More handpicked essays just for you.
Verbal language in the handmaids tale
Literary theory the handmaids tale
Language techniques used in the handmaid's tale
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Verbal language in the handmaids tale
The events that led to The United States joining the war were the Zimmerman telegram and the sinking of the Lusitania; therefore, these events shifted The United States’s position from neutral to fighting. World War I, also known as the Great War, was not originally on The United States’s agenda; however, Germany’s careless actions caused The United States to join the war. The sinking of the Lusitania was a turning point in the war because it was a passenger ship that was sunk by German U-Boats, or submarines. The Zimmerman telegram was a telegram sent from the German Foreign Office to the leader of Mexico. The telegram stated how Germany wanted Mexico to attack The United States (Alexander and Childress).
the President of the United States and all of Congress, the United States is shaken at the center. Wars take after, and demolition follows. Out of the lethal waste dumps rises the Republic of Gilead. The forces that be, in the place where there is Gilead bring back the abuse of ladies that is a sign of severe religions and their social orders. This abuse is supported by people with significant influence as a way to guarantee the survival of mankind and the conservation of the beliefs of Gilead.
Wash Yourself From Brainwash: 1984 1984 is the dystopian novel that inspired Margaret Atwood to write The Handmaid's Tale. George Orwell, the author of 1984, reflects on different aspects of society during this time. He described how the Party used its power to influence the people of Oceania from the Party's life perspective. The Party manipulates its members into thinking there is no past shown through the thoughts of the main character, Winston, from the beginning to the end. 1984 demonstrates the ownership of one’s body and conscience by terminating privacy, act of conformity, and the need to control people at all costs.
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.
Paragraph 1: In Gilead the hierarchy of society is divided according to the roles laid upon them by the commanders. The commanders wear black as they are the ones that are associated with the highest authority and the ones that are supposed to be feared in the society. Implementing their power they categorized the rest of the society into Wives that the second respected in the society, followed by the rest of the society that include wives, aunts, etc. Paragraph 2:
Conflict can be described as the struggle between two opposing forces, whether the forces being person vs person, person vs self or person vs society. Good examples of conflict can be found in almost any book. Margaret Atwood’s novel, the Handmaid’s Tale is a source of all three types of conflicts. The Handmaid’s Tale is about a society where females are given specific duties and are restricted from reading, writing, talking to others and looking at themselves in mirrors. The protagonist, Offred whom is also the narrator in the novel faces conflicts with herself, with other people, and the society that she lives in.
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.
The book The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood is a literary masterpiece containing many symbols hidden in everything from the flowers to the clothes worn by the characters. These symbols are used to represent the purpose of the characters in Gilead, the setting of the book. The flower is a symbol for the sole reproductive role of the handmaids and the colors are used to symbolize how the characters are meant to behave, red meaning fertile, white for purity, green for service, and blue for sadness.
The protagonist of The Handmaid’s Tale is referred to as Offred (of Fred). Through the manipulation of literary devices such as juxtaposition, allusion, and descriptive diction, Margaret Atwood voices her concerns about our future, and reveals just how quickly and completely our present could transform. As chapter 33 begins, the Handmaids are off to the Women’s Prayvaganza (a portmanteau of pray and extravaganza). The event, juxtaposed to the ‘fun festival’ it resembles, is really a mass wedding with girls as young as fourteen married off to Angels (troops).
In the Handmaid 's Tale power is used to control the women and sort them into certain gender roles. Each women in the society of Gilead is assigned a certain job that is stereotypical of a woman 's job such as cooking, sex, and reproduction. These women are the lowest class in Gilead and have no control. The men have superior power of the women but the women such as Ofgeln and Offred gain control in power in their lives. Men have an upper hand in the control of these women.
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.
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.
There are two ways people will react to when their freedom is taken away. They will either accept it or rebel against it, which is what a lot of the female characters in Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale accomplished. Shown through Offred’s repetition of certain events, Moira’s tone of being a fighter, and Serena Joy’s desperation, the reader can see that lack of freedom leads to rebellion. Offred, the novel’s narrator, now lives in a world where women are powerless. She has had her freedom taken away, and at times follows the rules, but ends up rebelling in many powerful ways.
Throughout the novel, Moira’s use of informal language and slang is apparent. This is significant because Moira’s crude vocabulary is dramatically different from how the Handmaids are taught to speak, marking her as a dissenter under the restrictive rule of Gilead. For instance, Moira scoffs that the Red Centre is “a loony bin” in Chapter 13. The use of the colloquial noun ‘loony’ to describe the Red Centre establishes a conversational, almost childish tone of voice. This contrasts from the rather mechanic and automated voice Offred has when she becomes a Handmaid, replying with contrived phrases such as “praise be” to other Handmaids.
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.
