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The Handmaid 's Tale By Margaret Atwood

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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. Theme: …show more content…

Structure: Each text has a distinctive structure. The Handmaid’s Tale is formless, disjointed for the most part. It is organized into non-chronological chapters because it is written in the mind of someone, a first draft, a thought process structured only by contemplation and mental revision. Offred puts this into words, saying that it’s a story “I’m telling, in my head, as I go along.” She tells a story of an extremely structured society, in a very unstructured way. The poem is the opposite. It’s a call to action, written in the form of the Villanelle - a form with a set number of lines, rhyme scheme, and line repetition. Dylan Thomas is not telling a story as much as he is making a statement, a command to keep on fighting. The types of people mentioned are there to reinforce this point, but they are not central to the poem. While The Handmaid’s Tale is written by an observer from the inside out, Do not go gentle into that good night is written from the outside looking in. Both make a statement on life, and purpose, using structure to support their perspective. Kassian Houben Characterization: The Handmaid’s Tale , focuses on at least one character from each ‘class’ The classes are: Angels, Aunts, Commanders, Econowifes, Guardians, Handmaids, Marthas, Wifes, and outcasts. By doing this, the author gives us an idea of the way different people deal with the situation, how they find meaning. Moira is an outcast. She goes

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