The Handmaid'S Tale Essay

Margaret Attwood uses her gift for fictional writing to explore the powerful theme of control. She does this through the medium of The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), which won the Governor-General’s award in 1985, and the first Arthur C. Clarke award in 1987. The dystopian novel portrays a current day North America being occupied by the religious extremists the Sons of Jacob. The religious leaders that are aiming to enact its idea of a perfect world heavily control the dystopia’s population. Attwood…

First written in 1985, The Handmaid’s Tale is set in a theocratic nation known as The Republic of Gilead, defined by its significant social boundary between males and females. Influenced by the strict and traditional lifestyle of the seventeenth century American Puritans, Margaret Atwood based her narrative on the disparity between the role of the man and woman in their culture. Especially in the 1970s, America was swept by rising movements based upon the Republican party ideals which heavily…

The dystopian novel, The handmaid’s tale, written by Margaret Atwood in 1985, is based after the government calls off the constitutional and begin to build a ‘christian society’ that replaces the US, now called Gilead. The handmaid’s tale explores many different themes, one of which is surrounding the contrast of gender roles and why they are represented this way. Women and men have completely different titles they are chosen to have based on certain characteristics and backgrounds. Gilead…

hindering a person’s chances to opportunity should never be allowed. When you look back, that was the society we once lived in. If you weren't of a certain class, race, or gender you weren't open to certain opportunities. In the novel "The Handmaid's Tale" males and females were exposed to different worlds. Women were treated unfairly and had little to no opportunity. They were forced to have sex with commanders without question and prostitution was deemed acceptable in this novel, something…

To hold people to oppression, you must convince them first that they need to be oppressed. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian novel, takes substantial efforts to depict this very scenario. She portrays a patriarchal society where women’s bodies are exploited, reading and writing by women are forbidden, and women are strictly monitored and oppressed. Along with other subjects, Atwood explores the social myths defining femininity, the social and economic exploitation of women, as…

constructed through the narrating of stories, the ambiguous nature of narrative is a position of real power to interpret history. In Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale, the author demonstrates the power of narrative through Offred’s resistance in a totalitarian regime that seeks to erase her individuality and, the loss of context when her tale is reconstructed by humanity. The author’s use and restriction of narrative in the Republic of Gilead demonstrates the attempt to establish…

The historical lens is the most effective lens with which to view the novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood because it leads the reader to the intended purpose of the novel. The purpose of Atwood’s novel is to warn the society of what the future will hold if the political and social trends found in the 1980’s were to continue. Atwood uses her skilled writing techniques to allow the reader to reach this purpose; an important secondary lens in which to view this novel is therefore the…

Dystopian Critical Analysis “Whether this is my end or a new beginning I have no way of knowing” (Atwood 295). In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale a young women named Offred is trapped in a dystopian microcosm being forced to do the unthinkable. In the United States an outbreak of syphilis occurred causing many people to become infertile. The population is declining and the country is scared as a whole. Then, a group of extremists break into the congress building during a session and…

Unorthodoxy In The Handmaid’s Tale In a world where everything is in order, individuality will not go unnoticed. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, is set in a totalitarian theocracy called the Republic of Gilead. The main character and narrator, Offred, presents her story as an audio diary, which is transcribed into book form by Professor Pieixoto. Offred tells of her life before Gilead, when she has a steady job and a loving family; during the revolution, when she loses her job, money,…

“There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from” (Atwood 24). The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a story of freedoms, and questions what it means to truly be free. An oppressive character in the novel, a woman apart of the theologically tyrannical Gilead, named Aunt Lydia introduces the ideas of “freedom to” and “freedom from” early in Offred’s telling of her story (Atwood 24). ‘Freedom to’ is best described as being able to do what one wants to do,…