The Handmaid 's Tale By Margaret Atwood

It isn't just handmaids, or even only women that have forfeited their personal identity; men have lost theirs as well. Their loss of individualism is symbolized by their generic titles. There are three classes of men in Gilead: the 'Commanders,' the Doctors, and the 'Eyes.' Like the color-coded uniforms of the women, the generic titles of the men announce their function. The Commanders are supposed to fertilize the handmaids; the Doctors examine the handmaids monthly to check for possible problems with their reproductive organs; the Eyes are the spy network of Gilead and are responsible for enforcing discipline. Also like the women's color coded-uniforms, the men's generic titles deprive them of their individuality and reduce them to mere task objects.

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.

Margaret Atwood 's The Handmaid 's Tale is a interesting novel that will have you confused but also have you bitting your nails with intrigue. So many questions might go in your head, at the same time; Atwood wrote this novel so her readers can have curiosity, even after reading the last word of the last paragraph of the last page of the book. One of the main topics of this novel is the effect on society when a women 's fate is taken away from and replaced by a label of their own. The social hierarchy in the novel categorizes its citizens in a way to hold different social norms for each to enforce patriarchy in the society. Even when power is taken away

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.

A form of mental oppression within The Handmaid’s Tale is showcased through the lack of individuality. The fact that in the first chapter, the characters are forbidden to use their real names let alone speaking them, leaving them with the only option which was “to lip-read… watching each other’s mouths. In this way [they] exchanged names from bed to bed (Part 1, Chapter 1, Page 14).” By conveying their names, they are able to hold on to and preserve what little individuality and identity they have left. Ultimately, it reveals how much power this new society has managed to gain and how much the main character clearly lacks within the situation. Moreover, the stative verb “exchanged” and the abstract noun “names” makes the action of telling each other their names come across like a business transaction. This actually highlights the way Gileadean society functions as woman are thought of as nothing but merchandise, objects, that can be sold or this case given away or exchanged to others in order to benefit the rest of society. Furthermore, the fact reflects the society that Atwood grew up in as women were generally thought of as just caregivers which would have significantly lowered self-esteem and brainwashed them into thinking that this is all that they can do; Offred begins to think this very

In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood tells of hardships endured by Offred, a young woman, whose only task in life is to bear children. In this dystopian world, the government has fallen, the world is plagued in nuclear waste, and the population has substantially dropped due to infertility. As a result, individuals are grouped into classes based on their bodies and its functions completely disregarding education, lifestyle, and personality. The novel is told through Offred’s point of view, a handmaid, who’s given to a commander to have his children. Ultimately, stripping individuals of their identity lead to rebellious actions as shown through those of the men in Gilead. Throughout the novel, the author depicts men as superior

In Margaret Atwood’s novel ‘The Handmaid’s Tale, she narrates how women are abused mentally and physically by the hands of men. Also, women were forced to become prostitutes or sent to colonies. During the Republic of Gilead which is ruled by men and surrounded by corruption, lust, prostitution, and violence towards women who were punished by hanging or being sent to colonies for exile if they break the rules. According to the government, women, who cannot follow the rules or have babies, were considered worthless. Women were strongly identified by coded languages that were mainly hidden within their clothing and were manipulated to act within Gilead.

In “The Handmaid's’ Tale” (Margaret, Atwood), neologisms are sprinkled throughout the story's characters and it’s deeper meaning. Neologisms (being words that have a different meaning than their current uses) show how certain characters or terms are viewed in Gilead’s society. Salvagings refer to the executions that take action against those that do not abide by the Gilead Republic's laws such as the doctors who practiced abortions before the war. Another neologism is the view of freedom. Offred and the other Handmaids are not given any freedom. Similar to a regiment, the women are given orders and tasks and they must follow suit while the other roles are in this same regime, just with different tasks such as the Martha's who clean and

In The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood depicts a fictional dystopia in which the American democracy has been overthrown by conservative religious extremists due to dangerously low reproduction rates. To “further” the society and “combat” the birth shortage, the new government implements completely new standards into men and women’s lives. In the book, the protagonist, Offred faces societal standards restricting her ability to love and her education; she reacts passively opposes both standards.

The Handmaid’s Tale is filled with stimulating, thought-provoking themes. The book can be analyzed with many different considerations, each of them leading into an individual theme. In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the theme of control is prevalent, and is significant in that it establishes many of the premises that contribute to the main conflicts of their society. In this essay I will discuss how the theme of control results in conflict regarding the way they dress, their identity, and the rights that they have.

The government enforces laws and regulations in order to maintain peace and harmony in society. Laws are meant to ensure the safety of all citizens however; women can be forced to face extremities if the laws and the government are patriarchal. The novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood tells the story of a totalitarian government that consists strictly of men who dominate women based on Christian ideologies. The government uses fertile women called “handmaids” for breeding purposes because of a decrease in birth rate. The nation of the Republic of Gilead is a dystopian society in which women have limited freedom and are restrained by the male authorities in their lives. Freedom is a term by which the identity of a person or nation

How does one define feminism? It means many things to many people. For some it’s more personal, for others it’s the Oxford definition: “the advocacy of women 's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes” (Oxford dictionary). In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood explores feminism through the themes of women’s bodies as political tools, the dynamics of rape culture and the society of complacency.

Imagine growing up in a society where all women are useful for is to reproduce. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is an excellent novel of what could potentially be the fate of the future one day. The main character, Offred, moves into a new home where she is there to perform “rituals” with the Commander, head of the house, so she can hopefully reproduce herself. Basically, she is a sex slave and birthing a healthy child is all she is wanted for. Also if she does have a child then she will be treated better, so it can be stressful for these women. The Commander and his wife are higher up in society and have all the power over Offred. The Commander is a key character, for he can get rid of Offred if he does not like her and he has all

The theories we have studied in class include the feminist, psychoanalytic, Marxist, and deconstructionist theories. The feminist theory is built on a male-dominated point-of-view that implies the weakness of women by portraying them as inferior, incapable, and inconsequential. Historically, the feminist theory has existed in three phases and dates back as far as 1792 to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s “The Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” There was a second phase of the feminist theory in the 1960s and 1970s that aligned with the Women’s Liberation movement. The third phase, from 1990s to present, includes a focus on women of color and gay women, commonly disregarded in previous movements (Purdue Owl 2). The psychoanalytical theory is based on Sigmund Freud’s theories of psychology. In short, he believed that “people’s behavior is affected by their unconscious” (Purdue Owl 1). Freud’s protégé, Carl Jung, expanded on Freud’s philosophy, “Jungian criticism attempts to explore the connection between literature … [and] the collective unconscious of the human race….[It] assumes that all

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale presents a possible gloomy future which we may one day see. In the book, the protagonist narrator named Offred, tells her handmaid life under a repressive regime which is based on religious fundamental ideas. The book creates a dystopia by reversing women’s rights. By doing so, it explores subjugation of woman and its results. This story leads us to examine what Feminism means and compare this to the situations of women living in the Republic of Gilead. The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian book, where women are sexual slaves and their basic freedom is taken from them in lots of ways. In this essay I will examine how women are being treated in the recent past and nowadays and how they are treated in Gilead.