The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

Offred is in a great deal of pain throughout the story. This makes for a good novel because conflict provides entertainment for the reader. However, one must understand her social stature in the new society to understand what she endures. Offred is a Handmaid which is similar to a sex slave. A Handmaid’s only purpose in life is to bear children. However, this is a difficult task considering pollution and syphilis

The Aunts even subject Offred’s body to routine exercises where they ask her to “breathe in to the count of five, hold expel” (70). Offred’s time is void, and her existence in Gilead is an empty vessel, a body to breed. She compares Gilead is a blurry white noise, where memories are the only thing that keeps Offred going.

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

Imagine not being able to go out, all you do is just stay inside doing nothing, and when you are able to go out they send you to do errands. Offred is a handmaid for a new society that took over a part of the United States. Her world consist of having sexual intercourse or a ‘Ceremony’ with a specific male once a month in order to reproduce and give birth. She also isn't able to communicate with others. In the novel if handmaid’s get pregnant they aren’t allowed to keep the child, they eventually give it to the Wife, the partner of the Commander, who then cares for it and acts as if it’s one of her own.

In the dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale penned by Margaret Atwood, Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian state that has replaced the United States of America. The goal of Gilead is to return to traditional values, meaning women as chattel property, censorship, bans on science and technology etc. Due to low reproduction rates, Handmaids are responsible for bearing children for elite households with wives that are unable to have children. Ceremonies are held monthly where Offred must have emotionless sex with the Commander of the household while his wife watches. The author detected patterns forming in American society and writes the consequence of these trends, drawing from the past as proof that

When Offred ventures into the Commander’s office, a place handmaids are forbidden to enter, she is overwhelmed with books. Atwood provides more information on the restrains of women in Gilead when Offred comments “It’s an oasis of the forbidden.” (137) Atwood provides insight on the strict regulations on women with Offred’s amazement on how extraordinary it was to be in the presence of many words. Atwood then makes a point of how disposable women are when Offred feels uncomfortable with the Commander watching her put on lotion but she doesn’t turn away. Offred silently lectures herself “For him, I must remember, I am only a whim.”(159)

As her current position is devastating to her, she takes refuge in her ability to remove herself from her surroundings. She tragically describes her loss of identity and her tangibility to that of pear, finding that she comes of short in the measurement of reality. Because Offred has lost her sense of autonomy and ability to influence her reality, she becomes even more accommodating and willing to conform to the structure of the Gilead society. In fact, Atwood explicitly expresses this loss of agency, acknowledging, “the expectations of others…have become [her] own” (Atwood

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

The Handmaid’s Tale depicts exquisitely how lonely everyone is in the confines of their classifications. Offred is desperate to connect, but understands that a smile from the housekeeper who is called Martha would be too dangerous. When she arrives in her new house she seeks warmth from the new Wife, and is instead met with hostility ‘’Don’t call me Ma’am … You’re not a Martha.’’ (Atwood, Margaret. 17) The Commander’s Driver touches his shoe to hers, even though Offred is not sure if it is on purpose, she feels her ‘’shoe soften, blood flows into it, it grows warm, it becomes skin.’’ (Atwood, Margaret. 92) Even though all of these connections are illegal, and Offred is supposed to keep her eyes downcast, and her Handmaid’s uniform’s head wings blocks her line of sight ‘’they are to keep us from seeing, but also from being seen.’’ (Atwood, Margaret. 9)

In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Offred recounts the story of her life and that of others in Gilead, but she does not do so alone. The symbolic meanings found in the dress code of the women, the names/titles of characters, the absence of the mirror, and the smell and hunger imagery aid her in telling of the repugnant conditions in the Republic of Gilead. The symbols speak with a voice of their own and in decibels louder than Offred can ever dare to use. They convey the social structure of Gileadean society and carry the theme of the individual's loss of identity.

In Margaret Atwood's fictional novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, set in a dystopian society, the character of Offred is a ‘handmaid’ assigned to a high-ranking Commander and his wife. Atwood’s explanation of the novel in her ‘Introduction’ categorizes The Handmaid’s Tale as a “feminist novel” (xv). Through Offred’s struggle to rationalize her transgressions, which lead to her imprisonment, Atwood challenges feminists’ conceptions of idealistic worlds. Feminists believe that women have both the right to control their bodies and to control if and when they have children, which is critical to their freedom of choice surrounding procreation and the expression and enjoyment of their sexuality (Boston Women's Health Book Collective). Barbara Ehrenreich,

Throughout the novel The Handmaid’s Tale, a major recurring theme is the loss of identity through the power of sex. Offred once lived in a society that praised sexual pleasure. On the other hand, Gilead is a society without the pleasure and only for the means of reproduction. Offred struggles with this transition because she remembers the times when she had possession of her own mind and body. She could love whoever she wished. Offred compares the loveless sex with the Commander “as one composes a speech… a made thing, not something born” (Atwood 66). Atwood’s rhetorical use of a simile exemplifies the loss of self-identity within the people of the society. Offred makes it clear that she must play a role, hide her thoughts and emotions, and be “made,” allowing her to be “composed” or

One of the many prevailing themes in literature is that power is gained and can be manipulated when restraints are placed on natural desires of the individual. This passage is significant because it is an example of this theme, for it shows how power and manipulation have completely changed and restricted the people, especially women, of Gilead. Due to this, the passage reveals the shared anger that the Handmaids possess, and the cruelty that has been brought upon the society. The use of similes, diction, syntax, and illustrate the impact that this event had on Offred, for she feels such anger towards the unknown man and the crime he has supposedly committed. These literary and rhetorical devices additionally serve to make this event seem as

Despite the little dependence on women, they are still objectified and subjected to injustice because of their gender, regardless if they were a female in general or as a poor female. As something as simple as what a person is born with affects the respect that is given to them. Margaret Atwood formulates Offred’s personality much like any other handmaid in the community. Offred becomes familiar with the functionality and role of women in the community, therefore she adjusts herself in order to be up to par with the unethical standard. “I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born. (Atwood, 75). To be what is required of her, Offred must act unhuman because the expectations of females exceed the

Offred, within the novel, is seen as being in one of the lowest classes within the hierarchy of women only putting her above the women who are sent to the colonies. Unlike the handmaids, the Martha, who are helping ladies to the Wives, talk about Offred like she is not in their present but viewed her as “a household chore,one among many”(Atwood 48). Although the Martha are women too, they have more control than Offred. By viewing Offred as a household chore conveys that Offred is an inconvenience but still a necessary part of Gilead. Speaking about Offred like this emphasizes that she is below them in the status of society and they are not seen as equals. In addition, Offred, being a handmaid, wasn’t allow to talk to the Wives in a direct manner (Atwood 14-15). By Offred not being allowed to talk to the Wives illustrates that the Wives authority over the handmaids. Furthermore, the handmaid’s are viewed as less and “[reduced]... to the slavery status of being mere ‘breeders’” (Malak). By conveying the handmaids are slaves shows are they force without consent to have sex with men and that the handmaid focus is to breed, unlike the Martha, aunts, and Wives. Moreover, the class system within the female hierarchy of Gilead is utilized as a political tool thus adding to the assumption