Handmaid's Tale: Paragraph Analysis
If Gerard was any other age than he is in that section of the story, the story would change dramatically. If Gerard was any younger it would be strange, because normally kids younger than three don’t understand what the military is and can't imagine like he did. From Page 8 it states this, “Sometimes the cart would be a tank, as he passes cautiously through rows of armed cling peaches and silent sentinels that looked like boxes of frosted flakes,” That would sound strange for a one or two year old to think wouldn't it. Also if Gerard was like 13 years old I think he would like helping his mom and not thinking in that mind set. From the book on page 8 also it states, “Gerald liked to pretend that he was driving a big, fine silver car down
Both texts ‘The Handmaids Tale’ and ‘The Bloody Chamber’ were written during the second wave of feminism which centralised the issue of ownership over women’s sexuality and reproductive rights and as a result, the oral contraceptive was created. As powerfully stated by Ariel Levy, ‘If we are really going to be sexually liberated, we need to make room for a range of options as wide as the variety of human desire.’ Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter both celebrate female sexuality as empowering to challenge the constraints of social pressure on attitudes of women. Both writers aim to expose the impact of patriarchy as it represses female sexual desire and aim to control it thus challenge contemporary perspectives of women by revealing the oppression
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.
In a dark tale of oppression against women in a modern day dystopian America titled; The Handmaid’s Tale, author Margaret Atwood uses neologisms, biblical language, and language musings in order to demonstrate the significance of language in a community that does not allow it. As society relapsed into it’s outdated social norms, the novels protagonist; Offred, is left re-evaluating the interpretation of what some words used to mean. In fact, ‘salvage’; the act of rescuing or recovering to the reader, is a term used to refer to those being executed in the Republic of Gilead. Language is a important factor in this novel. Words can be changed in order to project a particular idea.
How the government runs its citizens shapes the human condition. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a novel about how women are treated after a group of religious rebels overthrow the government and established a new government. This government takes charge of everything and change the rules, and some foundations that people base their lives on are broken by this government. Through that, we are able to see the main character breaking down as well. The Handmaid’s Tale is a novel that is written in fragments, it does not give a full retailing of the handmaid narrator’s life.
The Commander and the Aunts claim that women are better protected in Gilead, where they are treated with respect and kept safe from violence. However, while Gilead claims to suppress sexual violence, it actually institutionalizes it. An example is Jezebel’s, the club that provides the Commanders with prostitutes to service the male elite. Another example is the Ceremony that compels Handmaids to have sex with their Commanders. Foster suggests, “...sex can be pleasure, sacrifice, submission, rebellion, resignation, supplication, domination, enlightenment, the whole works” (158).
The novel opens with an unnamed narrator who begins to tell a bedtime story to two children, Abdullah and Pari. The narrator recounts the sad tale of a farmer named Baba Ayub, who lived in the fictional village of Maidan Sabz. Although the man was quite poor and had to work very hard to feed his large family, he loved his wife and children dearly, especially his youngest son, Qais. Baba Ayub was content with his simple lifestyle but, when an evil monster known as the div visits his village, his fortunes suddenly take a turn for the worse. The div eats anyone who looks at it and, because of this, the villagers fix their eyes on the ground, in fear of becoming the monster’s next meal.
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.
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.
Often, we see a society’s cultural values reflected in its citizens. For example, the United States values equality, a standard that is shared in all facets including gender. The opposite is true of Gilead, a fictional society in Emily Bronte’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The novel’s main character, Offred, is subjected to degrading treatment simply because she is a woman. It becomes apparent that this repeated degradation has affected the protagonist’s mind.
In Margaret Atwood’s novel, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, Moira is depicted as the symbol for resistance to authority and represents hope to the Handmaids. Atwood presents her as a polar opposite to Offred. She is independent, strong-willed, and outspoken. Conversely, the pair can be argued to be doubles in the fact that they both ‘resist’ to the oppressive Republic in Gilead.
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.”
These texts demonstrate the societal issues involving oppression of women, women’s sexual role and their status. The Handmaid’s Tale depicts the rigid societal structure whereby women are forced to serve in various aspects and functions in the society. The boundaries of the context set are in Gilead, a totalitarian state dominated by Christian fundamentalists, indicating that Gilead enforces conformity among its citizens. In a simply put manner, one’s social position is fixed. The permanent social statuses are clearly evident from the colour-coding of the women wherein “some [are] in red, some in dull green of
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.
Worldwide Scrabble Language is a splendid way of communication that it affects people’s relationships starting from the first step of creating identities to creating cultures; making one feel belonged to or estranged from a place, it is a form of connection and discrimination. Thinking of one’s mind as a liquid, language is the box that shapes the liquid, that it has a great influence on the way one thinks. Due to this, in the dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, one of the first things that is changed by the dictator government that want to restrict and brainwash the society is the language, and through banning words that remind people of their old lives and adding new ones that have religious connotations and also feel people estranged, they gain power and prove their dominance over the community. In the book, The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood conveys the idea that language is used to dehumanize and alienate people through the example of the various usage of language by the government of Gilead. First step of dehumanizing is making people feel detached from their identities, as one would not feel dehumanized when they still have the idea of an ideal “I” in their mind, thus the government forbids the usage of names.
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