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The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

859 Words4 Pages

Oppressors force and beat women in order to provide children. Margaret Atwood depicts this exact story in her book The Handmaid’s Tale which centers around Offred, a handmaid whose only job in Gilead is to provide a baby. In this dystopian society, women are forced into traditional gender roles enforced by a strict religious ‘code.’ Offred, along with the other women, struggles to survive emotionally and physically every day. They use many methods that can be explained using Freudian theory. Beate Krickel, a cognitive scientist, explains this theory in her article “Are the States Underlying Implicit Biases Unconscious? - A Neo-Freudian Answer,” where she explains how people can subconsciously cope with their harsh surroundings which affects …show more content…

Throughout her experiences as a handmaid, she constantly reminiscences about her experiences in her past life. At one point she notices how much she misses hotel rooms: “will I ever see a hotel room again? How I wasted them, these rooms, that freedom from being seen” (Atwood 50). She longs for a time when she can have the same freedoms she once had. This past freedom cause Offred to strive for more than what Gilead gives her. This actually helps her and gives her reasons to live. She subconsciously finds things in the past that she enjoyed in order to give her things to look forward to and allow her to have reasons to escape. These constant flashbacks act as a way for Offred to ignore her current living conditions. …show more content…

Offred observes this while watching Serena: “the woman in front of me was Serena Joy. Or had been, once. So, it was worse than I thought.” (Atwood 16). This shows Offred reminiscing about their past times. She recognizes how different Serena is now through her various coping mechanism. This desperation shows how unwilling these women are to live in this society. They are “afraid [and] miscategorize this feeling as” intense physical pain (Krickel 1018). By only showing their frustrations through physical pain, the wives effectively ignore their true fears. Ignoring these things makes living easier since no bad thoughts are brought up consciously. Instead, all of the negative attitudes surface in a physical illness. By not confronting their emotions directly the wives can focus more on

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She is known as a vessel for reproduction having no control over her own body. This reflects her acknowledgement of the degrading and oppressive nature of her circumstances. In conclusion, the oppressive nature of Gilead results in women not being able to own properties, empower themselves, and control their

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“Nobody dies from lack of sex. It’s lack of love we die frome.” Offred recognizes this reality in The Handmaid's Tale, written by Margaret Atwood. It is in human nature to need compassion and connections with other people. In The Handmaid's Tale a new society referred to as Gilead is formed where many unreasonable restrictions are added, including restrictions on the boundaries of relationships.

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Throughout history, oppressive regimes have existed to expand the power of a few at the cost of many. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale tells the tale of Offred, a handmaid in the oppressive Republic of Gilead. Gilead strictly controls the actions of its people, especially its women, to expand the power of the men in control and combat falling birth rates. Their control consists of literal force and the use of psychology. Krickel, a psychologist, uses repression as a way to explain implicit biases.

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