Theme Of The Trial And The Handmaids Tail

A genuine identity and individuality is not possible in an oppressive environment especially when one’s daily life, actions, and thoughts are dictated by domineering societal expectations. Oppressive environments such as regimes controlled by a dictatorship and that run off a totalitarian government system strip an individual of their civil rights as a human being in order to gain ultimate control over its citizens. A government such as the Republic of Gilead in Margaret Atwood’s work, The Handmaid’s Tale, controls their citizen’s lives to the extent to where they must learn to suppress their emotions and feelings. In the Republic of

Sexism is defined as prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex, and is a topic that has been on and off the media throughout the years, becoming more prevalent in the 21st century. Many iconic figures throughout the ages have spoken out for women, people like Mahatma Gandhi, who said “Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking, or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; to me, the female sex is not the weaker sex.” Sexism has been around for about as long as the human race, dating back to biblical times and beyond. A woman’s traditional role in the family has been that of the cook, the cleaner, the child raiser, and the gardener.

The Handmaid’s Tale is a story told in the voice of Offred, who is the character of the “handmaid”, which is described best by women who are being forced and used for reproduction because they can make babies. In the Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood uses symbolism, which is the use of symbols to represent ideas, to show the reader the handmaid’s role in society of Gilead. The handmaids were women who had broken the law of Gilead, and forced into having sex and reproducing for the higher class. They had no rights and were watched constantly so this created a very nervous atmosphere. This horrible way of living is most likely why Offred never fully made the reader aware of the horrible life she was forced to live because

In “The Handmaid 's Tale” by Margaret Atwood, there is the addressing of freedom, abuse of power, feminism, rebellion and sexuality. The audience is transported to a disparate time where things normalized in our current society are almost indistinguishable. Atwood uses each character carefully to display the set of theme of rebellion within the writing, really giving the reader a taste of what the environment is like by explaining detailed interactions, and consequences as well as their role in society.

The Handmaid's Tale, a film based on Margaret Atwood’s book depicts a dystopia, where pollution and radiation have rendered innumerable women sterile, and the birthrates of North America have plummeted to dangerously low levels. To make matters worse, the nation’s plummeting birth rates are blamed on its women. The United States, now renamed the Republic of Gilead, retains power the use of piousness, purges, and violence. A Puritan theocracy, the Republic of Gilead, with its religious trappings and rigid class, gender, and racial castes is built around the singular desire to control reproduction. Despite this, the republic is inhabited by characters who would not seem out of place in today's society. They plant flowers in the yard, live in suburban houses, drink whiskey in the den and follow a far off a war on the television. The film leaves the conditions of the war and the society vague, but this is not a political tale, like Fahrenheit 451, but rather a feminist one. As such, the film, isolates, exaggerates and dramatizes the systems in which women are the 'handmaidens' of today's society in general and men in particular.

Since society has existed, women have been known as different from men. For the longest time, women have been known as the “weaker sex” when compared to the male. There purpose, especially in the olden days is to obey and please the men. However nowadays there seems to be a more equality between the two genders. But even today discrimination between male and female takes place all over the world. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, you can see a lot of discrimination between the two sexes. The story takes place in the 1930’s and it has a bad view on women, they just got the right to vote for presidents, mayors, and senators. However most men thought that the women should only stay home and raise children, that they should not be involved in politics, and their ideas were not valuable. Women were treated as “house slaves” at times when all what they did all day, every day, was work around the house trying to improve the living for their husband and kids.

Sexism is generally associated with women but, when researching the effects it also has on men, my opinion has shifted. One of the first times we identify sexism dates back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. At this time, due to a woman’s deceitful moral compass, settlers had the belief that women had to rely on men. Due to the religious beliefs at this time, and the story of Adam and Eve, women were deemed corrupt and untrustworthy. Feminine sexism has been around for decades but, we are just recently recognizing that men are victims of this disturbing phenomenon. (Tracy)

One of the many sad aspects of The Handmaid’s Tale is that the women who are subjected to abuse and discrimination soon comply with the roles that have been assigned to them, permitting abuse and exploitation against and amongst themselves. Atwood is not particularly hopeful about women as a means of changing the conditions in which they are living in this society. Even Offred’s eventual escape from the perverted system is more of a luck luck thing than determined will. Paying particular attention to the ending of the novel, this essay will argue that the author wants to call the reader’s attention to the problems that women suffer, but that she offers no solution or hope for change. I will be addressing three different literary devices in this essay; Repetition, Characterization, and Foreshadowing. I hope you enjoy.

Sexism in the United States has affected the country greatly. The idea that the world is a “man’s world” has been apparent since the writing of the Declaration of Independence. In The Declaration of Independence, it states that all people “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”(Declaration of Independence). By this, the framers were hopeful that all humans would get these “unalienable Rights”, yet because of sexism women do not get these rights. In The Grapes of Wrath, women are shown to be less than men. It is stated that “Women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole” (Steinbeck 4). By this statement, the reader is told that as long as the men were okay,

One can agree that for many generations women were victims of sexism. Even though sexism was unfair, it later taught women to stand up for themselves. One reason why sexism existed was because men were looked upon as superior. Because men had the role of being strong, aggressive and the sole provider. Unfortunately, men were to become the masters of most women. For the duration, women were

Martin Luther King Jr. once said “our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” However, I will not be silent. Sexism is a thing of the past, present, and future. Women have never been seen as equal to men. This idea and concept affect how women carry out their lives. Women may act different or speak different just based on society's thoughts about their gender. In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and in today’s society it is clear that because of women’s perceived “weakness”, men now dominate women legally, physically and financially.

Since society has existed, women have been known as different from men. For the longest time, women have been known as the “weaker sex” when compared to the male. There purpose, especially in the older days is to obey and please the men. However nowdays there seems to be a more equality between the two genders. But even today discrimination between male and female takes place all over the world. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, you can see a lot of discrimination between the two sexes. The story takes place in the 1930’s and it have a primitive view of women, they just got the right to vote for presidents, mayors, and senators. However most men thought that the women should only stay home and raise children, that they should not be involved in politics, and their ideas were not valuable.

In conclusion, the poem is a confession from the writer for eating plums, which belonged to someone else, and then asking them to forgive the writer but never actually, after asking to be forgiven the writer then describes how delicious the plums were to the reader either in a “just wanting to let you know they were good” kind of way or “this is what you missed out

Margaret Atwood’s harrowing novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, follows the story of a woman marginalized by the theocratic oligarchy she lives in; in the Republic of Gilead, this woman has been reduced to a reproductive object who has her body used to bear children to the upper class. From the perspective of the modern reader, the act of blatant mistreatment of women is obvious and disturbing; however, current life is not without its own shocking abuses. Just as the Gileadian handmaid was subject to varied kinds of abuse, many modern women too face varied kinds of abuses that include psychological, sexual, and financial abuse.

Gender discrimination is an unfavorable treatment based on gender. It causes the elimination of individual’s right and opportunity (Reeves and Baden, 2000: 2). Gender discrimination usually disadvantages women because women are considered inferior in society. Virginia Woolf states that gender discrimination is a result of the imbalance power between men and women (in Dobie, 2012: 114). Apparently, women have already suffered the discrimination since a long time ago.