The Handmaid 's Tale By Margaret Atwood

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.

Language, arguably mankind’s most influential invention, not only forms the foundation for human culture, but is also embedded within every aspect of our cyclical lives. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood skillfully portrays the systematic oppression in the Republic of Gilead, as seen through the array of forms that language encompasses. Ultimately, Atwood depicts language as a manipulative tool used by the totalitarian regime to undermine its perceivably dystopian nature by spreading a false sense of organization and order. This is evident with the regime’s employment of naming systems, the misuse of religious texts, and the controlled limitations of language for women.

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.

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:

In the book The Handmaid 's Tale by Margaret Atwood, the foremost theme is identity, due to the fact that the city where the entire novel takes place in, the city known as the Republic of Gilead, often shortened to Gilead, strips fertile women of their identities. Gilead is a society that demands the women who are able to have offspring be stripped of all the identity and rights. By demeaning these women, they no longer view themselves as an individual, but rather as a group- the group of Handmaids. It is because of the laws that have been established that individuality has been demolished. From these points that will be raised, it can be concluded that a handmaid’s role in Gilead is more important than their happiness, and mental wellbeing.

“The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation” by Eudora Welty. In the book, The Handmaid’s Tale, the series of past and present events are not in chronological order like most books. The book is constructed like the mind, it is in no particular order. However, the passage at chapter 41, page 307-308 if read thoroughly with the use of texture can bring out new interesting findings. When studied with the use of literal content, plots and characters connect the passage. Analysing this passage critically, gives out insights into characters and the narrator’s life. Through an exhaustive deconstruction of textures, literal

In Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, the character of Offred is restricted by the severe regulations of her society. The once democratic United States of America with equality for all has been turned into the theocratic and totalitarian Republic of Gilead. When Offred is affected by the strict standards of this society, she responds in audacious, yet furtive ways in order to not attract the attention of the omniscient Eyes who control the society and punish offenders

Imagine a world where our basic freedoms are taken away from us; a world where we are not free to say what we want; a world where we are bound by the chains of oppression, and are at the mercy of an elite ruling class government, where even the slightest negativity expressed towards them is strictly prohibited. In this world we would have no identity, no names, and no communication. This obscene idea would ultimately be the dystopian world from our worst nightmares. Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale paints a vivid picture as to the nature of such a dystopia, a world which is ruled by a small wealthy ruling class, and where everybody’s rights have been stripped away from them. This dystopian society is situated in what was once the

The 1986 Novel ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ written by Margaret Atwood and Gary Ross’ 2012 film ‘The Hunger Games’ are dystopian texts that reflect the genre of dystopian literature and the context in which they were composed. The conventional themes through which they do this are uniformity, technology and removal from present time as well as how these concepts are manipulated to create new meanings.

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

The Handmaid’s Tale is a futuristic novel set in the Republic of Gilead, a dictatorial Christian society that has ousted the American government to come into power. The new government demands its followers to have a moral, highly religious and virtuous lifestyle guided by the Bible. The Handmaid’s Tale focuses on the journey of Offred, a handmaid during this era. Offred has viable ovaries, a fact that makes her valuable to the Commander and his wife who are in need of a child. In her previous life, Offred had been used to taking her freedom for granted.

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

he Handmaid’s Tale is a modernist novel by Margaret Atwood. It explores a dystopian future in which society has become an extreme hierarchy. Each individual has been assigned a role with it’s own regulations, which if not met lead to the person 's disposal. Offred, the main character, has known a time when life was still ‘normal’ but as society changed she had to take on the role of a Handmaid. A Handmaid’s purpose is to be impregnated and bear children for her superiors. Do not go gentle into that good night is a poem by Dylan Thomas. He too discusses the theme of purpose, but in a very different way. Both use structure, characterization, and imagery to provide a wide perspective on the theme of purpose.

In the year 2008, the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) conducted a survey on workplace sexual harassment. Out of 500 respondents from 92 companies, seventy-nine percent of sexual harassment victims were females. In the Republic of Gilead of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale, the protagonist and narrator, Offred is a handmaid with a ticking biological clock. A Handmaid’s purpose is to repopulate the world by having sex with their respective Commander’s but at the age of 33, Offred does not have that much time left. If she remains infertile then a cruel fate would be awaiting her, All the while during this crisis, Offred reminisces back to

At the United Nations campaign launch of “HeforShe” on September 20, 2014, Emma Watson stated in her influential speech that, “Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong…It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum not as two opposing sets of ideals” (Duca 2014). Similarly to Emma Watson, there are countless women in our generation who strongly believe in feminism and preach about what they truly believe in. However, some women are trapped in controlled societies where they face oppression and struggle to get their voice heard on what is right and wrong. This particular society can be strikingly demonstrated in Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. It is crucial for women to have fundamental human rights to express themselves in our society today because there cannot be any more injustice; due to the fact that women are not safe, must stand up for themselves and are incapable when it comes to certain circumstances.