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Allusions In The Handmaid's Tale

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The Handmaid 's Tale is one of Margaret Atwood most famous novels written during the spring of 1984, when the Berlin wall was still encircled. Atwood writes this book to create a dystopia, which most authors invision as the world’s fate. The Handmaid 's Tale effectively portrays the United States as a modern day totalitarian society of Gilead, which was depicted as perfect by using the book of Genesis. Although the authors’ ideas are inherently and completely fictional, several concepts throughout his book have common links to the past and present society which is the author herself calls a speculative fiction. Atwood integrates a totalitarian systems of the past, including the soviet system from deprivation, repression and terror which are …show more content…

The novel has created a society in which the only two important beliefs in a society are the ability to procreate and a strict belief in God. As it it mentioned above, Gilead is depicted as perfect by using the book of Genesis. The Biblical society is not as right as the republic of Gilead, which Margaret Atwood has built, but it is very similar . The Handmaid 's tale holds several biblical allusions. The most important in a state of opinion would be. “It’s the usual story, the usual stories. God to Adam, God to Noah. Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth [...]. Give me children, or else I die. Am I in God’s stead, who bath withheld from the fruit of the womb? [..]and she shall bear upon my keens, that I may also have children of her.” (Atwood 88) This verse was read to the Handmaid 's everyday at breakfast and before the ceremony just to drill it in their minds, even though most of them know those were not the right textual evidence from the Bible. This appears in the Old testament, which complicated matters because it actually states that Jacob falls in love with Rachel on first sight, but is tricked by her family into wedding her older sister Leah instead. Another biblical allusion depicted would be the Angels, so they are called. But they were simply Guards. “Carried by two angels” (Atwood 91) They are most likely driven from “Archangels” who symbolize strength, protection, and guardianship. “The Angels stood outside in with their backs to us. They were objects of fear to us..”

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