The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

What will the future bring? What will happen as feminists speak out, women work out of home, pornography spreads and is battled, and the desire for children dwindles? Perhaps life on Earth will improve. Maybe women will have the rights they demand, porn will be defeated, and people will respect women’s bodies. Maybe mothers will miraculously have the perfect number of children: just the right amount to keep the population within its limits. Or perhaps a deterioration will occur, as Margaret Atwood predicted in The Handmaid’s Tale. Atwood’s setting is futuristic, compelling, and terrifyingly believable. Her main character relates to the readers as real people. Her themes laced in the plot, from exposition to resolution, stem from conflicts with other characters, inner struggles, and heart wrenching losses. Readers are captivated as Atwood intertwines her literary elements, and warns the audience of a possible reality. Margaret Atwood tells the tale of a handmaid, and Atwood enlightens those partaking of her vision to the potential of such a degenerate future.

Atwood uses dehumanisation throughout this extract as a form of control, by reducing someone to something lower than you would imply you had more power over them and could control them. When Offred referred to herself and the other women as ‘wild animals’, a creature that could not think for themselves, would suggest that they would be needed to be controlled. By using animals as a reference to women Atwood was indirectly foretelling Offred’s fate of fundamentally becoming a caged ‘animal’ who serves to breed. Alternatively, because this extract was a flashback it could suggest that men were still able to dehumanise women even before the regime, which therefore suggests that years’ worth of society conditioning men that they had superior power over women led to centuries of women under the control of men. An example of this conditioning would be when the unknown man replaced the ‘usual women’ at the shop, ‘you do that he said indifferently’ his apathetic response suggests he already had control over Offred’s because she could no longer use her card.

In a “A Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood, readers see a world go from what it once used to be to total totalitarianism. In this now cruel world called Gilead, we see people stripped from their original identities, and no longer free. Furthermore, they are brainwashed to believe and abide by new regulations and rules, and the ones that rebel or no longer are of any use for the government end up dead. Besides the narrator who is now named “Offred” in this new society, her past friend “Moira” from the pre-totalitarian world, is a central figure of hope in the story. Moira becomes a rebel and fights to win back her freedom, but ultimately that thirst to outsmart the government, leads to her ultimate destruction.

Procreation is a driving force that manifests itself differently within the numerous characters in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s tale. Social classes are structured on the basis of child rearing, and sexuality is used as a tool to control the lives of citizens living within Gileadean society. People of different classes experience different motivating forces in relation to the goal of procreation rather than simply continuing the civilization. The whole class system is also based entirely off of fertility, although in private the separation of the classes may become less defined. This system is reinforced through many control tactics which affects those of a lower class in a negative manner. This is evident in many areas of the

“But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.” (Atwood 125), is a beautiful quote by Margaret Atwood used to portray the struggles and the agonies of women suffering from the unequal Gileadean hierarchy, which indirectly connects to our modern world issues with feminism such as pay gaps and property ownership laws. In the book The Handmaid’s Tale, it is not difficult to spot from the beginning that women are treated inhumanely. They are seen locked up in a gymnasium surrounded by gunmen and other groups of women called ‘Aunts’ with electric tasers, and the names all seem to be pre-made, as all names mentioned at the end of the first chapter possess polysyllabic first names and monosyllabic last names, except one, June. It seems that the new groups of people called Sons of Jacob overthrew

I made that up. It didn’t happen that way. Here’s what happened. – p. 301

The Women's Rights movement in America has been a consistent struggle since its founding in the early twentieth century. The social revolution received its greatest opposition in the nineteen sixties to the late nineteen eighties. It was during this time Margaret Atwood published her novel The Handmaid's Tale, the story tells of a futuristic utopian society in America, religiously based, that has effectively taken all human rights from women to accomplish their goal. In the now country of Gilead, the feminist American movement has been reversed completely.

Women’s equality is a constant struggle that is still an issue today. To this day, women are still not considered equals to men, which is shown in the workplace and at home. The inequalities in income, careers, roles in parenting and in marriage, and in relationships, are fixed problems that still do not have a resolution. These are regular issues that occur in the novel The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood. This novel is about the superiority and governing of women by men.

Summary: In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, a handmaid Offred is the narrator and the protagonist throughout the book, and the story is told through her point of view. Offred serves the Commander. This all takes place in Gilead, which is a totalitarian and theocratic state that has supposedly replaced the United States. Along with serving the Commander, Offred also serves his wife, Serena Joy, who is a former gospel singer who follows “traditional values.” Offred’s freedom, along with every other woman living in Gilead is entirely restricted. In fact, every month she is forced to have intercouse with the Commander, she cannot leave the house unless

The Handmaid’s Tale is one of the most prestigious books of Margaret Atwood, and many readers believe that this is a feminist novel. Also, like the author, Margaret Atwood, indicated in the preamble of the book: “If you mean a novel in which women are human beings- with all the variety of character and behavior that implies- and are also interesting and important…then yes. In this case, many books are feminist.” Actually, her words were accepted by many people, the Handmaid tale is a feminist book because the book is described from the side of the women and shows the discrepancies of women, the book demonstrates how women suffer the cruel state actions of Gilead, and the book reveals a series of stereotypes on women as well.

The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood is a story of fiction that takes place in a future where the ability to reproduce healthy babies is scarce. The novel focuses on a future where traditional values are strictly enforced by a totalitarian government leaving women powerless. This dystopia touches upon several aspects of life that shape society such as religion, government, gender roles, equality and more. Margaret elaborates on the outcome of a society that solely depends on traditional roles and its effect on women. The traditional values that govern this dystopia are similar to those seen in today’s society except they are taken to a further extent that prohibits any other way of living.

Critical lenses are often applied to novels to acquire a different understanding of its meaning. The Marxist theory is based on social status/value by the authority a certain person has, or the amount wealth they have. Marxism is also known as a theory based on capitalism and how socialism is the better route for governing a society. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood can be looked at through the Marxist critique; specifically in regards to capitalism, what role materialism plays, and how the different classes interact with each other. Karl Marx viewed capitalism as a stage in history that would end up in socialism.

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. However, one of Atwood 's most successful books, The Handmaid 's Tale, stands in stark contrast to the ideas of feminism. In fact, the female characters in the novel are portrayed in such a way that they directly conflict with the idea of women 's empowerment.

In a modern-day society, there are ideologies that select groups of people are to be subjugated. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood plays on this idea dramatically: the novel describes the oppression of women in a totalitarian theocracy. Stripped of rights, fertile women become sex objects for the politically elite. These women, called the Handmaids, are forced to cover themselves and exist for the sole purpose of providing children. The Handmaid’s Tale highlights the issue of sexism while also providing a cruel insight into the manipulation of power seen in the modern world.

Charles Strickland, a dull stockbroker, lives in England with his wife and two children. Mrs. Strickland is a model mother, but her husband seems bored with her and with his children. To everyone else, it is Strickland who seems commonplace. The family spends the summer at the seashore, and Strickland returns ahead of his wife. When she writes him that she is coming home, he answers from Paris, simply stating that he is not going to live with her anymore. With singleness of intention, Mrs. Strickland dispatches a friend to Paris to bring back her husband.