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The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

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“Religion is the opiate of the masses” Karl Marx. Throughout human history, religion has guided, inspired, and lead great people to do great things. But religion is also institutionalized and abused by people in power. Authorities lead the masses of followers because they have the power to shepherd loyal followers to whichever way they want, as long as the followers follow. But what if you do not have a choice to not follow? In Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale, individuals are thought to just be part of the new era, the future. Women’s roles are only to satisfy the biological purpose given from the start of time. Handmaids are at the bottom of the totem pole, consequently leaders at the top proselytize and use rhetoric to ensure everyone
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In many ways, history can solely reinvent itself. Women's representation in modern times has shown development ever since, but there are still elements that contribute to societal misconceptions toward women. Margaret Atwood, the best-selling author of The Handmaid’s Tale, expresses the evolution and the possible fates to which women are subject. Through The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood portrays a representation of current anti-feminist viewpoints by reflecting current perspectives of pro-life stances, as well as recurring oppressions against women's economic growth and rights.

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In The Handmaid's Tale by Margret Atwood, the Republic of Gilead was formed from extreme religious views. In Gilead, what the government has decided should be taken from the Bible has become absolute law. The authority the Bible already had pre-Gilead becomes even more powerful. Strange, small pieces of Biblical text show up frequently throughout the book to enforce the new rule of Gilead and the leaders. This is particularly evident in place names throughout Gilead, for example the names of the bakery or butchers have been replaced by biblical names such as "Loaves and Fishes, "All Flesh,” "

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239 Words | 1 Pages

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood begins with the main character, Offred, describing the setting of the gymnasium she is in. The room is called the Red Center and her and many other women are sleeping there. The place is guarded by two women, Aunt Sara and Aunt Elizabeth who prevent the women from escaping. Offred is the narrator of the story as well as the main character of the story. She is a handmaid, the women who bear children for the elite couples.

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235 Words | 1 Pages

The novel about the handmaid's tale is a book writer Margaret Atwood is about the when a religious movement that force all women to be treated unfairly. The women were in a low class to men. The women had different classes in which they were treated for which class they were in. The ecowives where wives they were wives to poor men. The handmaid are the people who are the one the are able to have a child.

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918 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout the novel The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood portrays a world built upon the ideals of male leaders through the lens of a woman subject to the terrors that this world inflicts. In response to falling fertility rates and progressive ideologies, a group of powerful men are motivated to concoct a society based entirely upon their religious ideals to further both their reign over the female population and their success as leaders. Through the experience of a woman living at the expense of these ideas, Atwood communicates the negative consequences of idealism in the hands of a man, and the consequences of a religion-based idealistic world. Throughout the Handmaid's Tale, Atwood portrays a dystopian world by the name of Gilead, where

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574 Words | 3 Pages

Women must be respected. Equality for women is an essential and wonderful part of democracy. One of the themes present in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale is that theocracy is unacceptable because it limits women’s rights. Atwood uses symbolism to communicate how the evil theocratic regime in the story is the antagonist against women.

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1560 Words | 7 Pages

The Handmaid’s tale by Margaret Atwood is lined with symbolism and situations that can easily be translated to shared realities. A person can turn to any page and land on issues of sexual discrimination, feminism, power, rape culture, victim blaming, religious oppression and the list goes on. Through out this paper some of the topics will be addressed as they cross into our everyday reality be it with purpose or just because that is always how it has been. It is important to know that the setting of this book takes place in the dystopian society of Gilead. A religious driven patriarchal society.

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1169 Words | 5 Pages

New Historicism is an emerging field of literary criticism that originated in the 80’s. It focuses on the relationship between literature and the time when it was written. One of its most fundamental concepts is that it “assumes that every work is a product of the historic moment that created it" (Richter 1205). An example of this occurs in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood as a product of Puritanism during the Seventeenth century. During the Seventeenth century, Puritans believed that women were culturally subordinate to men and “they did not approve of doing anything to prevent pregnancy.”

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2063 Words | 9 Pages

Nearly 300 years ago, a prince stood prisoner before three people traitors: Kishan, his brother; Yesubai, his betrothed; Lokesh, Yesubai's father and raja of a neighboring kingdom. After returning home from battle, the prisoner discovered his brother and his fiancée had been seeing each other while he was gone. Lokesh promised Yesubai to Kishan on one condition: that he and his brother each give the raja their amulets. If the prince did not obey, he would die. When the prisoner did not comply, Lokesh grabbed the prince and slit his wrist with a dagger.

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981 Words | 4 Pages

Some of these methods include destroying identity through classification, objectification, and indoctrination. Most women of Gilead are sufficiently repressed that they seem to accept their assigned roles, at least outwardly resigned to their fate. Atwood uses gender roles in The Handmaid’s Tale to show the lengths to which misogynistic totalitarian governments will go, to protect their dictatorships. The Republic of Gilead is a hierarchical society which requires complete submission of women to men. By taking away women’s paid jobs, confiscating their property, draining their bank accounts, and giving them no recourse, the male leadership leaves women in a fully dependent and subservient position.

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1620 Words | 7 Pages

Throughout history, women have often been subjected to prejudice and an inferior status to men. Due to sexist ideologies of men believing that women are not capable of controlling their own lives, women have often been reduced to the status of property. This concept is prominent in many pieces of literature to demonstrate the struggles women have to go through in a predominantly, male structured world. In the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, the author illustrates a woman’s battle in an extreme society ruled by men to express the misogyny occurring in the time period when it was written, 1894. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia summarizes Atwood’s story as one that “depicts one woman’s chilling struggle to survive in a society ruled by misogynistic fascism, by which women are reduced to the condition of property.”

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1035 Words | 5 Pages

This year is the 30th anniversary of the publication of Margaret Atwood 's dystopian classic, The Handmaid 's Tale. The novel is told from a first person account of a young woman, Offred. In an age of declining births, she is forced to become a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, the imagined future in the United States. The Handmaids are to provide children by the substitution of infertile women of a higher social status. Through the creation of different characteristics of female characters – ones who are submissive yet rebellious, and like to take advantage of their power - Margaret Atwood portray themes of love, theocracy, rebellion, and gender roles.

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996 Words | 4 Pages

In this written text, the emphasis will be on Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale and as well as the way Atwood portrays women and how it can be argued to show the oppression of women. The main purpose is to analyze the way women are treated throughout this book and depict why they are represented this way in the society in Gilead. Then, comparatively, observe the men’s domination over women and how they govern this society. In The Handmaid’s Tale, women are stripped of their rights, suffer many inequalities and are objectified, controlled by men and only valued for their reproductive qualities. The Gilead society is divided in multiple social group.

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1122 Words | 5 Pages

Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, argues that women are instruments of the patriarchy, that women know this, and that women allow the system of oppression to live on. Her fictions ask, “What stories do women tell about themselves? What happens when their stories run counter to literary conventions or society’s expectations?” (Lecker 1). The Handmaid’s Tale is told through the protagonist, Offred, and allows readers to follow through her life as a handmaid while looking back on how life used to be prior to the societal changes.

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1101 Words | 5 Pages

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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