The Handmaid's Tale: A Narrative Fiction

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.

Form, Structure and Plot: The novel has 15 parts, 46 chapters, and 378 pages. The novel has a series of flashbacks and dream sequences that take the reader from Offred’s life in the present and her past life with Luke (her husband) and her daughter. The story is hard to follow because you do not always know what will trigger her flashbacks. The novel only covers about two years in the present, but the flashbacks cover the year leading to the present, and the historical notes jumps to 2195.

Today I woke up with a hectic day ahead of me, my duties stopped me from spending time with my family. As I woke up at dawn the weather outside is wild as I dressed into my finest robe. I eat a small breakfast and then go outside doing my duties. I go outside and I speak to the lord about an trouble that had happened on my land. I then make my way down to the peasants, touching the sick and healing them. After this i would go back into my castle and the lords would give me taxes from the people who have been on my land, also they would report anything they saw in the distance and on the land. Some nobles then came running into the castle, complaining that the peasants and the surf aren't growing enough crops to provide them for there food, I then had to go speak

In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, The Handmaids Tale, religion is presented as a controlling influence, which takes away freedom of individuals. In the 1980s, this was a time of social change, where extreme right-winged fascist regimes such as Moral Majority and Conservative Revival merged religion and politics into a binding precedent. Consequently, Atwood wrote The Handmaids Tale in order to show the male fundamentalist leaders use women as submissive sexual objects under the guidance of religious scripture as justification and created a bleak futuristic society if anyone of these cults became successful. Primarily in the epigraph, Atwood opens with three distinct references to introduce the rules in the society of

The Handmaids tale by Margaret Atwood illustrates is what she self professes as a piece of ‘speculative fiction’, a dystopian society set in the future, in which the government has been replaced by a totalitarian leadership, ruling America through a biblical patriarchy based on fundamentalism. This theocratic structure causes the women in society to face severe oppression, forced to conform to the rules and obligations appointed to the roles of Wives, Daughters, Handmaids, Marthas, Aunts and Econowives. The role Atwood gives the reader a detailed insight into being the Handmaidens, whom are essentially concubines used for their fertility to carry the children of the commanders.

It’s hard to believe women living in different countries, centuries and even realities can live parallel lives. The authors of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood, Secret Daughter, Shilpi Somaya Gowda and The Rapture of Canaan, Sheri Reynolds, each work to illustrate how their protagonist’s experience oppression due to their gender. The Handmaid’s Tale, set in a dystopian world, tells the story of Offred, a woman who is caught trying to escape and is forced to become a handmaiden for a couple who is unable to conceive. She is forced to become indistinguishable among crowds and fears losing who she is, but never loses sight of her goal to be reunited with her daughter. Secret Daughter tells the story of Asha, a young Indian girl whose mother, Kavita, gives her away before her father can murder her for being a girl. Adopted by an American couple, she grows up not knowing who she truly is, only to find out the biological family she’s always wanted to meet, doesn’t exactly match the picture she has for them. The Rapture of Canaan, follows Ninah, a young girl growing up in a community governed by the religion her grandfather created that allows for nothing. Ninah finds herself struggling with what she does and doesn’t believe and looks to her friend James for guidance. Falling pregnant, Ninah does all she can to sustain herself while facing the wrath of her family. Although each of these women suffer within an oppressive patriarchal structure, they find ways to assert their identities as fiercely loving mothers.

The oppression of women throughout Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, exists in a dystopian society, mirroring the climate of the period it was written, and in actuality, may not be too far off the path from where we are now. Atwood’s portrayal of this misogynistic culture that subjugates women to second class citizens is a book worthy of AP merit due to the social impact, universal appeal, and timelessness of Offred’s story that does not fail to seamlessly connect the issues of generations into a single reflective text.

“I thought I told you to bring your speech so you can practice." She told me with a disapproving smirk that felt like she could see straight through

It was late evening, one of those in which Mildred couldn’t stop feeling the Hole in her stomach. A Hole that consumed her body and gave her need for speed, for blurring colours and an enormous distance covered in seconds.

“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don't let the bastards grind you down”(Atwood 52). Margaret Atwood, the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, stated this quote in her novel, as she heard it as a joke in her school. However, in this novel, this quote holds greater meaning than being a joke. The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel written by Margaret Atwood in 1985, but the novel has gained a lot of attention recently after the last elections.

“I think about laundromats. What I wore to them: shorts, jeans, jogging pants. What I put into them: my own clothes, my own soap, my own money, money I had earned myself. I think about having such control. Now we walk along the same street, in red pairs, and no man shouts obscenities at us, speaks to us, touches us. No one whistles. There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate it.” (24)

Treloar's outward air of confidence was mostly a facade; an attempt to keep Lexi's spirits buoyed whilst and his own from plummeting. The past two days, being cooped up in the hotel room, where the walls had slowly seemed to creep closer and closer in on them, and the knowledge they were being hunted by Huntington's goons had lowered his spirits. At times, although he hadn't dared speak it out loud, he'd even begun to wonder if Lexi would have been better off if he'd never snuck into her Father's mansion that night to reconnect with her.

“I heard something the other day that made me nauseous,” she said a little nervous.

The Handmaid’s Tale tells the story of a future dystopia where individuals use power from their position in society to manipulate others. The Commander, a high-up in Gilead’s hierarchy, initiates a forbidden, though at first non-sexual, affair with his Handmaid and uses his power to direct the relationship to sex. While Handmaid Offred expresses her surprise at the affair’s seeming lack of sexuality, author Margaret Atwood uses nuanced figurative language to reveal the underlying sexual and manipulative nature of the Commander’s desires. Atwood compares positional and coercive power to warfare and animal confrontations and emphasizes reward power with sexualized language. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood uses figurative language to argue that in a society without sex, individuals will manipulate power they have to obtain it.

Once upon a time there was a king. He had no sons, but one daughter. One day she became sick, and the king inspected her food for traces of poison by having taste testers eat the food to see if they got sick. When they had come down with sickness the king analyzed the food