The Handmaid's Tale

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.

In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, one discovers the dystopian society of the Republic of Gilead. This society was created in order to keep the birth rates from the continuous decline and deals with the problem by requiring women to have government-sanctioned sex. Women are only treated as if they are a pair of ovaries and the only purpose that they have is to keep the country populated . If a Handmaid is unable to reproduce, they are punished for their failures. “Having given birth successfully, the Handmaid can rest assured that she will not be sent the Colonies, where ‘unwomen’ clean up toxic dumps and radiation spills. ” (Miner 149). If a Handmaid is unable to do their duties, they are sent away, and there is a great chance they will not return. The sex they are giving to their Commander is in no way romantic, nor is there any real love involved. Offred, a Handmaid, remembers the life she once lived before becoming a Handmaid. The women who become Handmaid’s are given names that are not really their own. “My name isn’t Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses anymore because it’s forbidden. I tell myself it doesn’t matter, your name is like your telephone number, useful only to others; but what I tell myself is wrong, it does matter” (Atwood 84). The government has brainwashed these women into believing that they do not really matter and they have no real purpose. The government has taken away their names and given them the names of their Commander. In

Margaret Atwood is author that is most famously known for her use of feminism in her literary works. The Handmaid’s Tale is among one of the most well known books for its critique of feminism. Feminism is described as the advocating for women's rights for equality to men on all levels, including social, political, and economical. Atwood’s novel centers around a dystopian culture in which women’s rights are disregarded by the state, men, and fellow women. After the birth rate started to decline, the state decided to take control by creating a new society in which reproduction was the main focus. The men did not lose their right when the new society was formed, creating a patriarchal society. A disunity was created within the various rankings of women in

The Handmaid’s Tale is about Offered as she shares her thoughts and experiences in a journal-like form and provides some advice. Offred is a lower class female who has been taken from her husband and daughter at 5 years old to be a handmaid for the red commander at the red center. The point of this center is to reproduce with the Commander

In a time when complacency is commonplace; A Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood, is an important read. The dangers of not paying attention to the occurrences of injustice are front and center throughout the entire story of a woman suddenly stuck in a world ruled by religious zealots. Offred, as she's known now, speaks of the small signs that everyone ignored, constantly looking the other way on any infractions that didn't personally affect them.

In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, power is emphasized multiple times throughout the text. The plot of the story consists of wealthy men being the overseers of the economy. Since the birth rate of healthy children has drastically decreased due to environmental problems, women are only wanted for their ability to reproduce offspring and replenish the world. Therefore, the poorer women are taken away from their homes and placed with wealthy couples to bear offspring for them. The main character, Offred, is one of the many women who was taken from her family and placed in the home of a Commander and his wife. Since the role of each societal class’ power has changed, different characters in the text have subtle ways of displaying power.

The Handmaid’s Tale is filled with stimulating, thought-provoking themes. The book can be analyzed with many different considerations, each of them leading into an individual theme. In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the theme of control is prevalent, and is significant in that it establishes many of the premises that contribute to the main conflicts of their society. In this essay I will discuss how the theme of control results in conflict regarding the way they dress, their identity, and the rights that they have.

A Handmaid’s Tale A dystopian society can force someone to forget the past. Therefore, in A Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the female characters are oppressed members of society. This cause the characters to attempt forget the democratic freedom of the past in order to force themselves to accept the authoritarian society of today. In A Handmaid’s Tale, Offred defies the normal by struggling to forget the past by having constant flashbacks, her desire to escape and her preference for her real name.

“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

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.

To be free is to do or say whatever you want, but to be safe is to know or feel that you are not in danger. In Mencken's quote, he implies that a normal person prefers to be safe over having freedom. I partially disagree with Mencken’s because I would prefer to have my own freedom instead of being promised to be safe, but others might think differently.. In the handmaid's tale, everyone in Gilead lives in a very strict society where certain people have jobs to do and there are many rules that people have to follow or they will be executed and/or punished. This shows us that even though Gilead is supposed to protect everyone and keep people safe, people still break the rules and cause them to get punished or even murdered.

Are you happy mother? You’ve done it; you’ve finally taken from me the one thing I hold so dear. You always used to wonder why I forbade Luc from seeing you. You were always convinced that it was because I thought you were a bad influence on him, because you read dirty books, ate and drank what you wanted and swore like a solider on the battles grounds of war. But no mother it was because I knew that this would happen; I knew that one day you’d leave him; leave us, and all because you were too naïve, too proud to admit you needed the help that le mortwa

Dane turned on the television inside his spaceship, distracted by his musings as walked towards his bed. The cold sensation of the cooling system did not annoy the Ausar - who was half-dog and half-human - as the fur that lined his arms kept his body warm. The hulking man plopped his body against the mattress with a sonorous sound; the impact of his four-armed fierce body, larger than eight feel tall, shook the fixture as he strove to find the most comfortable position to lie in.

Over the past 200 years sexual liberation and freedom have become topics of discussions prevalent within western culture and society. With the recent exploration of sexuality a new concept of sexual and gender identity has emerged and is being analyzed in various fields of study. The ideology behind what defines gender and how society explains sex beyond biology has changed at a rapid pace. In response various attempts to create specific and catch all definitions of growing gender and sexual minorities has been on going. This has resulted in the concept of gender becoming a multi- layered shifting hypothesis to which society is adapting. Since the 19th-century, philosophers and theorists have continued to scrutinize gender beyond biological and social interpretation. Margaret Atwood 's The Handmaid 's Tale captures the limitations and social implications forced upon a set gender based on societal expectations. Gender is a social construct that limits the individual to the restrictions and traditions of a society, or if it’s an individually formed self-identification of sex and sexuality that is formed autonomously. Evidence of gender establishment can be seen within literary works and supported by various schools of gender and sexuality theory.

The Handmaid 's Tale is written by Margaret Atwood and published in 1985. The novel takes place in a city that used to be in the United States, now called the Republic of Gilead. The Handmaid 's Tale explores themes of a new totalitarian theocratic state society that is horrific, constantly terrifying, controlling and segregating its subjects. Its main concentration is on the subjugation of women, 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. The use of coded language and restrictive dress codes also play an important factor as a means of social order and control in this new society. In the Republic of Gilead there’s a Handmaid