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
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a recount of Offred’s service as a national resource within the dystopian theocracy of Gilead; a fundamentalist Christian society where every intricate social structure is a counter-revolution to the now-defunct United States. Offred is a handmaid at the disposal of her assigned Commander and must spend hours waiting in isolation, considering the past, present and future. From Atwood’s developing descriptions of life before the coup, the reader begins to fully
Each and every one of the citizens who inhabit the Republic of Gilead are obligated to be passive in the novel The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, however women have it worse since they no longer possess any economic or social control. The Aunts at the Red Center are exempt, but even they are subject to restrictions. In order to endure in the Republic of Gilead, characters have to be clean slates. They have to be willing to take on different names and go where they're told. They can't protest
Carol Ann Duffy, Caryl Churchill and Margaret Atwood are all feminist writers who had their work published in the twentieth century, during which time women faced (and still face) restrictions on education (the ability to read and write), their job roles (their position in the hierarchy at work) and being financially independent. In this essay, I will be discussing how women within Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls and a range of Carol Ann Duffy’s poems from her The
a 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
any woman? In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, when a woman relinquishes her reproductive rights, she loses her humanity completely. Becoming a Handmaid requires losing the mind, the soul, the heart, and the person one used to be. Handmaids have lost every right “except a few narrowly defined domestic ones, and human fertility is so reduced that individuals like Offred, with ‘viable ovaries’” are left with no other option (Thomas 90). In “Women Disunited: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s
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
Character Analysis- Offred In analyzing the character traits in Atwood’s The Handmaids Tale, I noticed the following characteristics or traits about Offred. She operates as the main character in this futuristic tale. Some of the characteristics that are most evident include her ability to see the future and the past through flashbacks and reflections that other characters could not do. Case-in-point: the rules of Gilead versus the rules of today in American society. This paper will analyze the main
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
attain their aim which is suspending people from any kind of sexual relationship founded on pleasure. Even commanders and officers of high degree in Islamic Republic of Iran slight the prohibitions as it’s seen in the novel when the Commander takes Offred into the club to enter into sexual intercourse. For example, Reza Zarei, the Tehran police chief, was busted in a hotel room with six prostitutes in 2008. He was in charge of vice in Islamic Republic of Iran when he was busted (Cohen). Arrest of Reza