Rationale In The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Attwood

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

In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood connects the effects of World War II on American citizens to the duties of the citizens of Gilead in order to portray how the government is dependent on the sacrifices its people make for the common good. According to the National WWII Museum, during WWII, civilians were urged to salvage materials in order to provide more supplies for the military. Substances like sugar, food, and gas were rationed. Materials such as tires, rubber, paper, metals, silk, and string were recycled (“Take a Closer Look: America Goes to War”). The practice of recycling and salvaging depicts how civilians would sacrifice some of their luxuries for more common items in order to contribute to the war effort. Offred is not

The Handmaid's Tale has been referred to as a ‘scathing satire' and a ‘dire warning'. The author, Margaret Atwood, is warning us not to take our rights and freedom for granted. There are many significant examples in the book which support this idea such as how Gilead took away all the rights and freedom of people, women are sometimes blamed for their own rape, and people didn't have the right to use birth control and abortion.

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 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 the Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, life in the newly formed dystopian society of Gilead is partial to the rights of women. Once the college town of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Gilead has produced laws that prohibit women from writing, reading, conversing in a casual manner, having jobs, purchasing items, and even forming intimate and meaningful relationships. They are brought down to just a means of reproduction. Those who reproduce are called Handmaids and one such Handmaid is Offred. Her way of adapting to such a drastic change of lifestyle is to separate her mind from her body, to dissociate herself from what’s happening around her and to her. Pollock, the author of The Brain in Defense Mode, cites a definition of dissociation

Psychological criticism has roots as far back as the fourth century BC, when Aristotle “commented on the effects of tragedy on an audience, saying hat by evoking pity and fear, tragedy creates a cathartic of those emotions” (Dobie 54). More recently, however, psychological criticism has been shaped and influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud. He developed theories concerning “the workings of the human psyche, its formations, its organization, and its maladies” that, while further refined by other theorists, are still the basis of the modern approach to literary criticism (Dobie 54). Freud’s theory of the tripartite psyche is used to classify and define the conscious and unconscious mind into the id, ego, and superego. When examined using this theory, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian novel about a patriarchal totalitarian government that has replaced the United States of America, is particularly interesting.

“I feel thankful to her. She has died that I may live. I will mourn later” (Atwood 286). Many sacrifices and hard decisions are made by unorthodox people to keep what they believe in alive. There would be no rebellions and no change without these nonconforming people. Offred, the main character and a Handmaiden, would have faced eminent death in her strictly orthodox world had it not been for the rebelliousness of those who died before her wanting change. The Republic of Gilead, previously known as the United States, is a theocracy. Environmental events and population decline prompt changes. A caste system is created, and each caste performs specific duties. They are punished if the laws are not followed. The Eyes are at the top of the caste system; they make sure the laws are obeyed. Next are the Commanders and their Wives. The Handmaiden’s main task is to produce a child with their Commander. In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, some unorthodox characters challenge the theocracy such as Offred, Ofglen, and Nick.

I agree to a large extent that a writer’s task is to make insignificant things significant. It allows authors to shed light on important, but maybe overlooked, issues plaguing society and make the reader appreciate what we originally took for granted. This is evident through Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale, a work of speculative fiction that depicts a dystopian future world called Gilead. In this novel, Atwood does a great job of highlighting the significance of feminism or specifically the lack thereof and warns the reader of the consequences that comes along with not recognising the effects on women in a patriarchal society.

‘Honey, do you know what they’re saying about you? They’re saying you’re uncouth, uncouth’. Judith spat the word out like a seed in a cherry, her red lips forming a perfect circle. Jackie had a sudden

Freewill and determinism have been a controversial philosophical problem for thousands of years, it is taken into question on whether human beings have an ability to control over their decisions in life or being constrained by the pre-deterministic future, beyond their understanding. The problem began in Ancient Greek and still rumble among modern philosophers and psychologists, but surprisingly, a writer - Margaret Atwood has successfully described if not answer the issue of independence and passivity in The Handmaid’s Tale. A dystopian novel set in the post-apocalyptic America now so-called Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian government. With the critically low reproduction rates due to biological warfare, the Handmaids are allocated to

“There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from,” (Atwood 24). The Handmaid’s Tale, written by Margaret Atwood, is a novel set in the near future where societal roles have severely changed. The most notable change is that concerning women. Whereas, in the past, women have been gaining rights and earning more “freedom to’s”, the women in the society of The Handmaid’s Tale have “freedom froms”. They have the freedom from being abused and having sexist phrases yelled at them by strangers. While this may seem like a safer society, all of the “safeness” comes at a drastic cost. Atwood depicts a dystopia in The Handmaid’s Tale

Wrap us up in lavish, itchy dresses and yank our hair into tight, neat ponytails held together by shiny baubles and with glittering jewels clipped to the ends. She’d slip golden hoops through the holes in our ears, and polish our faces bright with cocoa butter. It didn’t matter that the cloth scratched us till we rashed, or that the buckles on our miniature shoes were too tight; we were beautiful. We didn’t need to speak and it didn’t matter how much we complained, so long as strangers could look at us and coo at our doll-like bodies, at our big eyes and mimic our gurgling babbles. So long as we were beautiful

Novels can be developed through the point of view of events and characters. I Am Mordred develops a limited event for third person point of view in the Prologue and Epilogue, while Books One through Four develop a less limited point of view for characters.

Intro: The Handmaid's tale by Margaret Atwood is about a dystopian American society. The book is set in a disclosed future and deals with conflicts of the right of women we do not see today. Morality is based on a person's views of good vs evil. In the book The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood makes her character flawed in a sense of morality to show her rebellion against her society. The reader is then able to see when the charters feels uncomfortable or unethical.