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The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

567 Words3 Pages

The Handmaid's Tale, written by Margaret Atwood, is a story narrated through Offred’s eyes. She often expresses herself in rage, guilt, resilience, and hope. Through the lens of feminine critique, her story may include themes of power, reproduction, and resistance. Power structure is a prominent theme in the novel. With the construction of Gilead, women were deprived of their basic rights. They had no choice but to be controlled by men. Male figures are the literal embodiment of this structure. Commanders, especially, are the heads of authority, the enforcers, rule-makers. (gender roles) They maintain this power through symbols like handmaid's gowns, and their names being stemmed from commanders. Deception plays a significant role in this …show more content…

This may establish a sense of morality within the handmaids in fear of the Eyes, which causes betrayal. Reportings of wrongdoings are rewarded, creating a recurring cycle of perilous and false environment. Trust is dangerous in Gilead. In the red center, handmaids are forced to watch ( ) films on the Unwomen: ‘They want us to hear the screams and grunts and shrieks of what is supposed to be either extreme pain or extreme pleasure or both at once, but they don’t want us to hear what the Unwomen are saying’ (119). This forces the handmaids to be thankful for having a say in picking their role in society. They had a choice between bearing their womb, or being forced to the colonies and being met with unimaginable pain and death. Bible scriptures are also used to carry on this theme. Only commanders are allowed to read from the Bible during ceremonies. They are sharing their interpretations to the women in the household, upholding these mistaken beliefs: ‘Give me children or else I die.Behold my maid Bilbab. She shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her’ (88). This

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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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The handmaid’s tale is a book written by Margert Atwood. The story is narrated by the narrator’s protagonists. The narrator informs about the life in Gilead in which the commanders get a handmaid to breed for them since their wife’s cant breed and the society of Gilead needs reproduction. not only that, but there are different commanders and not every commander has a handmaid because some of them have wives that can breed children and have children of their own. There is different dress code for women in Gilead because the handmaids wear red, the wives of the commander wear blue, Martha’s wear green.

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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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The Commander and the Aunts claim that women are better protected in Gilead, where they are treated with respect and kept safe from violence. However, while Gilead claims to suppress sexual violence, it actually institutionalizes it. An example is Jezebel’s, the club that provides the Commanders with prostitutes to service the male elite. Another example is the Ceremony that compels Handmaids to have sex with their Commanders. Foster suggests, “...sex can be pleasure, sacrifice, submission, rebellion, resignation, supplication, domination, enlightenment, the whole works” (158).

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The Ministry of Love maintains law while the Ministry of Plenty concerns about economic affairs (Orwell 4). Winston Smith, a member of the Outer Party, knows that these four departments actually mean lies, wars, torture, and starvation (Orwell 216); yet, he accept these names. Without a doubt that doublethink is possessed as a practical method to control individuals. In The Handmaid’s Tale, similarly, fundamentalists as the potentates take the religious rulesas a power to limit individual beliefs and mindsets. First and foremost,handmaids in Gilead are defined as two-legged wombs, sacred vessels and ambulatory chalices (Atwood 146).

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Additionally, the use of the metaphor ‘make me fruitful’ contributes to how the Handmaids want to become pregnant and fulfill their role in society because this role has been justified to them through religion. Some of them truly believe that they will be fulfilling their spiritual duties if they bear children, rather than obeying the oppressive laws that use them for their bodies’ reproductive capabilities. Moreover, during the nighttime prayers, Offred explains that the Handmaids pray to become pregnant: “What we prayed for was emptiness, so we would be worthy to be filled: with grace, love, with self-denial, semen and babies” (Atwood 224). It is quite apparent that the Handmaids have been manipulated into believing that their worth is based on their ability to bear children because then they will be ‘worthy’. Also, the fact that the Handmaids ‘prayed’ shows that the Handmaids are following the spiritual

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(Atwood 88) This verse was read to the Handmaid 's everyday at breakfast and before the ceremony just to drill it in their minds, even though most of them know those were not the right textual evidence from the Bible. The police are called “Guardians of the Faith” which suggest that they are guarding the beliefs of Gilead. Another biblical allusion depicted would be the Angels, so they are called. But they were simply Guards.

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