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A Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

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In Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale, one of the many social issues explored was the rebellious actions of humans when their independence, freedom, and nature is taken away and controlled. In the theocratic government of Gilead fights to keep sex and sexuality apart by destroying pornography and sexual clothing, killing gays, lesbians, and abortion doctors, and force the society to participate in sexual rituals under the impression that they are supported by the Bible. This control causes a nation-wide fear of giving into human impulses and expressing freedom of speech, however due to the rebelliousness of human nature, this control and fear doesn’t hold. Atwood portrays this through symbols, simile, and humor. People have not been historically
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The Innocent and The Evil Categories are everywhere, within schools and novels. Society tends to have the imagery of innocent and harmful people, those who suffer and who benefit. “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood and “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak both show prime examples of innocent and harmful people. In these novels, two adjectives are shown throughout in different ways by three key points: overpowerment of a government, loss of individualism, and young love.

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In The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the wall’s purpose is to display a warning to anyone who wants to try and overcome the system. As seen in the novel, men who are strung up on the wall are seen as “war criminals” (Atwood 33). To explain, the citizens of Gilead see the people on the wall as criminals for what they tried to do. Although these crimes may be legal at the time, the Gilead leaders have changed the rules to fit their views. These criminals now are hung on the wall to let everyone know what will happen to them if they try to commit these crimes.

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378 Words | 2 Pages

The desire for power is very prominent in The Handmaid’s Tale. In the Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Atwood uses figurative language including, symbolism, diction, and dramatic irony to show multiple characters struggles with reproductive rights and the struggle of gaining power in the male dominated society; It is not always the lack of power that these characters, but the desire to not be underpowered. Offred is the main character in Handmaid’s Tale. The first struggle that is known right away is her name. Her name is forced upon her by others choosing.

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234 Words | 1 Pages

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood highlights this justification as it *depicts the creation and execution of an oppressive system. * Offred is married to a man who has been previously divorced, because of this she is seen as “morally unfit” and as someone who has less value than a woman whose partner had not been previously married. This . *. is shown through the quote, “The regime created an instant pool of such women by the simple tactic of declaring all second marriages and nonmarital liaisons adulterous...” This degradation allows the Gilead to justify the worth of woman in their society and grants them the ability to decide whether or not they are fit to be Wives or are forced into the burden of being a Handmaid.

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908 Words | 4 Pages

In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood, shows us how the government used women as a means of reproduction and to repopulate. The Gilead was a period where birthrates were down and religion was running the government. Women that could reproduce, were given the color red to wear as a symbol of menstruation and fertility. The time of the Gilead, was a time that women were branded by what their bodies could or could not do. Offred was a wife, a mother, and a daughter before she had it all taken away and was forced to be a handmaid.

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2132 Words | 9 Pages

In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood creates a dystopian world in which the object of the government’s control and management are the women. The new Republic of Gilead uses the bible as their means for control, justifying their actions through a version of Christianity perverted so heavily it is hardly recognizable to the reader. Women walk around heavily shrouded, any hint of their sexuality is strictly forbidden, they cannot work or engage in any activity that goes against their gender role, and they are not even allowed to read anymore. Narrated from the point of view of the handmaid Offred, she tells her story as a way of making sense of how the world around her came to be and how to maintain a sense of herself while living in it. Her

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538 Words | 3 Pages

In the novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” by Margaret Atwood, the idea that women are to be submissive in a male-dominated society is expressed. While this may seem like an anti-feminist ideology, it is the opposite. Instead of shedding light on the uplifting of women, Atwood explores the idea of what would happen to women in a male-dominated world, and how we would be negatively affected. The first way women are made to be submissive to men in their society is through their clothing. Women wear extremely modest clothing, not even showing their faces to the men.

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976 Words | 4 Pages

Just as Hillary Jordan’ main protagonist Hannah has been put into boxes her whole life, literature tends to think in boxes as well. Novels are put in different genre boxes and the characters are, through their character traits, in boxes as well. This thesis has three boxes as well, in this case called chapters. Within each chapter it will be tried to break these boxes open and discuss why not everything can be put in just one box and why society should start to think outside the box.

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942 Words | 4 Pages

Robert A. Heinlein once said, “I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them.” In human nature, people tend to act upon the way they feel, and those feelings are often a result of their surroundings, the world they live in. The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian novel, written by Margaret Atwood reflects this. The novel reflects how the more something is implemented, the greater the temptation is to do otherwise as shown through the Commander and Offred’s relationship, the society’s desperation for a baby, and the novel’s first person point of view.

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981 Words | 4 Pages

In The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the Republic of Gilead actively represses women by forcing them into very narrowly defined, ultra-conservative gender roles. This totalitarian government strips women of all rights and protections, and imposes severe punishments for defiance. Pollution and disease had caused severe infertility in this society, drastically reducing birth rates. In an effort to reverse a drastic population decline, this thoroughly misogynistic and power-hungry regime, takes full control over the human reproductive process. Furthermore, the leadership uses various dehumanizing methods to achieve complete subservience of women to men.

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1364 Words | 6 Pages

Aunt Lydia’s more relevant quote in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, is the two freedoms, who gives the reader an accurate insight of the Gilead society. This quote exposes the contrast between the freedom before and after the settlement of the Republic of Gilead, and the mentality of the brainwashed nation. It is well known that the Gileadean era is a dystopia, but the reader must study deeper into both societies –Gileadean and pre-Gileadean- to understand which one is really worse. Before the appearing of the Republic of Gilead, freedom was seen as a person’s desire, however, on the Gileadean era, freedom is a collective idea. On the current community, freedom is settled by laws based on moral and social values, but ignoring the

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996 Words | 4 Pages

In this written text, the emphasis will be on Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale and as well as the way Atwood portrays women and how it can be argued to show the oppression of women. The main purpose is to analyze the way women are treated throughout this book and depict why they are represented this way in the society in Gilead. Then, comparatively, observe the men’s domination over women and how they govern this society. In The Handmaid’s Tale, women are stripped of their rights, suffer many inequalities and are objectified, controlled by men and only valued for their reproductive qualities. The Gilead society is divided in multiple social group.

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1587 Words | 7 Pages

“Power doesn’t corrupt people, people corrupt power.”- William Gaddis. People take advantage of power when it is entrusted to them because of their own greed, which as a result lead to societal deterioration. In the story, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” by Margaret Atwood, the higher-ups from Gilead abuse the power that is given to them, ruining the life of the citizens in the society. This was the cause for the need of higher birth rates and fixing conflicts in the world, but this was handled immorally.

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1101 Words | 5 Pages

Imagine a nation in which its government commands by a religion where women are separated into different titles and must conceive children for their commander. Their rights from before this regime, and anything deemed unholy by the government, are a thing of the past. This situation is the one represent in the Republic of Gilead, where the rules of society and its traditions are not taken lightly if broken. In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood shows that an oppressive government leads to the inevitable neglect and remiss of the rules through Offred’s characterization, irony, and flashbacks. Offred 's character development can show that her actions change .

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540 Words | 3 Pages

Abortion has been and still is a controversial issue. Over time, the attitude toward abortion has changed, and some states have declared the laws allow abortion in some cases. Although a lot of abortions have been performed since it turned out to be legal, the debate over abortion is still argued by many people. Some people would think abortion should be illegal because allowing abortion is against The Declaration of Independence (US 1776). It says, “All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

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