Both Margaret Atwood's 1985 published novel The Handmaid's Tale, and her 2003 published novel Oryx and Crake feature a dystopian setting, with Atwood herself considering them both to be speculative fiction (Hunter). The research question of how the settings of the two novels compare, and how each setting affects its respective protagonist will be investigated in this essay. Though the two novels vary quite differently in storyline, and the protagonists of each novel face different problems, it is
The Relationship between Language and Power in Respect to Identity and Conformity. In The Handmaid’s Tale language and literacy have an enormous effect on the dystopian society. Nearly everyone's identity has been stripped away. The most powerful people have more privileges than some of the others, everyone has been renamed and repositioned. Women are grouped into classes Handmaids, Wifes, Marthas, and the Econowifes. The body and its functions especially the fertile female body have become more
Intro- The Handmaid’s Tale, written by Margaret Atwood is a fictitious novel that describes a misogynistic and dysfunctional society, The Republic of Gilead, which was once the United States. Gilead leadership stripped women of their freedom and their rights claiming low fertility rates as a justifiable reason for women to stay in the home and to bear children. The political agenda of Gilead leadership resembles religious conservative ideals of women as homemakers and the bearers of children as their
In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the dystopian theme of freedom and confinement is evident throughout. In the novel, it is clear that Handmaids are one of the groups of people with the least amount of freedom. They must always follow the rules or else they will persecuted. The little bit of freedom which is left, is usually sent with other Handmaids. It is explained that all Handmaids are denied freedom as they may cause a threat against the government: “Now we walk along the same street
Motif of Rebellion Atwood utilizes the motif of rebellion throughout The Handmaid’s Tale to create dystopia. Indeed, rebellion towards the society is present from the exposition where Offred first describes that the previous Handmaid of the house has committed suicide in order to escape her fate. However to prevent this, Gilead has “remove everything you could tie a rope to” (Atwood, 1986, p.7). This emphasizes the society wanting to abolish any sort of rebellion both socially and individually,
There are many different forms that the regimes of dystopian literature take in order to suppress individuality from suppression by force in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Margaret Attwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale to a kind of silent suppression in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 or even just a suppression by the circumstance of nature in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. There are many different ways in which the suppression is manifested and many would argue that
dystopia because one class is ultimately oppressed. In Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale, this is exactly the case, and the oppressed class is the handmaids. The United States is transformed into The Republic of Gilead. The increase in rape and violence against women, as well as the dropping fertility rates facilitated this change. The story begins with a handmaid named Offred. She is one of a few women who are still fertile. Offred works in the house of the Commander and every month, at the
Margaret Atwood's thought-provoking novel, The Handmaid's Tale, displays a dystopian society in which men dominate women. This governing body, the Republic of Gilead, presents a dystopia where the freedom of women is completely cut-off due this new governing body's radical policies. This society, is narrated by a women named Offred. Offred, a Handmaid in the story offers the society a means of reproduction. Offred presents us with the ideas and ideology of this society through a first-person narrative
Atwood, who is best known for her challenging and powerful themes, explains how women were portrayed in the mid 1980’s in the western world. This feminist dystopian fiction examines the cultural construction of female identity, language and historical memory. She does this through her creation of strong yet vulnerable female characters, producing a vivid set of possibilities for the women in The Handmaid’s Tale. Women are treated as political and societal instruments; they were both necessary to create
opinions, ideas, and believes. Accordingly, many authors have resorted to their writing to express their feminist ideas, but first we must define what feminism is. According to the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, feminism is “the belief that women should be allowed the same rights, power, and opportunities as men and be treated in the same way, or the set of activities intended to achieve this state”. As early as the fifteenth century is possible to find feminist writings. Centuries later, and