Handmaids Tale Analysis

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In the world before Gilead, Offred felt uncomfortable with her mother’s feministic ways, and she had an affair with a married man named Luke. Luke then divorced his wife and married her, and they had a child together. When Gilead started they took their daughter as they tryed to escape across the border into Canada. Instead, they were caught and Offred hasn’t seen her husband or daughter since. After her capture, she continues to mentally resist Gilead, but she submits to Gilead. Afterwards, Offred’s marriage was voided, and she was sent to the Re-education Center.

At the Re-education Center, women had to go by Gilead’s ideology that women should be only concerned with bearing children, in preparation for becoming Handmaids. Offred is the Handmaid for the Commander and his wife, Serena Joy. From then on, when Offred was at the right point in her menstrual cycle, she had to have sex with the Commander while Serena sits behind her.
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She could only leave the house for shopping trips, and the Eyes, watched her every move. She has to visit the doctor frequently to be checked for disease and other complications, and wait with his Wife for him to finish The Ceremony of reading the bible to everyone in the household before having sex with her. One day, when she visits the doctor, he offers to have sex with her to get her pregnant. She refuses knowing she could be sent away if caught. One day, after the Ceremony, the Commander sends his gardener and chauffeur, Nick, to ask Offred to come see him in his study the following night. She begins visiting him regularly where they then play Scrabble, and lets her look at old magazines (women aren’t allowed to read). Meanwhile, Offred begins to find that the Ceremony feels less impersonal now that she knows the

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