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Hamlet And The Handmaid's Tale Comparison

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No one is capable of choosing their emotions; they come as a result of human nature. This can be seen in our behavior throughout life, from the way babies cry when they miss their parents to the reckless actions of teenagers when they feel the urge to rebel. People begin expressing their feelings before they even start crawling. It is an involuntary reflex that comes naturally and continues to our dying breath. The ability to feel emotion is an aspect of humanity that transcends generations. Literature, through the course of time, has changed in drastic ways. It has now moved away from Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter to broader horizons, but similarities can always be found. William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale were written almost …show more content…

Gilead values obedience to their core beliefs and use many tactics to maintain it. The citizens often spy on one another and Eyes are spread throughout the society. Offred’s depression and fear is what controls the way she behaves even around Ofglen, who later on became one of her closest companions. “She may be a real believer, a Handmaid in more than name. I can’t take the risk. ‘The war is going well, I hear,’ [Ofglen] says. ‘Praise be,’ I reply. ‘We’ve been sent good weather.’ ‘Which I receive with joy’” (Atwood 24). Offred fears the possible torture she may face if she does anything that is seen as out of line. Much like innocent people confessing to crimes they did not commit in an interrogation, fear is a powerful decider of behavior. Offred knows the punishments that there are for people, she has participated in the executions and seen the dead people on the wall. This instills a constant sense of anxiety and dread that motivates the way she behaves with others. Fear to Offred is like gravity on a meteor, dragging her down

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1394 Words | 6 Pages

Just like Hamlet, Offred was also unable to trust anyone other than her best friend, Moira because of the situation she was placed in. Since Offred was a handmaid nearly all of her human rights were taken away, because of this she was unable to build relationships of trust with other people. She had lost all connections with people she loved, with the exception of Moira. Gilead, a world where all the citizens are obligated to obey those in power, none of the people had any meaningful relationships such as friendship or companionship. As shown by Offred 's statement: "We aren 't supposed to form friendships, loyalties, among one another" (Atwood 353), people were expected to not create new relationships.

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1108 Words | 5 Pages

In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the protagonist, Offred, expresses her wish that her “story [is] different,” that it is “happier,” or at least “more active, less hesitant, less distracted” than it is ultimately portrayed (267). However, as her story is told, these characteristics are evident in the way she talks and acts, especially around those with authority. Hesitant to express her true thoughts and feelings, and distracted by memories from her previous life, Offred attempts to piece together her role in the society that has taken her freedom. The result is a compilation of moments, of memories, both from her present, her past, and even speculation about her future.

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939 Words | 4 Pages

The setting of the movie is the first obvious difference that can be seen. The movie was set in New York City, New York in 2000 while the play was set in Elsinore, Denmark in the late middle ages. This greatly affects the way the movie is viewed because it is essentially an entirely different world. In the movie there are video cameras, cars, phones and skyscrapers, all things that obviously weren’t around during Shakespeare’s time. Even if the movie and the play had been based in the same year, the story still would have been slightly different.

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467 Words | 2 Pages

Satire is often described as the use of humor, irony, or exaggeration to criticize someone or something. The Handmaid’s Tale was written shortly after the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. With concerns regarding the possibility of reversing everything that feminists have accomplished, Atwood writes of a story that examines and criticizes what a protestant puritanical society would be like. In The Handmaid’s Tale, women are oppressed due to Gilead’s perverted perception of Christianity and the bible which can be seen when Aunt Lydia twists passages of the bible to conform to their agenda. Atwood shows a contemporary society with repressive views when taken to their logical extremes, in this case, extreme right wing ideology.

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1002 Words | 5 Pages

The society of both novel, “1984” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” shares familiar methods in order to maintain higher power to control lower class citizens. Their absolute goal to gain complete dominance is through removing or destroying a piece of humanity in order for disobedience or rebellion to be impossible. Gilead and Ingsoc constantly condition citizens by monitoring and invading their privacy. Both regimes employed similarly styles of monitoring, such as spies organisations or simply through the surveillance camera.

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643 Words | 3 Pages

In How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster teaches readers the meanings behind commonly used symbols, themes, and motifs. Many readers of all ages use this book as a guide to understanding messages and deeper meanings hidden in novels. The deeper literary meanings of various symbols in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale are explained in How to Read Literature Like a Professor. By using Foster’s book, readers can better understand the symbols in The Handmaid’s Tale.

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1436 Words | 6 Pages

Offred struggles between her attraction to Nick and remaining faithful to Luke. In the end of the novel, Offred ends up giving in to her attraction to Nick, however she does not feel that she has betrayed Luke in any way. Both gentlemen fulfill needs of Offed at different times of her life. Luke only exists in her past life, and most of Offred’s memories with him are fading away as she struggles to remember certain details of her past. Offred thinks, “The fact is that I no longer want to leave, escape, cross the border to freedom.

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MIP Rough Draft The play “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare and the book, “The Handmaids Tale” by Margaret Atwood, both create a fall of power in society and this loss of leadership opens the door for corruption to take over. Both authors have created this instability in society and use the motifs: loss of power, religion, and relationships to explore characters’ innermost selves. This exploration of characters proves that one will submit to anything in order to obtain stability in a corrupt environment. Both Shakespeare and Margaret Atwood immediately pull the rug out beneath from the characters in their work, creating instability not only in the character’s mind but in the reader’s mind as well.

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836 Words | 4 Pages

In face of severe situation, people often feel relief when they think of happier, simpler times in order to alleviate the severity. In the fiction novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, written by Margaret Atwood, a theocracy government controls every aspect of life in order to produce the best result of its plans. At the beginning of chapter 12, Offred takes a required, but luxurious bath because she can take off the burdensome wings and veils. While she bathes, Offred remembers her daughter from the past and a time with her family. Atwood compares Offred’s past and present through imagery, tone, similes, and symbolism combined with parallel structure to highlight the vulnerability of women to their surroundings.

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It is narrated by the protagonist, Offred who is a handmaid forced into sexual servitude. Facing a plunging birth rate, the fundamentalist regime treats women as property of the state. Handmaids are the few of the remaining fertile women and their sole purpose is to help the government into re-populating their society, where a lot of people are left sterile. The Handmaid’s Tale deals with the theme of women in subjugation to misogyny in a patriarchal society, primarily. It shows the struggle that women have to go through in that society, as a Handmaid or as not being able to be one.

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978 Words | 4 Pages

She knows that there are laws, but she is so desperate that she is willing to break them by suggesting this to Offred, “Maybe you should try it another way”(Atwood 204). She encourages Offred to break the law and have sexual intercourse with another man and plant it as the commander’s child. Her desperation make her take desperate actions and how she achieves to rebel against the government. The Commander the one above all and on top of the official classification of Gilead-Men. He has power and in control of the household.

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1593 Words | 7 Pages

In both novels Frankenstein and The Handmaids Tale the question of what it means to be human is a reoccurring theme in which emphasizes the passions and desires every individual may have... There are both dark and bright sides of being human as overcontrolling passions may lead to madness, distress, and use of violence. Victor 's overpowering passion for knowledge led to him doing the extreme by playing God and bringing a creature to life in a world where it would never be accepted as society tends to only accept humans that are visually appealing- as for society what it means to be human depends mainly on the outer appearance. The monster wanted nothing more but compassion and human contact, something babies desire for the most, but since

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571 Words | 3 Pages

Offred records tapes, telling the story of her time in Gilead. These tapes, while they do not say whether or not she was united with her daughter, do help lead to Gilead’s collapse. Offred found justice for both herself and her daughter in a way she never expected; she was able to help make sure no women or child went through what she did. This search for justice her goal throughout the novel, and while she was successful, it was in a way in which she never expected. Before her escape from Gilead, Offred saw justice with different eyes; justice to her was being reunited with her daughter and the idea of bringing the state of Gilead never seemed to cross her mind, until she began to realize just how deep Mayday ran.

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Feminism has gained a new definition a new understanding of female roles since the Elizabethan Era. Hamlet, a play written by William Shakespeare, is about a young prince, Hamlet, being visited by his father’s apparition urging him to avenge his death by murdering Prince Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius. All the while, Hamlet is enraged by his mother’s hasty marriage to Claudius and is showering his supposed love, Ophelia, with gifts and words of affection. Queen Gertrude and Ophelia are blindly obedient to male authority due to the influence of the social standards that require women to be submissive to men. Queen Gertrude and Ophelia’s actions and outcomes as characters are affected by male influence, the social norms of this time, and the females’ consequences of following these norms.

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Hamlet: a Feminist Perspective Hamlet by William Shakespeare is considered to be the apogee of canonical texts. Hamlet who is seen to be the hero, seeks revenge of his uncle for killing his beloved father and marrying his mother. In the finale, all characters find an unfortunate end and leave the kingdom of Denmark to prince Fortinbras who coincidentally passes through to invade Poland. The play Hamlet has received great stricture from feminist critics due to the actions and behaviors of many of the characters in the play. Feminism is “the advocacy of woman 's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men” (Dictionary.com).

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