The Handmaid Analysis

No one really knew what happened in the colonies, so most women either chose to become a jezebel rather than a handmaid. Within the novel characters like Ofglen and Janine have temptations to do something they are not supposed to, to get sent to the colonies. Towards the ending of the novel, Offred is pushed to her limits when getting caught by Serena Joy. After walking upstairs, because she was ordered to, she starts considering possible ways out of the situation. “There are a number of things I could do.

From the outset of 'The Handmaids Tale' the reader is placed in an unknown world, where the rights and freedom of women have been taken away. We follow the narrative journey of a handmaid, named Offred.

Without having Moira there with her Offred begins to become slightly more rebellious. Knowing the Handmaids are not allowed to discuss each other, Offred pursues to ask Aunt Lydia if she knows where Moira is. Through this action does Offred also start to look into the rebellious attitudes of her mother.

The author expresses Offred’s lack of personal identity through the use of repetitions. When observing her room, the narrator asks if “each of [the handmaids] has the same print, the same chair [and] the same white curtains.” (12) This line points out the possibility that everything that handmaids use is standardized. The repetition of the word “same” highlights this. It also emphasises that Offred’s individuality is taken away. The government strengthens its control over the handmaids and other

Despite the little dependence on women, they are still objectified and subjected to injustice because of their gender, regardless if they were a female in general or as a poor female. As something as simple as what a person is born with affects the respect that is given to them. Margaret Atwood formulates Offred’s personality much like any other handmaid in the community. Offred becomes familiar with the functionality and role of women in the community, therefore she adjusts herself in order to be up to par with the unethical standard. “I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born. (Atwood, 75). To be what is required of her, Offred must act unhuman because the expectations of females exceed the

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.

I noticed that the Handmaids exclusively wear red this reminded me of the book The Scarlet Letter because in the book the protagonist is forced to wear a red “A”. She is forced to wear a scarlet A because she had an affair, they did this to publicly humiliate her. The Handmaids are not necessarily being ostracized but they do commit adultery because the commanders are married. Offred is isolated, she eats alone can not see her family and the only people she regularly talks to are the marthas and Ofglen.

Offred has a flashback about a documentary she watched on the Holocaust. In the documentary, a mistress of one of the Nazi guards was interviewed. The mistress tried to convince the interviewers that he was not a monster even though people said he was. Offred starts to question what she was thinking about at that time, since no one asked what her relationship with him was or if she loved him. As Offred reflects on the documentary, she also tells the reader that what she remembers is the made-up story told by the mistress – the covered up truth, the reality.

The Handmaid’s Tale is about Offered as she shares her thoughts and experiences in a journal-like form and provides some advice. Offred is a lower class female who has been taken from her husband and daughter at 5 years old to be a handmaid for the red commander at the red center. The point of this center is to reproduce with the Commander

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.

This dystopian tale is told by Offred who is a handmaid to her commander. She is just there to buy groceries, play scrabble and get pregnant.

Offred who is the protagonist of the book “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood is having a interior monologue in Chapter one. Offred is remembering whens she first gets to the house and she is still sleeping in the centre with the other women. She feels alone because she cannot speak freely and express her herself also because she is not with any family or friends. Whenever she gets the chance to speak to someone or be intimate with her friends because they are lacking, it has to be secretive because they are not allowed to hold hands etc. The other women as well as her have suffered a lot physically and psychologically and it seen through the way she expresses herself in this passage.

Offred lives in a house as its describing being white. She changes her outfit and puts one a red dress. Later on she meets Rita who’s a Martha at the kitchen. She notices she's wearing a similar outfit as her , but green. The narrator wants to talk to her but the Martha's are not allowed to talk to the Handmaids..

Unlike Moira, Offred is desperate to conceive the Commanderís child in order to survive. Both women parallel many women in todayís society. On one hand, there are feminists who rebel against society no matter what it costs. On the other hand, there are women who are just trying to survive and find their place in a society in which they are second class citizens. In the novel, Offred is torn between smearing her face with butter to keep her complexion and hanging herself. In the same manner, she is caught between accepting the status of women under the new regime and following her own desires to gain knowledge and fall in love. Offred doesnít know whether to accept the circumstances and die inside, or to fulfill her own desires, set herself free like Moira has done. The contrast between Moira and Offred reveals Atwoodís attitude towards women and their sometimes self-destructive submission. Atwood shows the oppression of women through the extreme setting of the story, but she also allows the reader to see how women passively oppress themselves.

Offred, not her real name but the name given to her by her occupation, is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. The Republic of Gilead is a