The Handmaid's Tale Essay

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.

Throughout the course of world history on Earth, humans have always worked harder and harder in order to improve society and make it more perfect, although it still hasn’t been done quite yet, because it is merely impossible to achieve perfection in a world with close to seven billion people. There is a very distinct difference between a utopia, which can also be known as perfection, and a dystopia, which can also be known as a tragedy; and the outcomes normally generate from the people in charge or the authority that sets up the foundation, the rules, and the regulations for a society. In the Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, The Republic of Gilead is created by a powerful authority group called the Eyes after a huge government take over and the assassination of the US president. It’s very strict rules and goals are set up to protect women, to increase childbirth, and to keep all violence, men, and powerful social media under control. The novel is set in a first person point of view and the narrator, Offred, tells her story to us readers about her experiences as a handmaid and how her life was completely turned upside down. Throughout the course of the novel Offred reveals many sides of herself; although her thoughts do not remain consistent, her personality and opinion tends to change revealing, that she is hesitant and strong because she learns to make the best of what she has and silently overcome the system of the Republic of Gilead.

The literary masterpiece The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, is a story not unlike a cold fire; hope peeking through the miserable and meaningless world in which the protagonist gets trapped. The society depicts the discrimination towards femininity, blaming women for their low birth rate and taking away the right from the females to be educated ,forbidding them from reading or writing. These appear in Ethan Alter’s observations that:

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.

In her book, “The Handmaid’s Tale”, Margaret Atwood describes a dystopian society in which all of the progress in the feminist movement that was made during the twentieth century is reversed and the nation is reverted back to its traditional patriarchal ways. The story is told from the point of view of Offred, a woman who was separated from her husband and child and forced into the life of a handmaid. In this book, Atwood explores the oppression of women through her use of literary tools such as figurative language, symbols, and literary allusions.

One of Atwood’s bestselling novel is The Handmaid’s Tale, a disturbing dystopian fiction novel. The Handmaid’s Tale is a complex tale of a woman’s life living in a society that endorses sexual slavery and inequality through oppression and fear. The female characters in Margaret Atwood’s novel demonstrates how these issues affects women’s lives. Offred is the individual with whom we sympathize and experience these issues. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood addresses her perception of the ongoing feminism issues during her time; reproduction rights, workforce inequalities and gender discrimination. Atwood uses her talent to write The Handmaid Tale to express her view on past, present, and future women’s issues.

“The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation” by Eudora Welty. In the book, The Handmaid’s Tale, the series of past and present events are not in chronological order like most books. The book is constructed like the mind, it is in no particular order. However, the passage at chapter 41, page 307-308 if read thoroughly with the use of texture can bring out new interesting findings. When studied with the use of literal content, plots and characters connect the passage. Analysing this passage critically, gives out insights into characters and the narrator’s life. Through an exhaustive deconstruction of textures, literal

The Handmaids Tale, written by Margaret Attwood, goes on to explore the consequences that come to be from the reversal of womens rights in a society called Gilead. It is what one can consider a cautionary tale. In the new world of Gilead, a group of conservative religious extremists have taken power, and have turned the sexual revolution upside down. The society of Gilead is founded on what is to be considered a return to traditional values, gender roles and the subjugation of women by men, and the Bible is used as the guiding principle. It differs completely from the society, which was once the place in which Feminists argued for liberation from the traditional gender roles. What women had worked hard for in the

In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, power is emphasized multiple times throughout the text. The plot of the story consists of wealthy men being the overseers of the economy. Since the birth rate of healthy children has drastically decreased due to environmental problems, women are only wanted for their ability to reproduce offspring and replenish the world. Therefore, the poorer women are taken away from their homes and placed with wealthy couples to bear offspring for them. The main character, Offred, is one of the many women who was taken from her family and placed in the home of a Commander and his wife. Since the role of each societal class’ power has changed, different characters in the text have subtle ways of displaying power.

In The Handmaid’s Tale, much use is made of imagery; to enable the reader to create a more detailed mental picture of the novel’s action and also to intensify the emotive language used. In particular, Atwood uses many images involving flowers and plants.

     Are the women of Gilead aware that they are being controlled by the society? In Margaret Atwood¡¯s The Handmaid¡¯s Tale, the theme of control is a very important factor of the book. In the story, at the Republic of Gilead, the women are being controlled by the society to do what the society wants them to do. The handmaids are brainwashed before they start working for the society. But since the brainwashing happens so naturally over a period of time, the handmaids don¡¯t fully realize that they have been brainwashed by the society to do what the society wants them to do.

In Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, the character of Offred is restricted by the severe regulations of her society. The once democratic United States of America with equality for all has been turned into the theocratic and totalitarian Republic of Gilead. When Offred is affected by the strict standards of this society, she responds in audacious, yet furtive ways in order to not attract the attention of the omniscient Eyes who control the society and punish offenders

traditional communities, particularly in the more remote villages, she is still expected to shave her head and live like an ascetic, sleeping on the ground, living only to fast and pray for her departed spouse. (50)

If Luke and Kevin are examples of how the well-intentioned, sympathetic progressive men can be unknowingly complicit in the disenfranchisement and suffering of women, Waterford exemplifies how dangerous a man can become when he is misled by extremist feminist rhetoric. As a Commander in Gilead, Waterford exemplifies the very privilege that comes with being a man: that he “want[s] [Offred’s] life to be bearable to [her]” (Atwood, 187), without the slightest idea that her life could not be anything but miserable. Only a man who is secure in his rights and privileges could be oblivious enough to indulge in the delusion that he could create a “bearable” state of life for someone whose rights have been taken away. What sets Waterford apart from

‘’Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself’’ (John Locke). Therefore, societies should ensure that citizens are free to follow their individual desires for property because property is what ultimately determines the personality and value of each person in society. Nevertheless, totalitarian regimes are forced to restrain both intellectual and private property in order to ensure citizens follow the government’s revolutionary and oppressive rhetoric. Hence, this paper explores the role of property in two of the most well known fundamentalist societies in literature history: Utopia by Sir Thomas More, and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Both authors acknowledge that property represents a significant threat to governments that aim to have an equal society where every citizen contributes to the well being of the nation. Thus, property is restricted because it fosters individualism. First, through the analysis of More’s ideal society, one can understand the importance of restricting private property to sustain a communist commonwealth. Secondly, Atwood successfully illustrates the role of intellectual property in a society that aims to dehumanize women to ensure their contribution to the common good of society. Therefore, the contrast of More’s Utopia and Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale utopian societies demonstrate that in order for all-powerful governing systems to exist they need to strongly restrict freedom of property from citizens