The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

Written by Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel set in the near future where the United States is overthrown and a military dictatorship forms called the Republic of Gilead. Gilead is a society that reconsolidates power and creates a new hierarchical regime that limits women entirely of their rights. The rulers of this dystopia are centrally concerned with dominating their subjects through the control of their experiences, time, memory, and history. A woman called Offred narrates the story and works as a Handmaid for reproductive purposes only. In her storytelling, Offred describes flashbacks consisting of portions of her life before the revolution. These flashbacks are the only thing that keeps her going in this

Margret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaids Tale is a striking work of fiction, with strong characters inundated in a depressing melancholy. A dysfunctional patriarchal society based around the common goal of producing offspring, Gilead, becomes the physical manifestation of modern misogyny and championing of the male. Atwood uses this speculative and extreme example in the future to convey a message about current society, resulting in a famous example of the Dystopian genre. Atwood explores the ideas of individuality, leadership and control, conveying her ideas through a multitude of techniques.

In "The Handmaid's Tale", Margaret Atwood tells a saddening story about a not-to-distant future where toxic chemicals and abuses of the human body have resulted in many men and women alike becoming sterile. The main character, Offred, gives a first person encounter about her subservient life as a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, a republic formed after a bloody coup against the United States government. She and her fellow handmaids are fertile women that the leaders of Gilead, the Commanders, enslave to ensure their power and the population of the Republic. While the laws governing women and others who are not in control of Gilead seem oppressive, outlandish and ridiculous, they are merely a

In her dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood subliminally raises the question of how one’s personality is influenced by their role in society. This question is answered through multiple characters in the novel, specifically Offred, The Commander, and Moira.

The Handmaid’s Tale is filled with stimulating, thought-provoking themes. The book can be analyzed with many different considerations, each of them leading into an individual theme. In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the theme of control is prevalent, and is significant in that it establishes many of the premises that contribute to the main conflicts of their society. In this essay I will discuss how the theme of control results in conflict regarding the way they dress, their identity, and the rights that they have.

In Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale she explores the concept of a not-so-distant future where toxic chemicals and abuses to the body have left many men and women alike sterile. The main character, Offred, gives the reader a first person account about her submissive life as a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. A republic that was formed after a coup against the U.S. government. She and her fellow handmaids are fertile women that the commanders of Gilead ‘enslave’ to ensure their power and to repopulate their ‘society’. While the laws that govern the people of Gilead seem outlandish and oppressive, they are merely

Throughout history, women have been recognized for their central role in perpetuating life. During The Journey Inward, Campbell claims, “They represent life. Man doesn't enter life except by woman” (55). Although women nurture and carry life in their bodies before birth, both men and women are needed to create new life. Therefore, men and women both hold responsibility for forming offspring. The society described by Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid’s Tale is the patriarchal Republic of Gilead. In Gilead, they take the idea that women solely “represent life” to the extreme: forcing fertile women to live a life focused on reproduction and blaming all that goes wrong with conception and birth on women. Throughout her novel, Atwood implies that women should have more varied roles in society than simply reproducing.

In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, The theme of gender, sexuality, and desire reigns throughout the novel as it follows the life of Offred and other characters. Attwood begins the novel with Offred, a first person narrator who feels as if she is misplaced when she is describing her sleeping scenery at the decaying school gymnasium. The narrator, Offred, explains how for her job she is assigned to a married Commander’s house where she is obligated to have sex with him on a daily basis, so that she can become pregnant and supply the Commander with a child. In addition, the uniform that Offred along with the other handmaids are required to wear is a red dress, which symbolizes blood. Offred has little to no freedom as she has duties assigned daily making her feel as if she is in prison. When she occasionally leaves the room she is confined to, Offred is always being watched over by someone else so that she is never alone when she is outside of her room. All through the novel, Offred has habitual flashbacks to different parts in her life. For example, she is nostalgic about her relationship and time spent with her mother, daughter, and husband Luke as she compares her new life to how it was before the regime. Furthermore, the regime denies public access towards acquiring new knowledge and language, limiting Offred’s potential. The Gileadean regime’s primary focus is rule over gender, sexuality, and desire.

Margaret Atwood’s well-known novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” is about a woman named Offred. She is a handmaid in Gilead, a theocratical state that has taken over the United States. Due to extinct reproduction rates, the handmaids are assigned to bear children for couples who no longer can conceive a child. The handmaid serves the commander and his wife. They are raped, and they have controlled freedom.

The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood, is a dystopian novel written by Margaret Atwood that contains many controversial ideas and themes relating to society. The novel takes place in the near future of a new society called the Republic of Gilead, not very long after the United States government was overthrown. Gilead follows the rules and policies made by the new religiously extremist rulers. The readers learn about Gilead through the narrator named Offred, who is a handmaid. The Handmaids in Gilead are women who had the job of reproducing with the Commanders of the different households they were assigned to.

Visualize a society controlled by a group of people, who lust having control of every aspect in a society. Making a place where only them has power and can decide of what they want. Creating rules to take over every habitant’s rights and destroying their identity, making them perfect slaves for their idealistic society. Think about a society where the most important individuals are the one who gets nothing but disrespect and neglect from the other citizens. Generally, these subjects are distained by the society, but this changes as soon as some very important and high-ranking personality needs them.

This dystopian novel is written by Margaret Atwood. The title is The Handmaid’s Tale. What was once known as the United States to most people is now known as Gilead. Gilead came about by people who were trying to fix the world so they took power into their own hands to try and stop a declining birthrate and fertility. Handmaids are given to people of high status whose wives can’t have children, so their job is to give the family a child. The government thinks that these handmaids are the perfect people for this because they have viable eggs. Even though they live in such a place where you have no power over yourself any more, and are being watched where you go, Offred, main character survives day to day in the hopes that she will one day see

The novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale”, by Margaret Atwood, explores the role of women in a fictional patriarchal society. Women in the novel are seen as property of a man and they live under a strict set of enforced rules and guidelines that male society has deemed appropriate. These patriarchal beliefs are so entrenched in the society that many women either believe the ideals or have been subconsciously influenced by society. Most of the women in the novel were “products of society” with their personalities being heavily attributed into the culture that they were now immersed in. A major theme of “The Handmaid’s Tale”, by Margaret Atwood, is the skewed sense of freedom and power that the women have developed; seen in the value placed on children, the women’s interactions with one another, and the clear presence of suicide.

In Margaret Atwood's fictional novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, set in a dystopian society, the character of Offred is a ‘handmaid’ assigned to a high-ranking Commander and his wife. Atwood’s explanation of the novel in her ‘Introduction’ categorizes The Handmaid’s Tale as a “feminist novel” (xv). Through Offred’s struggle to rationalize her transgressions, which lead to her imprisonment, Atwood challenges feminists’ conceptions of idealistic worlds. Feminists believe that women have both the right to control their bodies and to control if and when they have children, which is critical to their freedom of choice surrounding procreation and the expression and enjoyment of their sexuality (Boston Women's Health Book Collective). Barbara Ehrenreich,

The Handmaid’s Tale explores gender and identity as well as domestic politics, which, in turn, ties into social protest. Atwood uses the example of a ‘Unwomen’, who were past protestors demonstrating against violent sexual attacks on women and calling for greater safety on the streets. This relays the knowledge that rebellions and protests have happened in the past and makes readers aware of the dilemma that moral freedom comes at a price. The real threat in The Handmaid’s Tale comes not from males but from the females. In other words, the male-dominated power structure that exists relies on females to regulate one another and enforce social standards within their society.