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The Handmaid's Tale Analysis

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A Disappearing Act or A New Beginning When starting a new chapter in your life, something new appeals to the senses. Either it’s buying something that has been thoroughly thought about or moving to a new town or state to feel refreshed. While some people want to start a new life, others just want to disappear. Due to situations in their personal life, the only option they seem to have is to leave and have a normal life. There are some in the world who would want to live a normal life instead of the perfect life. In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale, the author, Margaret Atwood, she draws a close line between a surrogate, a rape victim, and a sex addict. Being a handmaid is the same job as being a housekeeper, but with Offred it’s a different …show more content…

Even though she loved to have sex, she was forced to perform sexual acts with the Commander. “Above me, towards the head of the bed,Serena Joy is arranged ….this is not what he’s doing,” (Atwood 93-94). No matter the situation, if you’re willingly telling people you will have sex with them or not, that person shouldn’t not be held against their own will. In this situation, she was being held by the Commander’s wife, Serena Joy, so he could have sex with her just so he can impregnate her. Even if she’s lying there and no doing anything about it, she still refuses that this act is unnecessary. As the days past and the nights go by, another Ceremony comes around but this time there’s something different. “ This state of absence, of existing apart from the body…..unconscious, for him, like scratching himself,” (Atwood 160). At the next ceremony, Offred has a weird feeling due to the sexual acts that were performed on her at the last one. She feels very uncomfortable being there and uncomfortable that the Commander and his family isn’t there. After what he has done to her, you would think that she’s rejoiceful that they didn’t show up. The new relationship that was form between them after the incident has also made her feel uncomfortable. In the words of Offred, “I didn’t like it,” (Atwood 161). All of the sexual acts that has been perform on Offred, all of the sexual context she …show more content…

Everything that has happened has shown how strong Offred and any woman can be throughout any situation. She has been separated from her family and was forced to become a walking womb for there’s who couldn’t have children or didn’t want to carry children in their stomach. She didn’t like the life the Gilead rules were making her live so she made up her own mind to leave and be able to follow her own

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She tells the story as it happens, and shows us the travels of her mind through asides, flashbacks, and digressions. Offred is intelligent, perceptive, and kind. She possesses enough faults to make her human, but not so many that she becomes an unsympathetic figure. She also possesses a dark sense of humor. Like most of the women in Gilead, she is an ordinary woman placed in an extraordinary situation.

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It was at that point that her search for justice became one where she realized she might not ever be with her daughter again, but that she could make sure that no one else ever had to go through that. Margaret Atwood tells the tale of a woman's continuous search for justice, one that evolves as the novel goes on, changing from a personal mission to one that considers society as a whole. She achieves this through the story of Offred’s search for her daughter and the changing definition of

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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).

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Also considering the benefits that come with having a baby in Gilead, it shows just how more cautious and by the rules she is. However towards the end of the book Offred 's actions change drastically and she ends up doing things that are definitely not allowed. In chapter 36 when Offred is offered lingerie by the commander her reaction is, “Yet there is an excitement in this thing, it

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