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Symbols In The Handmaid's Tale

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There are symbols that are important throughout the story: the washtub and farm, the white cloth, and the clothier/ man with the cloth. To start, the farm is an important symbol, as it sets the scene of a rural community, where strangers are almost as kindly taken to as their neighbours down the road. The washtub may sound like an odd choice for this literary theory, but it reveals to the reader around the time the story would have taken place. With this information, we can deduce that this would have been in a time that electricity wasn’t very common out in the rural communities, and before the time when items like washing machines were readily available. The significance of this is that it sets up how the social world works out there, as during this time …show more content…

The clothier states in the story that the cloth could only be bought with love, but the symbol is much deeper than that. He defines love as the kind of love experienced between the closest friends, between a man and his wife, and between parents and a child. This gives the reader a deeper understanding of the value of this cloth, as only a deep love can ever buy this cloth. The wife and husband go on to explain about the times they have loved, like the love the wife had for her cat, how the couple love each other though they are infertile, and they also offer him some kindness in return, giving him water, and telling him they didn’t wish to take more than they could pay for. When they ask for only 8 yards, yet they receive six fold and two yards extra, you begin to see how much love they really have. Finally, we have the clothier himself, who is a symbol of “the experience of the other”. He may represent a person like someone from the Salvation Army or a charity, where by them giving their kindness, he too can give that kindness to someone else. When the couple treats him with kindness, and the couple explain about their love, he takes it and gives it back in

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The language used in The Handmaid’s Tale is somewhat familiar, such as the Biblical Stories and references that most of us may know but neologisms introduces futuristic words that do not exist in todays society. Neologisms used in The Handmaid’s Tale would be Econowife and Birthmobile, although the words themselves make somewhat sense as they contain words we are familiar with like Wife and Birth. The power of the language will continue to be consistent through the rest of the novel in the sense that, words we are not familiar with represent the power of the people who are in charge as they can come up with whatever they want and people will follow since they have all the power and control over the people. The making up of words in the novel

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1207 Words | 5 Pages

Words speak louder than Action The usage of language is really important in the story, the author starts his/ her expression of ideas by using languages from which reader can able to identify the feeling or emotions of a character. Using proper and meaning full language is highly effected on stories. At first, when the reader starts reading a story, the first thing is to understand the language, author uses “Figurative Languages” which helps to define the feeling in other words. Author Atwood expresses her ideas through the use of powerful language in “The Handmaid’s Tale” so that the reader gains new perceptions about the purpose or the theme of the story.

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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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882 Words | 4 Pages

The laundry includes two symbols as well, that add to the main objective. " He ventured generally upon the whitest heap of things. " Skye’s chose to step on her freshly washed white pile of clothes. The white pile of clothing represents Delia 's pureness and innocence.

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985 Words | 4 Pages

During the story, Flannery O'Connor uses different symbols that represent the grandmothers major turning points in finding grace and redemption. The symbols she uses are the grandmother’s clothing, the weather, and Bailey’s shirt. The grandmothers clothing plays a very important role in the story and the theme of grace and redemption. As described in the story the grandmother was wearing

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871 Words | 4 Pages

The American science fiction and fantasy author Richard Grant once said that “the value of identity of course is that so often with it comes purpose.” In both The Awakening by Kate Chopin and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the main protagonists search for their identities through the context of their daily lives. In correlation with the preceding quotation, in The Awakening, after a vacation opens her eyes to all that she has been missing in her life, she becomes desperate to find herself outside of the mother-woman while in The Handmaid’s Tale, the narrator must decide which parts of her identity she wants to hold on to and who she is in the trying times of the Gileadean society. The two novels demonstrate the journey of these women

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808 Words | 4 Pages

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.

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What would become of the world, if our current societal flaws, such as sexism, racism, and classism were ingrained and executed at a systematic level? This is exactly what The Handmaid’s Tale set out to explore. The novel, which claims to be speculative fiction, is set in the theocratic Republic of Gilead (formerly the USA), where birth rates are rapidly declining and women have been marginalized by the patriarchal regime, forbidden to read, write or love and valued only if they are able to procreate. They are separated into classes, including Wives, Marthas, Aunts, Unwomen, and Handmaids, distinguishable only by the color of their clothing. The Handmaids are renamed by combining ‘of’ and the name of the Commander that they have been assigned to, stripping them of any individuality.

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Symbolism can be defined as the use of symbols that an author uses to suggest more than the literal meaning of the object .Symbolism often allows the reader to understand the text better and connect with the story on a different level. In The Handmaid’s Tale, symbolism can be seen in various parts of the novel. One of the most common type of symbolism that can be identified in the text is through the use of colours. One of the most obvious symbols in the novel is the uniform that every Handmaid is supposed to wear.

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1107 Words | 5 Pages

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.

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801 Words | 4 Pages

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.

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1504 Words | 7 Pages

“Power doesn’t corrupt people, people corrupt power.”- William Gaddis. People take advantage of power when it is entrusted to them because of their own greed, which as a result lead to societal deterioration. In the story, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” by Margaret Atwood, the higher-ups from Gilead abuse the power that is given to them, ruining the life of the citizens in the society. This was the cause for the need of higher birth rates and fixing conflicts in the world, but this was handled immorally.

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779 Words | 4 Pages

For instance, there is an understanding of the woman’s feelings as she describes “a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” and the pattern looking at her “as if it knew what a vicious influence it had” (Gilman 437). The personification is symbolic in displaying how the woman felt as she was stuck in the lonely room with allowance of her husband and Jennie, their child’s nanny, keeping their eyes on her with the dependence of her healing. Additionally, the woman specifies that behind the yellow wallpaper she can see “a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to sulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design” (Gilman 438). As the appearance of the wallpaper is personified, the author taps into the hidden meaning that the woman’s sickness is taunting her as she is attempting to heal. In the end, readers are given the most significant piece of personification in the statement, “and then when the sun came and that awful pattern began to laugh at me, I declared that I would finish it today!”

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1561 Words | 7 Pages

The author used symbolism throughout the whole story to show the difference between these characters. The symbolism is there to give us a further explanation on the family and also to tell us how much heritage is important to some, but not others. The first symbol

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1425 Words | 6 Pages

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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