequences as well as their role in society.

In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Offred recounts the story of her life and that of others in Gilead, but she does not do so alone. The symbolic meanings found in the dress code of the women, the names/titles of characters, the absence of the mirror, and the smell and hunger imagery aid her in telling of the repugnant conditions in the Republic of Gilead. The symbols speak with a voice of their own and in decibels louder than Offred can ever dare to use. They convey the social structure of Gileadean society and carry the theme of the individual's loss of identity.

In the book The Handmaid 's Tale by Margaret Atwood, the foremost theme is identity, due to the fact that the city where the entire novel takes place in, the city known as the Republic of Gilead, often shortened to Gilead, strips fertile women of their identities. Gilead is a society that demands the women who are able to have offspring be stripped of all the identity and rights. By demeaning these women, they no longer view themselves as an individual, but rather as a group- the group of Handmaids. It is because of the laws that have been established that individuality has been demolished. From these points that will be raised, it can be concluded that a handmaid’s role in Gilead is more important than their happiness, and mental wellbeing.

Gilead is a society not far from the present and it based around one central idea, control of reproduction by using women’s bodies as political instruments. Handmaids are women who the state took complete control of through their political subjugation. They are not allowed to vote, hold property, read or do anything that can make them independent from their husband and the state. These handmaids are reduced to their fertility and treated like nothing more than a set of ovaries and a womb. They lose their identity and become an object of the state. The narrator of The Handmaids Tale is a handmaid by the name of Offred. The novel takes place in first person point of view and this allows the readers to see how she is treated and all the events that take place for her. First person point of view allows the reader a closer view as to how a central theme develops by giving the reader a firsthand experience from the mind of the narrator.

“Dystopian literature invites the reader to reflect upon the mutability of identity.” By comparing The Handmaid’s Tale and The Road, discuss how far, and in what ways the two novels support or refute this claim?

Margaret Atwood's novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, satirizes the movement of religious conservatives that was occurring during its time of publication in the 1980’s. The beliefs expressed by these conservatives are taken to the extreme in the book when a totalitarian government creates a new society that reverses all advancements of women. Through these reversals and formed hierarchies, Atwood creatively makes a statement about the unfair molds in real life that both genders try to break free from. In other words, the story inflates the roles of men and women through the creation of strict regulations in order to show the discriminatory stereotypes that are a reality today.

The two novels, The Handmaid’s Tale and Indian Horse, are moving, first-person novels of personal difficulty in a narrow-minded and controlled environment. In this essay, I will reveal a multitude of similarities and differences between the two books, focusing on the settings and the similarities between the two societies, as well as the differences between the key characters.

In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, one discovers the dystopian society of the Republic of Gilead. This society was created in order to keep the birth rates from the continuous decline and deals with the problem by requiring women to have government-sanctioned sex. Women are only treated as if they are a pair of ovaries and the only purpose that they have is to keep the country populated . If a Handmaid is unable to reproduce, they are punished for their failures. “Having given birth successfully, the Handmaid can rest assured that she will not be sent the Colonies, where ‘unwomen’ clean up toxic dumps and radiation spills. ” (Miner 149). If a Handmaid is unable to do their duties, they are sent away, and there is a great chance they will not return. The sex they are giving to their Commander is in no way romantic, nor is there any real love involved. Offred, a Handmaid, remembers the life she once lived before becoming a Handmaid. The women who become Handmaid’s are given names that are not really their own. “My name isn’t Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses anymore because it’s forbidden. I tell myself it doesn’t matter, your name is like your telephone number, useful only to others; but what I tell myself is wrong, it does matter” (Atwood 84). The government has brainwashed these women into believing that they do not really matter and they have no real purpose. The government has taken away their names and given them the names of their Commander. In

In The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood explores the role that women play in society and the consequences of a countryís value system. She reveals that values held in the United States are a threat to the livelihood and status of women. As one critic writes, “the author has concluded that present social trends are dangerous to individual welfare” (Prescott 151).

For this essay, we focused strictly on critics' reactions to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. For the most part, we found two separate opinions about The Handmaid's Tale, concerning feminism. One opinion is that it is a feminist novel, and the opposing opinion that it is not. Feminism: A doctrine advocating social, political, and economic rights for women equal to those of men as recorded in Webster's Dictionary. This topic is prevalent in the novel The Handmaid's Tale. Margaret Atwood, a Canadian writer, spends most of her time featuring women in her books, novels, and poetry that examine their relationships in society. In the book Atwood centers her novel on a girl whom

In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and George Orwell’s 1984, both authors write dystopian novels about corrupt societies in which individuals have manipulated and forced to live under totalitarian rule. They create the novels to ridicule their own societies and as a warning to future societies. The central characters, Offred and Winston Smith are similar in ways they are presented living in dystopian societies. Margaret Atwood and George Orwell use their novels to showcase the importance of self-identity, and how simple it is to lose self-identity when one is expected to conform to the ideologies of society.