Power In 'The Handmaid's Tale'

Though the English language has its roots in a male-dominated society where the true meaning of words are now taken for granted. In The Handmaid’s Tale, language facilitates power. In order to effectively rule over class and gender the level of censorship on literature and control of discourses runs high. Atwood uses word choice to expose the shocking structures of the Gilead society and how faulty its foundations are as it was built upon gender inequality. The repercussions of gendered language are evident throughout the novel, implying that the sexist structure of Gilead is a result of oppressive language modern Americans accept and use in every day talk.

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.

Books that are banned or challenged often have controversial topics but many don't consider the positive effects of these books. The Handmaid's Tale is an example of this because despite including uncomfortable topics, it also offers meaningful themes and ideas.

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.

Margaret Atwood's renowned science fiction novel, The Handmaid's Tale, was written in 1986 during the rise of the opposition to the feminist movement. Atwood, a Native American, was a vigorous supporter of this movement. The battle that existed between both sides of the women's rights issue inspired her to write this work. Because it was not clear just what the end result of the feminist movement would be, the author begins at the outset to prod her reader to consider where the story will end. Her purpose in writing this serious satire is to warn women of what the female gender stands to lose if the feminist movement were to fail. Atwood envisions a society of extreme changes in

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 words control and Gilead, the setting for the novel "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood, are interchangeable. Not only is control a pivotal feature of the novel and its plot, it consequently creates the subplots, the characters and the whole world because of its enormity in the Republic of Gilead. Resistance also features heavily, as does its results, mainly represented in the salvagings, particicution and the threat of the colonies.

When dystopian societies are featured, they often show the domination and inferiority of women by men. In Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the establishment of the Republic of Gilead, which projects strict christian polices, addresses the restriction of freedoms from women. This restriction can be shown through the recurring presence of the color red, which constructs an association between femininity and violence. The color red signifies pain, violence and fear. Yet, the undeniable expression of red in“The Handmaid’s Tale,” highlights the inferior circumstances of the women suffering in this male-dominated Gilead society. In comparison, Octavia E. Butler’s “Parable of the Sower,” is set in a community that greatly enforces traditional gender roles, hindering the ability of survival for women. The status of being a woman alone, fabricates an intense state of vulnerability and exposure to sexual violence. Through the apparent existence of Gilead, in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and the gated community highlighted in the “Parable of the Sower,” the presence of power and freedom are emphasized through the major oppression of women figures.

Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaids Tale, is a story of a dystopian society set in the land of Gilead. The premise of The Handmaids Tale is the creation a masculine dominated civilization in which not only are the rights of women oppressed, but the basic rights of humanity. Everything, even and up to sex, has been desensitized, which destroys the concept of family, as men have sex with and impregnate handmaids, not their wives, as a means of conception and reproduction. While the officials of the Republic of Gilead attempt to suppress all evidence of the past, it is impossible to do so. The novels main character, and narrative voice, is a handmaid named Offred. Early on in the novel, she describes her home in this future, tyrannical society. The glimpse she provides, through symbolism, demonstrates to the reader the main themes of the novel, and allows the reader to identify the failures of Gilead in upholding its principles. A closer look at chapter two of The Handmaids Tale foreshadows many of the thematic elements established throughout the novel. The idea of family, represented by the Late Victorian house, the necessity of both the wives and the handmaids, represented by the color of the flowers, and the notion of time, represented by the grandfather clock are the books integral themes.

As you read through the handmaid’s tale you see the relationships of the characters develop and the fight for power, however small that glimpse of power may be. The images of power can be seen through out the novel, but there are major parts that stand out to the reader from the aunt’s in the training centre to the secret meetings between the Commander and Offred.

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a disturbing novel that displays the presence and manipulation of power. This is displayed throughout the novel and is represented significantly in three ways. As the book takes place in the republic of Gilead, the elite in society are placed above every other individual who are not included in their level. Secondly, men are placed at the top of the chain and they significantly overpower women in the society (elite or not). Finally the individuals within the elite society also overpower each other and have their own separate roles. This can be interpreted as a chain. Men of the elite are placed at the top, the men who less elite

governed by men. The novel is based on a futuristic time period where women are restricted

In this excerpt from the first chapter of her work, Atwood manages to introduce the reader to several key characters while simultaneously showing the extent of oppression in The Republic of Gilead. She is orienting the reader in this unfamiliar world, describing the setting and conditions of its people. It quickly becomes clear that the women being described are under constant watch, their every move prescribed. The narrator’s diction when describing the nature of these interactions establishes a gender hierarchy — in telling us that they took place “almost without sound” and “in the semidarkness,” we understand that the women would be subject to some form of punishment if found out. Likewise, we can infer that this is a patriarchal society.

According to Gilead’s leaders, the United States had an ongoing infertility crisis as well as too much separation of religion and government, prior to the takeover. The Gilead’s founders were called the “Sons of Jacob” that used lobbied for a more extreme Christian bend to the government. Its major national issue, sterility consequent on nuclear and chemical pollution, turns its few fertile women into “Handmaids” to its highest-level Commanders and their wives, using as justification the biblical story of Rachel and Jacob. The barren Rachel directed her husband Jacob to “go in unto” her servant Bilah and “she shall bear upon my knees, that I also may have children by her.” With the rapid rise of industries, a steep increase in pollution and

The Handmaids Tale is a novel by Margret Atwood, it shows woman opression under a regime that reduces female voice and rule. The Handmaids Tale events took place in the Republic of Gilead. A place where a woman lived only to bear children and follows what the aunte train them to do or to say. They've been called "handmaids". We as a middle Eastern people can relate to this novel in so many ways.