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Compare And Contrast Anthem And The Handmaid's Tale

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The Power to Dissent
Abuse of power presents differently in every text, but is always struggled with or against. In each, an overarching, unseen authority dominates the dystopian works compared. Anthem, a short story by Ayn Rand, establishes the possibility of a reality in which humans are mere cogs in the wheel that is a society devoid of human progress. Likewise, the novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood depicts a society stripped of individuality through role relegation and the restriction of communication. Through the presentation of characters oppressed by power, these texts contrast people, as strength as parts of society versus their value as individuals.
Anthem decreases individual value through the creation of a society which …show more content…

We take for granted the liberties we afford to each other every day. For us, it is opinion in the matter of our worth of individuals. We aren’t all too focused on contributing to society. Phrases like “self-care” would never be present in either of these texts for that very reason. We embrace abnormality and want to help each other become greater. The stagnancy of these texts is nearly unbearable to people in our society. Controlled by everything from emotion to attire, these texts use their control to further a society under the guise of improvement over a pervious way of living. The Handmaid’s Tale boasts a defiant member of society from the beginning, forever struggling against a regime intent on classicism in the highest degree. Anthem, however, furthers the idea of deviating from society better than The Handmaid’s Tale. This is due, mostly, to the fact that Equality must come full circle, from believing that The Council is omniscient, to his realization that his thoughts are the only thing which should truly matter to him. He no longer lives to serve his brothers, but rather, for his own selfish desires. Here, being selfish is his greatest achievement, as it symbolizes he is free from the power which once controlled every aspect of his

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A country that is opposite of the society in Anthem is the United States. We live in a democratic society where our rights and freedoms are protected under the Constitution. For the most part, individualism is encouraged and the society has been growing and developing throughout the course of history. Unlike Anthem, children stay with their parents after birth in order to develop their own personalities and thoughts. Although the school system is not perfect and does not mold to each child’s learning, the teachers are working on developing different alternatives for students that learn differently.

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Anthem is a book that makes oneself contemplate the future and what evils are bestowed upon it. In this novel, the reader is caught in the life of Equality. Equality’s life is placed in the future, where the feared reality of communism has conquered all but the souls of few weary men. Equality is one of those few men who have a light that is invulnerable to a ravaging wind. Equality’s time captive before his extraordinary escape has taken a toll on his body and mind and now at the end of his journey forces him to question whether the decisions he’s made are full of sin or teeming with righteousness.

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‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, written by Margaret Atwood, was written over thirty years ago in 1985. Despite this, her novel about a woman living in a totalitarian world is still widely read and relevant to today’s society. The lingering question is why? Why is it still relevant in our society despite its vast contrast to our world now? Why is it still so popular?

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Nowadays, most people live in democratic countries where they have fundamental freedom and rights. However, The Handmaid's Tale and Prisoner of Tehran describe the opposite side where both characters are imprisoned in their societies. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel which describes a society is ruled by a extreme religion. The setting changes from a democratic country to a dictatorship where people live in fear. The novel is told by the protagonist, Offred, who is a Handmaid, a baby-maker, and is only valued by her ability to reproduce.

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How does Atwood present the narrator at the start of The Handmaid’s Tale? Atwood renders the narrator within the Handmaid’s Tale as a protagonist to manifest the contrast between those who conform to societies’ values, and those adamant to rebel. Thus Atwood delineates the narrator as a protagonist through the use of the sensory imagery, psychoanalysis, and tyrannical propaganda to illustrate this contrast.

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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.

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In Beloved by Toni Morrison and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, abuses of power are used to both challenge and uphold gender roles in a destructive way. The ghost of Beloved in Beloved uses her supernatural abilities to sexually exploit and emasculate Paul D. In The Handmaid’s Tale, the Commander abuses his societal standing to simultaneously take away power from and give power to Offred. The characters in each novel abuse their power to regain their own dignity and sense of self, both believing their actions are helpful rather than degrading. Morrison and Atwood create hierarchical abuses of power to expose the weight of gender roles in times of conflict and to reveal how society shapes identity and identity shapes actions, which therefore upholds unfair and unbalanced power structures. Morrison’s use of Beloved’s relationship with Paul D. in Beloved reveals a small portion of how racism and slavery can create so much pain that gender roles are challenged in a harmful way, creating a loss of identity.

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What would become of the world, if our current societal flaws, such as sexism, racism, and classism were ingrained and executed at a systematic level? This is exactly what The Handmaid’s Tale set out to explore. The novel, which claims to be speculative fiction, is set in the theocratic Republic of Gilead (formerly the USA), where birth rates are rapidly declining and women have been marginalized by the patriarchal regime, forbidden to read, write or love and valued only if they are able to procreate. They are separated into classes, including Wives, Marthas, Aunts, Unwomen, and Handmaids, distinguishable only by the color of their clothing. The Handmaids are renamed by combining ‘of’ and the name of the Commander that they have been assigned to, stripping them of any individuality.

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The novel The Handmaid 's Tale written by Margret Atwood is about how the government chose to have power over the way the community was controlled and be in command of the lives of men and women. The novel unfolds from the view of a middle-aged woman named Offred who questions beliefs and rules that have been accepted by the society. Offred is a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead who is persistently questioning the government beliefs and regulations. Her character pushes the restrictions arranged by the government. This is illustrated in details through her disobedience against the social principles, her methods of challenging them and the final result of her challenge.

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The novel ‘The Handmaids’s Tale’ written by Margaret Atwood focuses on this superficial world where women are inferior to men. In the society of Gillead women are there to serve a purpose, whether its to be a wife and tend to the garden and house, or a handmaid who is used only to get pregnant by the commander and to bear the surrogate child for the housewife. This society in Gilead is completely dominated by the male species, and as readers one can only assume it is written around the troubles at Gillead to show the audience the dangers of how mens marginalisation of women is very real and how dangerous it could be in our society today. In Gilead women are split in to categories and are divided by colour.

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Dystopian literature has become more common in today’s society. Some of the top book series are about dystopias. One of the top dystopian book trilogies is “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins. While most dystopian novels are similar in some aspects, “The Hunger Games” is specifically relatable to Margaret Atwood’s novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale”. Collins describes the society of Panem in “The Hunger Games”.

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“No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body”. When Margaret Sanger spoke these words, she was expressing her belief on a woman’s right to have an abortion. This quote, however, speaks to the fact that women are oppressed on more than just abortions. In the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Atwood portrays the dehumanization of sexuality through both the characters and events within the novel, therefore proving that women will always be considered less than men will. Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1939.

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“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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