The Handmaid 's Tale Literacy Essay

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

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

The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood describes the story of Offred, a Handmaid, that is a woman ascribed a breeding function by society, and who is placed with a husband and wife higher up the social ladder who need a child. Through Offred's eyes we explore the rigidity of the theocracy in which she lives, the contradictions in the society they have created, and her attempts to find solace through otherwise trivial things. The heroine is never identified except as Offred, the property of her current Commander, she was a modern woman: college-educated, a wife and a mother when she lost all that due to the change in her society. The novel can be viewed from one perspective as being a feminist depiction of the suppression of a woman, from another

Can human live without love? The answer is evidently no. Love can be defined as: the most spectacular, indescribable, deep euphoric feeling for someone. Margaret Atwood, the author of the outstanding dystopian fiction the handmaid 's tale (1985) had once in her book said: " nobody dies from lack of sex. It 's lack of love we die from.” In this novel, Atwood specifically depicts a society where relationships have been altered, undermined and in many ways forbidden. The key word in the issue of relationships is love. In the Republic of Gilead, a form of theocratic government, women had lost their ability to love. The protagonist Offred is a handmaid whose sole purpose in life is to reproduce a child. Gilead expects its handmaids to have faith in its commandments, but has removed love and hope from them. Women became objects and sex slaves to men. Therefore, the relationships of the protagonist Offred are unhealthy as well as abnormal, yet they are source of hope for Offred to survive from this theocratic form of government. Her relationship with the commander is strained but profitable, her relationship with Serena Joy has lots of tensions and conflicts; and her relationship with Nick is subtle as well as controversial.

In Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale, the idea of women’s bodies as political instruments and elimination of sexual pleasure is explored. The republic of Gilead “depicts a futuristic society in which a brutal patriarchal regime deprives women of power and subjectivity, enslaving them through a sophisticated, ubiquitous apparatus of surveillance” (Cooper 49). Offred is a “girl” who lives with her commander within Gilead. She is surrounded by girls at his house. When one becomes a woman they have had a baby. Any time before they have a baby they are just girls. They are valued only by their ovaries and wombs. They have no freedom

Within history, societies have to try to find a balance between gender and class. Margaret Atwood writes about a country called Gilead: a society where women are broken down into classes while men control all the power. Throughout her dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood utilizes gender and class to alienate the protagonist, Offred, illustrating how women and their position within society are used as a political instrument to gain dominance.

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 the novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the dystopian society of Gileadean society is described. The role of women and the oppression of women by men cannot be missed while reading the novel. Due to the dropping fertility rates, fertile women are trained to be a Handmaid by the Aunts in the Red Center. The job of the Handmaid is to conceive a baby with the Commander, so the Commander and the Wife can nurture the child. Atwood uses the oppression of women in the Gileadean society to show her thoughts about the danger of historic events and the developments in society nowadays. The novel projects the struggle of Offred, who is a Handmaid herself, against the totalitarian restriction of her society and her desire for happiness and

The novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, is a dystopian speculative fiction novel written by Margaret Atwood. It follows the story of Offred, who is a Handmaid living in post-apocalyptic Massachusetts during the Gilead Regime. Her job is to have sex with the Commander in order to produce a baby for him and his wife, Serena Joy. This is the one role for Handmaids in Atwood’s world because the fertility rates are drastically declining. Other environmental factors such as radioactivity and disease also make it more difficult for people to have children. The rest of the women in the Gilead are also split into different classes, each with its own roles. In this society, there are Marthas, Aunts, Econowives, the Commander’s Wives, and the Unwomen. Although these roles might be different, one thing is common: women’s rights have been severely oppressed since the rise of Gilead. Specifically, one common idea suggested by the novel is that women are expected to suppress their sexuality while men are not, and this

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.

The Handmaids Tale is a poetic tale of a woman's survival as a Handmaid in the male dominated Republic of Gilead. Offred portrayed the struggle living as a Handmaid, essentially becoming a walking womb and a slave to mankind. Women throughout Gilead are oppressed because they are seen as "potentially threatening and subversive and therefore require strict control" (Callaway 48). The fear of women rebelling and taking control of society is stopped through acts such as the caste system, the ceremony and the creation of the Handmaids. The Republic of Gilead is surrounded with people being oppressed. In order for the Republic to continue running the way it is, a sense of control needs to be felt by the government. Without control Gilead will

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

Margret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” is a dystopian fiction novel that covers a number of speculative themes. The novel captures the story of Offred, who happens to be a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. This republic is administered by a theocratic and totalitarian system. Given the trouble certain elites within the administration experience in conceiving, the administration offers to acquire Handmaids to help in bearing children on their behalf. The main character, Offred, is assigned to serve the Commander’s family.

    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.

A Critical Analysis of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” In this dystopia novel, it reveals a remarkable new world called Gilead. “The Handmaid’s Tale,” by Margaret Atwood, explores all these themes about women who are being subjugated to misogyny to a patriarchal society and had many means by which women tried to gain not only their individualism and their own independence. Her purpose of writing this novel is to warn of the price of an overly zealous religious philosophy, one that places women in such a submissive role in the family. I believe there are also statements about class in there, since the poor woman are being meant to serve the rich families need for a child. As the novel goes along the narrator Offred is going between the past and