Handmaids Tale Analysis

In the Handmaid’s Tale, it becomes clear of what at the time is occurring in the beginning of the chapter. Offred is explaining how she is stuck in this new kind of caste system where she has to follow certain rules. She describes herself as someone that is trying to look for a future. She intends by describing how she must not talk or look directly at people. These particular rules make her feel like every day is the same in which she must continue to bare what occurs in the caste system. As she continues on by telling her story she describes how the caste system works and the people that are affected by it. Along her way in surviving the system where men are superior to women, she becomes friends with a girl that oppose the new caste

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

Paula Hawkins, a well-known British author, once said, “I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head.” In Margaret Atwood’s futuristic dystopia The Handmaid’s Tale, a woman named Offred feels she is losing control over everything in her life. Offred lives in the Republic of Gilead. A group of fundamentalists create the Republic of Gilead after they murder the President of the United States and members of Congress. The fundamentalists use the power to their advantage and restrict women’s freedom. As a result, each woman is assigned a specific duty to perform in society. Offred’s husband and child are taken away from her and she is now forced to live her life as a Handmaid. Offred’s role in society is to produce a child

Despite the little dependence on women, they are still objectified and subjected to injustice because of their gender, regardless if they were a female in general or as a poor female. As something as simple as what a person is born with affects the respect that is given to them. Margaret Atwood formulates Offred’s personality much like any other handmaid in the community. Offred becomes familiar with the functionality and role of women in the community, therefore she adjusts herself in order to be up to par with the unethical standard. “I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born. (Atwood, 75). To be what is required of her, Offred must act unhuman because the expectations of females exceed the

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.

Firstly, although offers Offred some kind of comforts but it is still destined to be fractured. Offred name is a slave name which describes her function: she

Comparatively to Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Handmaid’s Tale has prohibited the use of language and literacy for women in Gilead in order to suppress the independent voice, desire and autonomy. This is used as a means of social control and manipulation as a measure of ensuring that there are no opportunities in which woman can gain political power and be taken away from fulfilling their reproductive duties. In Atwood’s novel, language and reading are considered dangerous weapons in a woman’s hands, as having the capacity to underpin a women’s independence. Allowing women to be ambiguous, to think for themselves generating a desire to be autonomy’s while providing an opportunity to be mobile and rebellious. As a result, as soon as Offred

Offred's memories are a way for her to escape a society riddled with hopelessness. The authoritarian society of Gilead prevents her from

Offred offers a seemingly ineffective form of resistance. That resistance is to escape within herself to still have her own thoughts and old memories. By doing this she resists Gilead and shows her individuality. This is a method many other women placed in desperate situations like these have used. By retreating inward Offred shows that she still has a choice.

The women bond over their physical miseries; they find relief in complaining to one another and comfort in the, “I know what you mean”, empathetic reply that they receive. Offred tells how she once hated this small talk, and explained that now she longs or it. “At least it was talk”, she explains, “an exchange, of sorts” (Atwood 10). This shows how lonely the handmaid’s feel despite being a member of a community of Handmaids. While she gets sexual attention, she is ultimately left alone- leaving her miserable and longing for any sort of meaningful human contact- even in forms she once

Offred wanted her presence to be known in the Gilead society. She wanted to be treated as human and not as a handmaid. Offred wanted power so on every little occasion whether it was her thoughts or actual words she used certain words and phrases throughout the novel to establish her power and image. Offres used her opportunities to gain power , create meaning for herself and to establish her

The Handmaid’s Tale is a good example of showing how a women’s body is perceived in the book. Atwood uses the body of a women in a way showing its utility for bearing a child and how that is the societies only purpose for using it. Sexuality is highly encouraged in this novel as the whole entire purpose is to be able to impregnate a women to have a child which there is no other way to do so other than having sexual intercourse with that of the opposing sex. The reason for the amount of emphasis of sexuality in most dystopian fiction novels is because no matter what, it is in our human nature to be attracted to the same or opposite sex. And if in a dystopian novel there is an existence for not being attracted to the same or opposite sex then the characters in that novel are not human because it is a major character trait for humans to have an attraction to any sex.

“Waste not, want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?” (Atwood 7). From stealing butter for lotion to playing Scrabble with the Commander, plainly, Offred is unorthodox. The Republic of Gilead controls how much knowledge each caste is allowed; this is one way of controlling people and keeping order. Despite being condemned to this society and commanded not to read, Offred reads anyways. Offred’s actions show her dislike of

Even this is as usual, now. We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn 't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”(56) Offred actively defines her passivity, ignoring the fact that the America that she used to know had changed dramatically. She normalizes every event around her like the fact that watching people being hanged on the wall are just daily sightseeing, she avoids the uncomfortable truth of Gilead, intentionally refuse to revolt against the dictatorship regime. Interestingly, there is a quote on ignorance that I 'd like to share “Being ignorant is like being dead, you don’t know that you are dead, only people around you suffer.” Additionally, in chapter 13, Offred was sitting in the bath, visualizing her body while naked ”I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will . . . Now the flesh arranges itself differently. I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping.”( 91) She changed her opinion of her only property-her body from a device, her womb as a “ national resource” to a “central object” ,”glows red” like the sun which surrounded by planets. She glorifies herself because of her ability to bear a child. As well as denying the truth, interpret handmaids as a pivotal class in the society, not oppressed women whose womb are

Offred's purpose is to serve the Commander and his wife, Serena Joy. When Offred is at the crucial point in her menstrual cycle when she is most fertile, the Commander must have passionless sex with Offred in order to accomplish the objective of impregnating her. This is Offred's third attempt; she was not successful with the two Commanders before this one. If Offred fails again she will be declared an Unwoman and sent to the colonies for hard labor. Offred's freedom is completely restricted. She can not have the door to her room totally shut, and she can leave the house only on specific purposeful trips such as to visit the wall or for purchasing grocery items. All the while, Gilead's secret police forces, known only as ‘Eyes', are scrutinizing every move she makes.