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The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

829 Words4 Pages

The world was once said to be a man’s world, and women’s only true purpose was to please and reproduce. In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Atwood writes about a dystopian society where religious extremist overthrow the United States government and turn it into theocratic dictatorship. The new government suspense the Constitution along with freezing women’s bank account and stripping them of their rights. Although this seems very far fetched, modern society is walking a steady path down that road. Modern United States and the Republic of Gilead, although being different, have a few things in common. In the Republic of Gilead, women were divided into fertile and non-fertile. The handmaid’s only role was to serve as a surrogate …show more content…

She admits to this when she is at the Center with the rest of the handmaids- to-be. After admitting to her very traumatic experience, she is shamed and blamed for the rape. The Aunts make the rest of the handmaids chant “her fault” while they ask who lead the men on. The Aunts are put in charge of teaching a handmaid how to be a handmaid, and how it is such an honor to be chosen as a handmaid. In the United States, rape culture is presented as something so normal, and claims are made saying that women “ask for it”. In Ohio, two high school boys raped an unconscious girl and posted the video of it online. After they were arrested, the media victimized the boys by saying these “star athletes’ futures were ruined.” The rape victim received numerous death threats because she wanted justice for herself. Another case, Brock Turner was a Stanford University student was “convicted on three counts of felony sexual assault for raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster” but was only sentenced to six months of prison. The judge believed that too much jail time would “a severe impact on Turner and his future.” He didn’t even get a slap on the wrist because he was a free man after serving three months of his six month sentence. The victims were once again accused of being the reason why they got

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To be convicted of not one, but three sexual assault crimes and only see a jail cell for ninety days is not enough. Brock Turner only received ninety days with all the evidence stacked against him because the court used the sentencing period based on Turners best interest. Although court documents also noted that this minimum recommendation was not significant especially under the circumstances of this case. The court documents notice that this sentence was usually for those who took responsibility within a plea and with this sentence rape culture on college campuses would be further strengthened ("COURT DOCUMENTS: STANFORD RAPE CASE", 2016). This shortcoming has been noted in the justice system and the reason for Restorative Justice formed by Mary Kross.

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(Atwood 187). Although Handmaids experience oppression by the Gilead regime, Atwood emphasizes the importance of unity and collaboration in the face of difficulties. The government of Gilead presents how hypocritical their society is toward women’s rights since the government uses a form of manipulation to make the Handmaid’s circumstances more tolerable. Additionally, Offred expresses how women do not have a right to their bodies because of the power others have over them as Offred states “I am abject” (Atwood 331). Offred expresses the removal of her individuality, autonomy, and basic human rights.

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The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

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The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood highlights this justification as it *depicts the creation and execution of an oppressive system. * Offred is married to a man who has been previously divorced, because of this she is seen as “morally unfit” and as someone who has less value than a woman whose partner had not been previously married. This . *. is shown through the quote, “The regime created an instant pool of such women by the simple tactic of declaring all second marriages and nonmarital liaisons adulterous...” This degradation allows the Gilead to justify the worth of woman in their society and grants them the ability to decide whether or not they are fit to be Wives or are forced into the burden of being a Handmaid.

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The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

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In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood, shows us how the government used women as a means of reproduction and to repopulate. The Gilead was a period where birthrates were down and religion was running the government. Women that could reproduce, were given the color red to wear as a symbol of menstruation and fertility. The time of the Gilead, was a time that women were branded by what their bodies could or could not do. Offred was a wife, a mother, and a daughter before she had it all taken away and was forced to be a handmaid.

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The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

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Like the setting, a dystopian republic similar to that of Puritan New England, the storytelling is a mix between past and future. Rather than having the events occur in chronological order, Atwood’s treatment of time in The Handmaid’s Tale adds to the storytelling by providing Offred a means of escape from reality. Atwood uses flashback, historical notes, and imagining others’ present as narrative techniques. Offred attempts to go through present events from others’ points of views.

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Women are beings of creation, the individuals given the burden and gift of fabrication. This obligation is powerful, yet it has been taken hostage by men. Men took power through force and have kept it, spanning from biblical times to our modern society. And with this power, men have used it to harm other women, usually for their own pleasure. Women throughout history have been sexualized, raped, abused, and killed, just for being women.

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The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

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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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The award-winning novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, written by Margaret Atwood depicts the malversation of a totalitarian society. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is a speculative fiction, reflecting the possibility of modern society's flaws. However, Atwood successfully conveys a sense of hope through the characters', Offred and Moira, acts of rebellion. The Handmaid's Tale make a clear point that society like Gilead will cease to exist. The totalitarian society will be overthrown, expressing that an extremist society will not be able to remain.

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The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

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In the novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” by Margaret Atwood, the idea that women are to be submissive in a male-dominated society is expressed. While this may seem like an anti-feminist ideology, it is the opposite. Instead of shedding light on the uplifting of women, Atwood explores the idea of what would happen to women in a male-dominated world, and how we would be negatively affected. The first way women are made to be submissive to men in their society is through their clothing. Women wear extremely modest clothing, not even showing their faces to the men.

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The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

1523 Words | 7 Pages

Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale is a cautionary tale warning about a future in which women are stripped of their rights and forced into reproductive slavery. Atwood's use of biblical references throughout the novel accentuates the role that religion plays in the story, particularly as a tool for controlling women's bodies and limiting their freedoms. At the time of the novel's publication in 1985, Atwood was concerned about the rise in political power for Christian groups, particularly the conservative Christian political organization known as the Moral Majority. Today, similar concerns can be seen in the political activism of some Christian groups in America, particularly in the areas of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, Christian

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The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

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Imagine living in a world where roles are given, freedom is taken, and you must abide to the rules unjust to everyone. Would you fight back, or reluctantly follow these oppressive rules? Offred is an independent and emotional woman who is forced into labor. In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, women are forced into certain labor based on their fertility and status in this new society. Both men and women have become oppressed for the sake of the country.

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Handmaid’s whom are the fertile women in the Gilead society, are stripped from all freedom and rights, banned from knowing any form of literature and have to be submissive to men, allowing their bodies to be sexually used to produce children. In contrast, women who are not fertile such as Wives have their freedom taken away too as they are confined to doing assigned jobs around the house. In contrast, the Aunts and the Commanders are shown to have the highest rankings in the Gileadean society. They are powerful figures, with privileges such as the Aunts being allowed to read and write and the Commanders being permitted to get married and have a handmaid's assigned to

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The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

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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 .

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