ipl-logo

Censorship In The Handmaid's Tale By Maragret Atwood

1517 Words7 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Censorship and media

In a world where gender inequality persists and undemocratic governments are spreading, censoring Maragret Atwood’s thought provoking dystopian novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” by prohibiting it in high schools is a disservice to society. Censorship is the deliberate restriction of information, ideas, or opinions imposed by governments, organizations, or individuals. The principal objective of censorship is to stifle certain narratives to maintain social norms. Therefore, censorship, in general and specifically the banning of “The Handmaid's Tale,” undermines society, stunts individuals intellectual development, and is unjustifiable. “The Handmaid’s Tale” is a cautionary tale about a society that is undermined when women are stripped of their …show more content…

Without this critical awareness, there is a risk of complacency. Understanding the warning in “The Handmaid’s Tale” may encourage people to take a more informed and vigilant stance to actively advocate for gender equality, and foster a society that values the agency and well-being of all its members through activism. Reading and learning from a wide variety of challenging texts, including “The Handmaid’s Tale” is foundational for an engaged, active society. To ban books from libraries and schools risks the regression of society and the future of young people across the …show more content…

“The Handmaid’s Tale’s” thought provoking narrative challenges readers to think about uncomfortable truths with regards to power, gender, and societal control. The novel’s ability to spark critical thinking and generate discussions on these important topics makes it an essential read. This can be seen through the line, “Better never means better for everyone… it always means worse, for some” (Atwood, 244). The Commander says this when he is trying to justify the creation of Gilead to Offred. The line encourages readers to think critically about how Gilead is structured and provides a segway for readers to consider the issues in our world that cannot be solved without causing harm to some people. How a society balances these harms depends on what it values and prioritizes so healthy debates are necessary to inform important policy decisions. Consider, for example, there are ongoing debates on how to mitigate issues like environmental damage and future climate change risks, an issue that also exists in Gilead, and how the impacts and burdens of actions or inaction will be distributed amongst individuals and between

Show More
Related
877 Words | 4 Pages

It's november 11 1918 war one has just finished and germany is left in ruins. After 15 years a political figure takes power and his name is adolf hitler. Hitler gained his power just like jack did int the book lord of the flies, by fear and promises of short term relief from crisis. In the book lord of the flies by william golding the author uses the boys to show how power changes when in crisis. The boys are quick to assign ralph the chief because he is the first one to talk about rescue and being saved.

Read More
1310 Words | 6 Pages

Throughout the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, the protagonist Offred expresses how exposed beliefs and practices by the Gilead government affect the lives of Handmaids, relaying

Read More
93 Words | 1 Pages

Do you think if women were able to read in Handmaid’s Tale, they would oppose their role of just being seen as birth reproduction? 4. What comparisons can we make with birth reproduction in handmaids tail and in today's society?

Read More
2188 Words | 9 Pages

In the article “Go Ahead and Ban My Book” she wrote as a response to the novel being banned, specifically by a high school in Madison County, Virginia, she admits to religion, one of the leading causes of controversy, being a focus by saying “The truth is that the inspiration for The Handmaid’s Tale is in part biblical… The novel sets an inward faith and core Christian values…against totalitarian control…mostly based on the earlier scriptures in the Bible” (Atwood). She goes on to explain how the concerns of it being sexually inappropriate are not reasonable “my book is much less sexually explicit than the Bible” and that it was not intended for teens in the first place “I did intend my book for adult readers, who would recognize totalitarianism when they saw it” (Atwood). Overall, there is a theme that she is not regretful about the things that she included in the story, and she feels as though it is not fair to challenge it based on the reasoning provided. There was a constant mindset that the criticism won’t occur without

Read More
996 Words | 4 Pages

When analyzing the characters of the Handmaid's Tale and the Scarlet Letter through the feminist lense, sexism has become so internalized that women work to maintain the system through prejudice and belittling one another for not fulfilling orthodox gender roles.

Read More
1784 Words | 8 Pages

By utilizing propaganda through mass media, fear-based and false campaigns to create a“camouflage” rhetoric, the government perfectly shapes public opinions and manipulates societal action in a way that best benefits those who hold positions of power. Such approaches are reflected In The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. The Republic of Gilead contains a strict class and hierarchy which the government requires everyone to perform a certain role. On the surface, Gilead appears to be a perfect society. Yet, the totalitarian aspects of gilead take over.

Read More
2035 Words | 9 Pages

Works of literature often portray ideas relating to Marxist theory, this is why in a dystopian society, class distinctions dominate the social climate, using Marxist ideologies as a tool to define the lives of the narrator and those around her. In Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, ideologies from Marxist theory dominate the society in which Offred, the narrator, lives in, evidenced by the strict class systems and limited interaction between them. In writing the novel, Atwood makes a point to create a world that could exist using technology and ideas already accessible in today’s society, meaning the events that take place in The Handmaid’s Tale could happen in present day. Offred lives in a reality where class distinctions dominate society, and women, especially fertile women. These women are displaced downwards, although there are those women who attempt to resist the grip of society.

Read More
1058 Words | 5 Pages

Fairy tales have been told for centuries and have been used to portray the conflict of sexual politics over time. Little Red Riding Hood and Beauty and the Beast are both examples of fairy tales with this focus. Making use of this conflict in The Handmaid 's Tale, Margaret Atwood has used certain elements of fairy tale genre to have the opposite effect of the stereotypical ‘happy ever after’ as the novel plays in a dystopian world. More specifically, the author has borrowed elements of fairy tales to develop the theme of shifting power in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Read More
1620 Words | 7 Pages

Throughout history, women have often been subjected to prejudice and an inferior status to men. Due to sexist ideologies of men believing that women are not capable of controlling their own lives, women have often been reduced to the status of property. This concept is prominent in many pieces of literature to demonstrate the struggles women have to go through in a predominantly, male structured world. In the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, the author illustrates a woman’s battle in an extreme society ruled by men to express the misogyny occurring in the time period when it was written, 1894. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia summarizes Atwood’s story as one that “depicts one woman’s chilling struggle to survive in a society ruled by misogynistic fascism, by which women are reduced to the condition of property.”

Read More
1251 Words | 6 Pages

The Handmaid 's Tale is one of Margaret Atwood most famous novels written during the spring of 1984, when the Berlin wall was still standing. Atwood creates a dystopia, which mostly consists of gender gap and oppression. The Handmaid 's Tale effectively portrays the United States as the modern-day totalitarian society of Gilead, which was illustrated 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 the author herself calls a speculative fiction. The author uses a totalitarian system which includes aspects of Soviet system, to describe, deprivation, repression and terror with the use of

Read More
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

Read More
1587 Words | 7 Pages

One’s power can be abused due to indolence; it ruins the lowest social class. In the handmaid 's tale, the Handmaids are treated poorly, making the person no longer themselves. The reader learns that Offred is being told what to do and has no say for her opinion, since it is against the law to go against the government. According to the handmaid’s tale, "You go out through the door and turn right. There 's another door, it 's open.

Read More
649 Words | 3 Pages

The novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a story about a society set in a future world where women’s rights have been revoked. Many values change with this new regime of controlled women and strict laws. Despite the changes in the world it maintains many conservative, religious beliefs while also containing liberal, feminist beliefs simultaneously. Society in the futuristic world of Gilead is structured heavily off of readings from the Bible and traditional views of gender that have been in place for a long time. An example of the Bible being an important part of society is the idea of the Handmaids came from a passage in the Bible about two women, Rachel and Leah.

Read More
1008 Words | 5 Pages

cultural constructs of femininity, identity, and the extent of government control. The story explores the affects social and political trends have on society. The Handmaid’s Tale evaluates gender roles and the subjugation of women. Atwood’s use of aphorisms, symbolism, and allusions urges readers to examine the juxtaposition of cruelty and vulnerability in femininity.

Read More
889 Words | 4 Pages

Gilead is ruled by fundamentalist regime that treats women as property of the state, and is faced with environmental disasters and a plummeting birth rate. In the opening chapters, the handmaid’s lives are presented as just property of the state. The start of chapter one begins with The Handmaid 's Tale, The novelist Margaret Atwood presents the life of handmaids as protagonist who live in such fear and solitude. The first chapter begins with the narrator describing the old gymnasium as being peaceful such as ‘Powdering the dancers with a

Read More

More about Censorship In The Handmaid's Tale By Maragret Atwood

Related Topics

Open Document