The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

Throughout the course of world history on Earth, humans have always worked harder and harder in order to improve society and make it more perfect, although it still hasn’t been done quite yet, because it is merely impossible to achieve perfection in a world with close to seven billion people. There is a very distinct difference between a utopia, which can also be known as perfection, and a dystopia, which can also be known as a tragedy; and the outcomes normally generate from the people in charge or the authority that sets up the foundation, the rules, and the regulations for a society. In the Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, The Republic of Gilead is created by a powerful authority group called the Eyes after a huge government take over and the assassination of the US president. It’s very strict rules and goals are set up to protect women, to increase childbirth, and to keep all violence, men, and powerful social media under control. The novel is set in a first person point of view and the narrator, Offred, tells her story to us readers about her experiences as a handmaid and how her life was completely turned upside down. Throughout the course of the novel Offred reveals many sides of herself; although her thoughts do not remain consistent, her personality and opinion tends to change revealing, that she is hesitant and strong because she learns to make the best of what she has and silently overcome the system of the Republic of Gilead.

Written by Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel set in the near future where the United States is overthrown and a military dictatorship forms called the Republic of Gilead. Gilead is a society that reconsolidates power and creates a new hierarchical regime that limits women entirely of their rights. The rulers of this dystopia are centrally concerned with dominating their subjects through the control of their experiences, time, memory, and history. A woman called Offred narrates the story and works as a Handmaid for reproductive purposes only. In her storytelling, Offred describes flashbacks consisting of portions of her life before the revolution. These flashbacks are the only thing that keeps her going in this

Gilead is a society not far from the present and it based around one central idea, control of reproduction by using women’s bodies as political instruments. Handmaids are women who the state took complete control of through their political subjugation. They are not allowed to vote, hold property, read or do anything that can make them independent from their husband and the state. These handmaids are reduced to their fertility and treated like nothing more than a set of ovaries and a womb. They lose their identity and become an object of the state. The narrator of The Handmaids Tale is a handmaid by the name of Offred. The novel takes place in first person point of view and this allows the readers to see how she is treated and all the events that take place for her. First person point of view allows the reader a closer view as to how a central theme develops by giving the reader a firsthand experience from the mind of the narrator.

The literary masterpiece The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, is a story not unlike a cold fire; hope peeking through the miserable and meaningless world in which the protagonist gets trapped. The society depicts the discrimination towards femininity, blaming women for their low birth rate and taking away the right from the females to be educated ,forbidding them from reading or writing. These appear in Ethan Alter’s observations that:

“I feel thankful to her. She has died that I may live. I will mourn later” (Atwood 286). Many sacrifices and hard decisions are made by unorthodox people to keep what they believe in alive. There would be no rebellions and no change without these nonconforming people. Offred, the main character and a Handmaiden, would have faced eminent death in her strictly orthodox world had it not been for the rebelliousness of those who died before her wanting change. The Republic of Gilead, previously known as the United States, is a theocracy. Environmental events and population decline prompt changes. A caste system is created, and each caste performs specific duties. They are punished if the laws are not followed. The Eyes are at the top of the caste system; they make sure the laws are obeyed. Next are the Commanders and their Wives. The Handmaiden’s main task is to produce a child with their Commander. In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, some unorthodox characters challenge the theocracy such as Offred, Ofglen, and Nick.

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

Offred is a Handmaid in what used to be the United States, now the theocratic Republic of Gilead. In order to create Gilead's idea of a more perfect society, they have reverted to taking the Book of Genesis at its word. Women no longer have any privileges; they cannot work, have their own bank accounts, or own anything. The also are not allowed to read or even chose who they want to marry. Women are taught that they should be subservient to men and should only be concerned with bearing children. Margaret Atwood writes The Handmaid's Tale (1986) as to create a dystopia. A dystopia is an imaginary place where the condition of life is extremely bad, from deprivation, oppression, or

A once normal society is taken over by high ranking, religious men, who create a society that ideally fits their beliefs on how a society should be. The book, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a science-fiction novel told in a first person narrative by the main character, Offred. Offred lived in a dystopian society called Gilead, where she was a Handmaid and her sole purpose was to have children for wives that could not have kids. As the story progresses you can see that everyone is the story is portrayed to have broken some rules one way or another. Through characterization, the setting of Gilead, and irony Atwood shows the readers how living under an oppressive government leads to acts of rebellion.

Women deserve freedom as much as men. They are both humans, therefore, must have the same rights. Margaret Atwood addresses this topic with her book The Handmaid’s Tale. The story takes place in a future dystopia called Gilead. Women lose all rights and become objects for men. The Handmaids are a great example. All of their names start with Of followed by their master’s name. The main character’s name, Offred, means of Fred’s property. She is one of many women who are downgraded to objects. She breaks minor laws as acts of defiance. She is constantly remembering her pasts when she had a daughter and a lover. She continues her disobedient acts and is interested in joining a group of rebels, Mayday. As she struggles to survive, she falls in love with Nick. After the Eyes take her away, she has never seen ever again.

Only if women were able to develop fully as human beings, free of legal and cultural restrictions, would it be possible to know what women’s nature was really like” (Hannam 40). This relates to Offred because she reminisces on when she used to have the freedom to do and wear what she pleased. Now, she is forced to dress in the color-coded fashion to identify her social class. She also endures the reality that she may only leave her room to go on shopping trips with Ofglen and she is watched constantly by the Eyes, Gilead’s secrete correctional authorities. She recognizes the fact that the way in which she lives is not her choice, and that her choices and everyday life would be completely different if she lived in a world of freedom, rather than

On the surface, The Handmaid 's Tale appears to be feminist in nature. The point-of-view character and narrator is a woman and thus we see the world through a woman 's eyes. There 's much more to the story than that, though. Atwood doesn 't show us our world. She shows us a newly created world in which women lack the freedoms that they currently take for granted. This dystopian society is completely controlled by men. Of course, the men have help from the Aunts, a crack team of brainwashers that run the reeducation centers and

The Handmaid 's Tale is a dystopian novel in which Atwood creates a world which seems absurd and near impossible. Women being kept in slavery only to create babies, cult like religious control over the population, and the deportation of an entire race, these things all seem like fiction. However Atwood 's novel is closer to fact than fiction; all the events which take place in the story have a base in the real world as well as a historical precedent. Atwood establishes the world of Gilead on historical events as well as the social and political trends which were taking place during her life time in the 1980 's. Atwood shows her

The Handmaid's Tale is written by Margaret Atwood and was originally published by McClelland and Stewart in 1985. The novel is set in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Handmaid's Tale explores themes of a new totalitarian theocratic state society that is terrifying and horrific. Its main concentration is on the subjugation of women in Gilead, and it also explores the plethora of means by which the state and agencies gain control and domination against every aspect of these women's lives. Restrictive dress codes also play an important factor as a means of social order and control in this new society.

“Look at us! We’re just like everyone else. We’ve bought into the same ridiculous delusion; this idea that you have to settle down and resign from life.” (April Wheeler, Revolutionary Road). It has become a society norm that women are meant to serve housewives; to cook, clean, garden, and nurture children, even though they are much more capable of other things. The role of women is greatly overseen, as they are not perceived to be of their full potential, rather than as societies idealistic expectation. This is because men and those who are wealthy are unable to look past gender and accept women as of equal significance.

Margret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale takes place in the closely monitored, male dominant area of Gilead where women are deprived of their sexual and human rights, forbidding them to live independently. For many years prior to Gilead’s existence, women were seen as inferior to men and neglected of basic human rights such as voting, career opportunities, and equal salaries. The Republic of Gilead was later introduced following the transition of the United States’ government into a totalitarian leadership style, giving the government complete and all power amongst society. Very similar to the second wave of feminism, where women fought for reproductive rights, women are doing so in this near future setting of Gilead. In the novel, a future is revealed in which female fertility has completely dwindled. Thus, women who are still fertile are labeled “Handmaid’s” and are sent to different upper class commanders for reproduction. With this being said, the fact that only certain women are capable of reproduction forces completion amongst the sex due to the high sexual standards society expects the female gender to meet. The novel follows a Handmaid by the name of Offred, and her fight with sexual repression and exploitation of women within the corrupt Republic of Gilead’s. Atwood takes an alternative method of portraying feminism throughout this novel by writing a stark contrast of feminism, portraying the women within The