Personal Narrative: The Handmaid's Tale

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.

In Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale, the idea of women’s bodies as political instruments and elimination of sexual pleasure is explored. The republic of Gilead “depicts a futuristic society in which a brutal patriarchal regime deprives women of power and subjectivity, enslaving them through a sophisticated, ubiquitous apparatus of surveillance” (Cooper 49). Offred is a “girl” who lives with her commander within Gilead. She is surrounded by girls at his house. When one becomes a woman they have had a baby. Any time before they have a baby they are just girls. They are valued only by their ovaries and wombs. They have no freedom

Parents typically don’t want their children reading in depth books about sex; however, The Handmaid’s Tale offers great fictional examples that teach sexism and the mistreatment of women, yet these examples can lead some in the wrong way. Therefore depending on the view in society, The Handmaid’s tale should be banned or kept to certain areas of the world because of the unfair treatment of women.

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

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.

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.

In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, The Handmaids Tale, religion is presented as a controlling influence, which takes away freedom of individuals. In the 1980s, this was a time of social change, where extreme right-winged fascist regimes such as Moral Majority and Conservative Revival merged religion and politics into a binding precedent. Consequently, Atwood wrote The Handmaids Tale in order to show the male fundamentalist leaders use women as submissive sexual objects under the guidance of religious scripture as justification and created a bleak futuristic society if anyone of these cults became successful. Primarily in the epigraph, Atwood opens with three distinct references to introduce the rules in the society of

Today I woke up with a hectic day ahead of me, my duties stopped me from spending time with my family. As I woke up at dawn the weather outside is wild as I dressed into my finest robe. I eat a small breakfast and then go outside doing my duties. I go outside and I speak to the lord about an trouble that had happened on my land. I then make my way down to the peasants, touching the sick and healing them. After this i would go back into my castle and the lords would give me taxes from the people who have been on my land, also they would report anything they saw in the distance and on the land. Some nobles then came running into the castle, complaining that the peasants and the surf aren't growing enough crops to provide them for there food, I then had to go speak

THE OPPRESSION OF WOMEN IN ATWOOD’S THE HANDMAID’S TALE AND THEIR WAYS OF RESISTING THE REGIME

In Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale, the idea of women’s bodies as political instruments and elimination of sexual pleasure is explored. The republic of Gilead “depicts a futuristic society in which a brutal patriarchal regime deprives women of power and subjectivity, enslaving them through a sophisticated, ubiquitous apparatus of surveillance” (Cooper 49). Offred is a girl who lives with her Commander within Gilead. She is surrounded by girls at his house. When one becomes a woman they have had a baby. Any time before they have a baby they are just girls. They are valued only by their ovaries and wombs. They have no freedom and

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is set in a future time period where the United States is under the control of the Gileadean regime. A terrorist attack leads to the collapse of Congress, the suspension of the Constitution, and the establishment of a theocratic totalitarian government. Men and women are given roles within society; they are Commanders, Eyes, Handmaids, and Marthas. In this novel, Atwood explores a prominent social issue, feminism. The suppression and power of women are examined through the setting and characterization of the novel to help understand the meaning of the novel as a whole.

Once upon a time, I had been thinking that I was the happiest woman in the world. I had a great husband Luke and a little lovely daughter. And I had my best friend Moira. A perfect life! Everything was going well until one day, the terrible day in my life when a new law defined that women could not hold property even doing monetary matters! How unfair it was! “I [felt] as if somebody cut off my feet” (Atwood 179). You may think it was not that bad. Yes, yes, it was not, but it was just a beginning point of my worst life! Look at me. I am a thirty-three-year-old handmaid in the society of Gilead, where everyone calls me, Offred, where men are above and have a power over women who are such a weak gender, and where there is no freedom! I always

In comparison to the short story “Sweat,” Delia’s job is making her husband Sykes appear inferior to her because she is working when he is not. One critic, Cheryl A. Wall states, “Delia’s work is a economic necessity to her husband, but it is also a psychological threat to Sykes as well. In the story Sykes seems to never work at all, so he asserts his manhood mainly by intimidating and betraying his wife” (qtd. in Akins). Wall argues that occurrences such as abuse and restrictions by men are the result of intimidation because a woman is able to gain power within the relationship by working. The kicking of the laundry symbolizes Sykes discontent with Delia’s work and the threat he feels because he is no longer the breadwinner. Her actions, like talking back; solidifies the threat he feels and only intensifies his brutality towards her.

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

In today’s news we see many disruptions and inconsistencies in society, and, according to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, humankind might be headed in that direction. The deterioration of society is a concept often explored biologically in novels, but less common, is the effect on everyday social constructs such as the position of women as a item that can be distributed and traded-in for a ‘better’ product. The Handmaid’s Tale elaborates the concept that, as societal discrimination towards women intensifies, gender equality deteriorates and certain aspects of societal freedoms are lost. Offred’s experience with serving Gilead demonstrates a victim’s perspective and shows how the occurring changes develope the Republic.