The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood
2. The Odyssey holds many themes for the reader to find and dissect, but the lesson Homer attempted to drive in was a warning on the dangers of hubris. Hubris is excessive pride or arrogance. Most of the characters in the Odyssey display hubris at one point or another in the story. For example, many of Odysseus’ troubles are a result of his hubris.
Inferiority and superiority complexes between individuals exemplify the imbalance of power and is shown throughout the novel, Handmaid’s Tale, written by Margaret Atwood. “This is supposed to signify that we are one flesh, one being. What it really means is that she is in control, of the process and thus of the product” (Atwood 94). Throughout the ceremony, the process alone is supposed to demonstrate that both the wife and the handmaid are equal and one. That gives them a sense of equality and there is some sense of a balance between the women.
“The Handmaid’s Tale”, a dystopian fiction novel by Margaret Atwood, was written about two decades ago, however the passing of time does not change the quality of this unique story. The story takes place in a Republic of Gilead, a futuristic United States, in which a Christian theocracy has overthrown the old government and are now forcing everyone to live by their beliefs, word by word. Offred, a young woman who is assigned with the duty of being a handmaid, a person who bears children for their assigned couple, lives with her commander and his wife, Serena, in his mansion. The commander is an elderly man who has a high position in the government and he once a month has to have sexual intercourse with Offred due to the declining birth rates in the Republic of Gilead. Serena is the assigned wife of the commander, although she can’t bear children herself due to her age, she waits for Offred to hopefully become pregnant in order to finally have the child that she has always desired to have.
Khedhir Baqer Professor Choman Hardi English 102 28 October 2015 Introduction: The idea of brainwashing someone to accept different beliefs and forbid that person from the ability to think independently has always been a subject of interest to me. But, I have never encountered clear examples of brainwashing. The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) , which is a Dystopian novel written by the Canadian author Margaret Atwood, made me realize how devastating this act can be.
One’s sense of self is often defined by his/her freedom to do, act, or speak how they please. Without the basic civil liberties that we, being Americans, take for granted in the present day such as the freedom of expression, the freedom of speech, and the freedom of protection, we would not be the self-respecting, unique individuals that many are today, but rather a mass of indistinguishable American citizens. In America, and democracies with similar ideologies, the freedoms granted to each citizen allow the diversification of each individual person. However, in some countries with a harsher, civil-liberty-abusing government, it may be difficult for people to find their sense of self with the absence of their freedoms. The Handmaid’s Tale, written by Margaret Atwood, details the lives of women within one of
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.
Just as Hillary Jordan’ main protagonist Hannah has been put into boxes her whole life, literature tends to think in boxes as well. Novels are put in different genre boxes and the characters are, through their character traits, in boxes as well. This thesis has three boxes as well, in this case called chapters. Within each chapter it will be tried to break these boxes open and discuss why not everything can be put in just one box and why society should start to think outside the box.
Cheerleading, a Sport or Not Not long ago, a debatable question has been pondered by many to decide whether or not cheerleading is a sport. After having a self-debate, I have made the decision that I personally do not believe that cheerleading should be considered a sport considering knowing the way cheerleading is ran and how different it is from any other well-known sport. Cheerleading started out back in the 1800’s and still is popular today. Cheerleading began as an all-male activity at college football games in the 1800’s. In the 1920’s cheerleading started to become more of a woman’s sport It quickly became a full-on female sport leaving the males find a new activity to make their own.
In The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the Republic of Gilead actively represses women by forcing them into very narrowly defined, ultra-conservative gender roles. This totalitarian government strips women of all rights and protections, and imposes severe punishments for defiance. Pollution and disease had caused severe infertility in this society, drastically reducing birth rates. In an effort to reverse a drastic population decline, this thoroughly misogynistic and power-hungry regime, takes full control over the human reproductive process. Furthermore, the leadership uses various dehumanizing methods to achieve complete subservience of women to men.
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).
Aunt Lydia’s more relevant quote in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, is the two freedoms, who gives the reader an accurate insight of the Gilead society. This quote exposes the contrast between the freedom before and after the settlement of the Republic of Gilead, and the mentality of the brainwashed nation. It is well known that the Gileadean era is a dystopia, but the reader must study deeper into both societies –Gileadean and pre-Gileadean- to understand which one is really worse. Before the appearing of the Republic of Gilead, freedom was seen as a person’s desire, however, on the Gileadean era, freedom is a collective idea. On the current community, freedom is settled by laws based on moral and social values, but ignoring the
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.
“Power doesn’t corrupt people, people corrupt power.”- William Gaddis. People take advantage of power when it is entrusted to them because of their own greed, which as a result lead to societal deterioration. In the story, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” by Margaret Atwood, the higher-ups from Gilead abuse the power that is given to them, ruining the life of the citizens in the society. This was the cause for the need of higher birth rates and fixing conflicts in the world, but this was handled immorally.
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 .
Gilead is ruled by fundamentalist regime that treats women as property of the state, and is faced with environmental disasters and a plummeting birth rate. In the opening chapters, the handmaid’s lives are presented as just property of the state. The start of chapter one begins with The Handmaid 's Tale, The novelist Margaret Atwood presents the life of handmaids as protagonist who live in such fear and solitude. The first chapter begins with the narrator describing the old gymnasium as being peaceful such as ‘Powdering the dancers with a
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