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Literary analysis of the handmaids tale
The handmaid's tale literary analysis
Margaret atwood the handmaid's tale characterisation
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The chapter begins by describing a man named Jephthah. He was the son of Gilead by a harlot (v. 1). His brothers threw him out of their house because he was a harlot’s son (v. 2). Jephthah fled from them and dwelt in the land of Tob, along with worthless men who assisted him (v. 3). During this time, the Ammonites arrived to fight against Israel (v. 4).
The novel starts with Offred beginning to serve the Commander and his wife, Serena. Offred had been hired as the household's Handmaid and therefore, every month during her fertile week, she must have impersonal and wordless sex with the Commander as Serena sits behind her. Unfortunately, as a Handmaid, Offred's original identity and freedom have been stripped from her and she can only leave the house to shop, her door cannot be closed all the way, and the secret police watch her every move while she's in public. In the old world, Offred had had an affair with a married man named Luke.
“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum,” a phrase in the novel meaning, “don’t let the bastards grind you down”. This phrase found in the closet pushes Offred to fight against the oppression within the society of Gilead. Margaret Atwood's, The Handmaid's Tale, narrated through the protagonist, Offred, a Handmaid who serves the purpose of reproducing, lets the reader know that handmaids are not allowed to have any verbal interaction with men or have the ability to read. The novel reveals how a patriarchal society leads to the oppression of women throughout the character of Offred, hierarchy, and symbolism. Atwood reveals oppression through the role that Offred portrays in the novel, which shows how a patriarchal society leads to oppression
Invention and Arrangement The book begins with “A few words about this book”, “Prologue”, and “Deborah’s Voice”, which offer some background information preceding the actual story, and differs in format with the rest of the novel. The rest of the book is divided into three large sections: “Part 1: Life” (1940-1951), “Part 2: Death” (1951-1973), and Part 3: Immortality” (1973-2001). Each of these sections is structured by chapters, each chapter with varied titles. There are 11 chapters in Part 1 and Part 2, while Part 3 has 16 chapters.
Hello, all! Welcome to The Books Today, where we take a look at novels of the past comment and how they relate to the events of the modern world. I’m your host, Erin Grasmeyer, and today’s episode will be discussing Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale and how our world may not be so far off from becoming just like Gilead. For those who don’t know, or need a refresher of the contents of the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale follows the story of a woman named Offred, who is a Handmaid in Gilead, a totalitarian state rooted in sexist values. Reproductive rates in Gilead are low due to extreme chemical pollution, and so Handmaids, such as Offred, are assigned to infertile families to bear their children.
Introduction Canadian author Margaret Atwood describes in her futuristic speculative novel The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), a story about a handmaid, with a patronymic name Offred, who witnesses, experiences and recounts a transformation of her country. The country has turned from the land of freedom to the totalitarian theocracy, where tyrannical dictatorship, oppression, Christianity and Biblical speeches held sway over people, in particular, over women. Aiming to return things to “Nature’s norm” (THT 232) and “traditional value” (17), a group of men called “Sons of Jacob” has established The Republic of Gilead, “after the catastrophe, when they shot the President and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency” (183). Like the New England Puritans of the seventeenth century, Gilead is against women’s education, “second marriage, non-marital liaisons adulterous” (316), divorce, second marriage, homosexuality, pornography, abortion, and sterilization. The last one is the serious problem, which threatens the continuation of the future Gilead: [T]his was the age of the R-strain syphilis and also the infamous AIDS epidemic, which [...] eliminated many young sexually active people from the reproductive pool[.]
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.
Offred does not claim her story to be completely true, leaving a room for ambiguity and doubt. In a search for accuracy, she constantly changes her stories, twists and recreates them in a new way. For instance, thinking about her husband Luke, she imagines him being dead, imprisoned, and escaped and believe in “all three versions of Luke, at one and the same time”(121). Another example is her description of her encounter with Nick in several completely different ways and the further confession that “it didn’t happen that way either” (317). Offred admits her story is a reconstruction, because “it’s impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was” (158).
After the night set over our family's cottage and the darkness cast a veil over the trees, creating ominous silhouettes, Cal and I were deep in slumber. Or so I thought. I did not have a clock or watch, but I knew it was late when I heard the unmistakable creak of the floorboards and the rustle of Cal shrugging a jacket over his shoulders. Still blinking the remnants of sleep from my eyes, I listened and wondered what he was doing. Why would he be sneaking out in the dead of the night?
The main theme in this story is women in subjection and how women’s bodies are used as political instruments. The theme of the book is something the author Margaret Atwood is familiar with. In many of her literary works she focuses on women and their situation. She has been writing about feminisms even before it was discussed about open. Like mentioned earlier The Handmaid's Tale was written in 1985, a time when feminism started to be spoken about in the society.
The Handmaid’s Tale has several interesting characters and monumental plot points that one could focus on. I chose to focus my playlist around three characters and twelve events. These fifteen songs provide a large range of genre from rap to metal and everything in between although some songs were chosen based solely on their title. In the first chapter of the novel, Offred is going through the “transition” period between the old age into Gilead and is learning to accept the way things will be and learning what her new purpose will be.
Imagine a nation in which its government commands by a religion where women are separated into different titles and must conceive children for their commander. Their rights from before this regime, and anything deemed unholy by the government, are a thing of the past. This situation is the one represent in the Republic of Gilead, where the rules of society and its traditions are not taken lightly if broken. In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood shows that an oppressive government leads to the inevitable neglect and remiss of the rules through Offred’s characterization, irony, and flashbacks. Offred 's character development can show that her actions change .
Feminism refers to the broad range of ideas, approaches, and ideologies directed towards gender and sex equality of women, in doing so, there are many misconceptions of women being of servitude to men and that “... women are slaves of the system” (Coad). In “The Handmaid’s Tale” Margaret Atwood, shows the domestic roles that women play as well as their feminist satire, in the Republic of Gilead. Some people believe, that women are only meant for servitude. For instance, due to “declining births” (Atwood, back cover) the Republic of Gilead tend to give the false impression that “there is no such thing as a sterile man” (Atwood, 61).
In the 1980s, United States was experiencing the rise of conservatism. Under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, conservative religious groups were gaining popularity. In response to the social and political landscape, Canadian author Margaret Atwood published a fictional novel The Handmaid’s Tale in 1986; a genre of dystopian novels. The storyline projects an imaginary futuristic world where society lives under oppression and illusion of a utopian society maintained through totalitarian control. Dystopian novels often focus on current social government trends and show an exaggeration of what happens if the trends are taken too far.
The handmaid 's tale is a dystopian novel written by Margaret Atwood that focuses on oppressing women, abusing them and using them for reproduction and solely nothing else. The idea of raping women to get them pregnant in this book is not a problem in their society. The whole idea of giving women the same rights and equal chances as every other gender is not believed in this society. In today 's world, this way of treating women is not a realistic idea. Women today have rights and are still fighting for more.
