The Handmaid's Story: Serious Or Happy?

In certain situations, an ambiguous ending is the perfect way to end a book, offering the reader something to think on while awaiting for the next instalment or it may be fitting for the mood of the novel to provide no true closure to the story. However in Margret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a novel where the narrator describes everything she thinks, does, or doesn’t do with an impressive amount of detail, it is amazingly frustrating for the book to take an unexpected turn to uncertainty in its final chapters.

In the beginning of The Handmaids Tale, there are 3 quotations that form the front piece of the book and insight the readers into the important aspects of the book. “And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children…” This quotation resembles how important it was to give children. That if Rachel gave no children she might as well die, “Give me children or else I die”. This quotation sets the theme for infertility. Rachel allows Jacob to get the maid pregnant because she wants to claim the children as her own. The desire for children is put above any other sin committed, such as this version of adultery. The reason for this quotation in the book is to imply that these actions will be taken in The Handmaids Tale. The second quotation,

After reading the Handmaid's Tale, I felt that Societal Complacency was the most critical aspect to the success of the Gilead Society. The Republic of Gilead is a run by a strict Old Testament religious doctrine. This government does not tolerate anyone who does not conform, it is run mostly by fear. Fear of death or the wall or being sent to radioactive colonies. This new government is cruel towards women, it robbed them of their humanity under the guise of protecting them. This new republic has forced women to give up jobs, forbidden them from reading, they control or regulate sexual activity as well as reproduction and birth, they have also prohibited or limited speech between women and even renamed women so that it fits in with a more

Philip Zimbardo, an American psychologist said, “Bullies may be the perpetrators of evil, but it is the evil of passivity of all those who know what is happening and never intervene that perpetuates such abuse,” (“Philip Zimbardo Quotes”). In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, a pair Handmaid’s called Offred and Ofglen, and a wife named Serena Joy, clearly exhibit contrasting examples of complacency and passivity in their dystopia. Taking place in what used to be the United States, the Republic of Gilead begins their overthrow first with a massacre of the previous government, followed by the Republic effectively stripping women

“I think about laundromats. What I wore to them: shorts, jeans, jogging pants. What I put into them: my own clothes, my own soap, my own money, money I had earned myself. I think about having such control. Now we walk along the same street, in red pairs, and no man shouts obscenities at us, speaks to us, touches us. No one whistles. There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate it.” (24)

It was dark, and that worried Anton. He tried not to come outside during this time of night, (because that was when they came out) but this was the only time his contact would agree to meet with him. Looking across the horizon, Anton could see the sun going down. “Huh,” he says. “I can’t remember the last time I actually saw a sunset.” He kept walking, and eventually reached the outskirts of the city. I can’t remember what this place was called, he thought as he walked. A worn-down building answered his question; tattered letters on the side of the wall displayed the words NYPD.

Treloar's outward air of confidence was mostly a facade; an attempt to keep Lexi's spirits buoyed whilst and his own from plummeting. The past two days, being cooped up in the hotel room, where the walls had slowly seemed to creep closer and closer in on them, and the knowledge they were being hunted by Huntington's goons had lowered his spirits. At times, although he hadn't dared speak it out loud, he'd even begun to wonder if Lexi would have been better off if he'd never snuck into her Father's mansion that night to reconnect with her.

When a high school jock with the perfect life, wakes up one morning with a beast that only he can see chained to his wrist, he must learn to adapt to creature bent on destroying his life, or give into its fiendishness and give up his once perfect life.

This novel is an account of the near future, a dystopia, wherepollution and radiation has rendered countless women sterile, and the birthrates of North America are dangerously declining. A puritan theocracy nowcontrols the former United States called the Republic of Gilead andHandmaids are recruited to repopulate the state. This novel containsAtwood's strong sense of social awareness, as seen in the use of satire tocomment on different social conditions in the novel. The Handmaid'sTale is a warning to young women of the 'post-feminist' 1980s and after,who began taking for granted the rights that had been secured for womenby the women before them.

The Handmaid’s Tale was published in 1986 by Margaret Atwood. Known as a dystopian novel, I’m given insight to a warped United States, which is now the Republic of Gilead. The narrator Offred reminisced of the “president being shot and congress being machine-gunned” (Atwood 206). Gilead has decided to take action due to the structure of the states and the dramatic decrease in Caucasian birthrates. Gilead has created a government, new life style, and vocabulary, for residents. The most drastic change would be that women no longer have rights. No longer able to read, write, work, or decide day to day activities. Men were positioned

Imagine you wake up one day in a home and have no recollection of who you are and who the people in the home are around you. Scary right? Well, this was the reality for a particular female patient. Despite this reality, a certain patient, who goes by Duke, visits her everyday, reading her a love story. As the two patients are adapting to this new lifestyle, new things are coming with it. Duke becomes known in the nursing home for reading this passionate love story, and is later sedulous to only reading the story to his fellow female patient.

Flashbacks give us insight into Offred’s life before Gilead. Offred was born around thirty years before the creation of the Republic of Gilead toa strong opinionated feminist who had a one night stand with Offred's father with the sole purpose of getting pregnant. Offred's mother raised her alone and tried to bring up her daughter with her own values: that women were oppressed and needed to fight for their rights, but without much success; Offred herself states that she took much of her personal freedom for granted in the life she lead prior to Gilead's creation.Offred attended college along with her childhood friend Moira and started working in an office. Soon Offred met and fell in love with a married man named Luke. They started having an

On this particular night, each hopes to find the other in order to kill him in defense of their property rights. Both men separate from their hunting party and happen upon one another in the forest. Before either can attack, the branch of a beech tree collapses on the two men and traps them both. The men initially quarrel but soon realize the futility of their vengeance and reconcile. They revel in dreams about the peaceful future and make plans to meet publicly as friends. After coming together, the two join their voices to get the attention of their hunting parties. Ulrich spots a crowd of supposed men approaching, but Georg cannot see due to the blood in his eyes. As the crowd nears, Ulrich realizes that the pack is not of men, but rather

Pushing limbs out of the way, I leaned down against Ghost’s back as he picked his way along the animal trail beside the stream. The only indication Duncan passed this way was Flint’s hoof prints in the dirt, evidence I was heading in the right direction. The sound of water splashing ahead alerted me, but I couldn’t determine if it was the stream rushing over boulders in its path, an animal walking through the water to the other side, or the pair I was hunting down.

Nadia just came to class two days after the incident and I still confused with the girl who I saw at Nadia’s house. Since then, I noticed that Nadia always tried to avoid me. Whenever I bumped into her, she would low down her face and did not want to make eye contact with me. Since then, I eventually understood that the girl that I saw was actually Nadia. The reason I did not recognized her because her face was different than I used to see. At that moment, she showed up with her bare face without make-up. Her flawless face that I used to see actually had a few acne and blemish at some spots on her face. Her eyebrows which had a few hairs on it and thin made her seemed did not have eyebrows at all. She also got panda’s eyes and not clears like