Essay Comparing Handmaid's Tale And Never Let Me Go

Both The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood and Never Let Me Go (2005) by Kazuo Ishiguro explore the failures of the utopian future by addressing the dystopian possibilities for a future that marginalises those deemed to be lesser by refusing to acknowledge their individual identities. Atwood’s handmaids must reject their past and are forced to accept their assigned futures through violence which leads to Offred’s reluctance to rebel against her oppressors. Atwood uses Puritan New England to construct a theocracy where all must conform and perform their role or die (Palumbo, 2000, p. 81) especially women who are given the illusion of importance and power. Similarly, Ishiguro’s Kathy H., Tommy, and Ruth struggle with their lack of identity and have been taught by Hailsham that donation is their only future hence rebellion has not occurred to them.

170) in the late 1990s. Ishiguro’s clones eventually accept their futures despite remaining largely rejected by the population they die to help. Although they do have hopes for a future such as Ruth’s fantasy office job or the rumour of a three-year deferral for being in love (Ishiguro, 2010, p. 149-150). Both novels explore the possibilities for a future influenced by the past events and breakthroughs as Atwood states she ‘would not put any events into the book that had not already happened in what James Joyce called the “nightmare” of history’ (Atwood, 2017) while Never Let Me Go used the cloning of Dolly the sheep in 1996 to imagine human clones ‘as complete individuals who are fundamentally good and innocent’ (Bergman, 2006). Both novels rewrite what it means to be human in the