The Handmaid 's Tale Essay

In a society where women are completely oppressed they have two choices: To conform and survive, or to rebel and risk execution. Conformity would entail suppressing their morals and their personal rights to adapt to Gilead’s social standards. Would one choose self-inflicted isolation by disassociating oneself as a human being to survive, or gain more rights and disregard all morals by working for the government? This society is represented in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaids Tale. The novel is set in the Republic of Gilead, a dictatorship, formerly known as the United States of America. The government controls all aspects of the lives’ of its citizens, with its harshest regulations directly affecting women.

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

THE OPPRESSION OF WOMEN IN ATWOOD’S THE HANDMAID’S TALE AND THEIR WAYS OF RESISTING THE REGIME

   As the saying goes, 'history repeats itself.' If one of the goals of Margaret Atwood was to prove this particular point, she certainly succeeded in her novel A Handmaid's Tale. In her Note to the Reader, she writes, " The thing to remember is that there is nothing new about the society depicted in The Handmaiden's Tale except the time and place. All of the things I have written about ...have been done before, more than once..." (316). Atwood seems to choose only the most threatening, frightening, and atrocious events in history to parallel her book by--specifically the enslavement of African Americans in the United States. She traces the development of this institution, but from the

Character Analysis of The Handmaid's Tale Moira = == = = We first meet Moira "breezing into" (P65) Offred's room at college.

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.

It is necessary for the government to impose a certain amount of power and control of its citizens in order for a society to function properly. However, too much power and control in a society eliminates the freedom of the residents, forbidding them to live an ordinary life. In the dystopian futuristic novel, The Handmaids Tale, Margaret Atwood demonstrates the theme of power and control through an oppressive society called the Republic of Gilead. The government established power and control through the use of the wall, military control, the salvaging, the particicution, and gender.

The Canadian author Margaret Atwood wrote The Handmaid's Tale back in 1984. A year later, the book was published in 1985. The novel narrates the struggle of a handmaid who finds herself stuck in a repressive, totalitarian regime. This regime takes place in The Republic of Gilead formerly known as the U.S.A where all the fertile handmaids are forced to carry children for the elite commanders of the society.

Offred's memories are a way for her to escape a society riddled with hopelessness. The authoritarian society of Gilead prevents her from

The Dystopian concerns in The Road and The Handmaid’s Tale Dystopian novels have a prominent role in American fiction after 1945. When one talks about Dystopian subgenre, it envisions a time not so distant from the present that world is in an unpleasant time which can deal with either government fallen under a totalitarian rule or the environment is in a degradable state. There are two specific novels that fall under this subgenre: The Road and The Handmaid’s Tale. The Road deals with the outcome of the environment in the United States after a nuclear outbreak, and The Handmaid’s Tale deals with the idea of theocracy and the thin line that separates church and state, concerns that can make up a dystopian novel. The Road deals with the United States in the not so far future being damaged to an unrepairable state by unknown nuclear outbreak which is one concern that is focused on in a dystopian novel.

Written in 1985, the dystopian, fictional novel; The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood depicts a totalitarian theocracy society set in the United States of America that covers many facets of being a modern woman in this patriarchal world, that range from domestic/dating violence, sexual assault, to less-involved topics. Though the novel was originally published in the year 1985, its’ explicit scenes draw an eerie image of what the future may look for women following the election of President Donald Trump. Altogether a woman’s socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and educational level affect the probability that she will experience any form of violence throughout her lifetime. One’s socioeconomic status is not always a reliable source to determine

The central social hierarchy within the novel is the gender hierarchy, placing men in a position of extreme power. This is evident in every aspect of the book, as the entire Gilead society is male dominated. The Commander is at the top of the hierarchy and is involved with designing and establishing the current society taking control of a nation of women, and exploiting their power by controlling what is taught, what they can teach themselves and the words that they can use. Soon all of the women will become brainwashed, simply because it is made nearly impossible to defy the rules

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.

Lack of Difference from Women in The Handmaid’s Tale and Women in Modern Day Society

    Feminism as we know it began in the mid 1960's as the Women's Liberation Movement. Among its chief tenants is the idea of women's empowerment, the idea that women are capable of doing and should be allowed to do anything men can do. Feminists believe that neither sex is naturally superior. They stand behind the idea that women are inherently just as strong and intelligent as the so-called stronger sex. Many writers have taken up the cause of feminism in their work. One of the most well known writers to deal with feminist themes is Margaret Atwood. Her work is clearly influenced by the movement and many literary critics, as well as Atwood herself, have identified her as a feminist writer.