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The Handmaid's Tale Power

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Margaret Atwood's didactic novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985) serves as a cautionary "tale" to warn readers about the destructive nature of power and oppression. Atwood portrays a dystopian totalitarian regime, Gilead, with a firm hierarchy motif where gender separation is established to reveal how an abuse of political power results in the oppression of individuals. Atwood uses her novel as an artistic tool to encourage the need for heightened political and social awareness by examining the way individuals are controlled through oppressive means, giving rise to a frightening loss of individualism and freedom. Hence, Atwood's novel communicates the dangers of a passive acceptance of power and oppression within societal and political movements …show more content…

Atwood establishes militaristic and rigid settings in Gilead to emphasise the totalitarian regulation and lack of freedom within such a society, "Aunt Elizabeth patrolled; they had electric cattle prods," using evocative animalistic imagery and prison-like descriptions, "Army cots that had been set up in rows, without spaces between so we could not talk," to show the dehumanising effects of such oppressive societies in order to consolidate supreme control. The Handmaids, as such, become dehumanised to the collective identity of mass-bred "cattle", representing their value to society merely being attributed to their sexual function. In order to consolidate the oppressive regimes, Atwood comments on the way those in power use fear as a method of silencing, marginalising and manipulating individuals from transgressing their socially prescribed roles. Atwood presents Gilead as a totalitarian regime that regulates its citizens through surveillance. This is portrayed through the symbol of the 'eyes'. Perhaps it was a test to see what I would do. Perhaps he …show more content…

Atwood's novel challenges readers not to be complacent about the gains made in the feminist movement for fear of losing all that has been fought for. By setting the narrative in a speculative future, Atwood represents people in Gilead society as a rigid hierarchy where conformity is enforced through fear and people are valued according to their function and contribution to the state. Contextually, the rigorous tyrannies and lost freedoms to extreme conservatism as a corrective response to an age of extreme liberalism characterised by deterioration of morality and rampant sexuality is censored within the Gilleard regime. Thus, individual privileges such as abortion, "old sex", "mini-skirts", and agency become a distant memory, by which the regime reduces the self as a figure of the collective, mimetic in the loss of self with 'few mirrors'. Atwood compares the clothing worn by the Handmaids, "Everything except the wings around my face is red," with "the colour of blood", symbolising childbirth and fertility, to present the way clothing is used to "define us" as merely what people can offer. Atwood uses uniform clothing as a visual depiction of the notion of social stratification and subsequent power imbalance in Gilead, while trying to climb the hierarchy. In justifying institutionalised rape through the

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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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Research Paper on The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale, creates a dystopia of the near future in which a conventional fundamentalist group rules what is left of the United States, which has now become “Gilead.” The Republic of Gilead has subdued women and reduced Handmaids like Offred, the main character, to sexual slavery. Offred yearns for happiness and freedom, and discovers herself struggling against the totalitarian boundaries of her civilization. The Republic of Gilead is a totalitarian state formed by a religious cult centered on ideas of bigotry and inequality, especially in relation to gender.

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Language is the most powerful tools in connecting between the author and the readers. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood uses word choice and sentence structure to expose that the shocking cultures of Gilead society are built upon foundations of sexism. Additionally, with the use of double entendre, Atwood emphasizes the theme throughout the novel: the presence of power. Atwood shows Gilead society is a corrupted place where people seek to break the rules and to show power through the action between the Commander and Offred.

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Atwood clearly emphasizes this point through the inclusion of Offred 's inner thoughts; which in turn, help to illuminate to the reader the process of this deterioration. Atwood also shows how the Republic of Gilead uses totalitarianism tactics, which parallel those used in North Korea, in order to remain in control. In The Handmaid’s tale, a dystopian novel, Margaret Atwood uses imagery and allusion throughout the novel to illustrate how the republic of Gilead uses techniques to deteriorate one 's mind in order to maintain their power. Throughout the dystopian country

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There were limits but my body was nevertheless lithe, single, solid, one with me. Now the flesh arranges itself differently. I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping.” (Atwood 91). This makes the reader believe that Offred has given into the social injustice at Gilead being the oppression of women.

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Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" delves into the harrowing experiences of its protagonists within the dystopian society of Gilead, where violence and fear are omnipresent tools of control. Despite the oppressive regime's relentless efforts to subdue them, the protagonists manage to retain glimmers of human dignity and hope amidst their ordeal. Through the characters of Offred, Moira, and June, Atwood explores the resilience of the human spirit in the face of overwhelming adversity, highlighting the capacity to endure and find solace in moments of defiance and solidarity. Gilead's totalitarian regime maintains its grip on power through the pervasive use of violence and fear. Offred, the novel's protagonist, is subjected to physical and

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Davidson characterizes The Handmaid’s Tale as a work of speculative fiction, saying that Gilead “eerily resembles our present” (Davidson 4), but she also characterizes the novel as an allegory for past, present, and future regimes based in misogyny and racism. She includes parts of Atwood’s speech to back up her claim. “There is nothing in The Handmaid’s Tale, with the exception of one scene, that has not happened at some point in history. [...] I transposed to a different time and place, but the motifs are all historical motifs” (Atwood). By using events that have happened in the past, Atwood injects a sense of realism into her dystopia.

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Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale, takes place in a post-feminist, dystopian world that personifies negative feelings towards the 1980s feminist movement and radically projects them onto civilization, producing the severe subjugation of women that quickly transitions into their dehumanization and loss of identity. Atwood uses the strong juxtaposition of oppression and power in order to warn civilization of the dangers surrounding idealistic thoughts regarding society. While Atwood’s story is one that takes place in a dystopia, she adds a very realistic undertone that makes readers feel as though any events portrayed in her novel could happen in the near future. Nothing in this realm is fabricated, not technology, or law, or even history

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The following quote states, “We had flannelette sheets, like children’s, and army-issue blankets, old ones that still said U.S.” (Atwood, 1985, p. 4) This is a historical allusion by introducing Gilead and its connection to the real world the United States. By choosing, at her time, a powerful country reflects on the author’s thoughts on which country is capable of shifting the power and directing it into a dystopian-like world. It concurs with her background.

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The Handmaid’s Tale – Response Assignment “We two legged wombs, That’s all: scared vessels, ambulatory chalices” (Atwood 171). In Margret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, the repression of women is the main subject of satire. Atwood satirizes this subject effectively by using irony, and setting the story in a dystopian world. Firstly, Atwood successfully satirizes the repression of women because she effectively uses a dystopian world to convey her message.

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Women are consistently objectified and dehumanized throughout the entire novel and in the dystopian setting of Gilead women’s bodies are only valued for their reproductive functions. A woman's only value or thing she can produce in her entire life while in Gilead is a child. Offred says, "We [the handmaids,] are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices" (157). Women are reduced to mere vessels for reproduction, stripped of their individuality and autonomy. Offred considers herself and the other handmaids to be two-legged wombs and ambulatory chalices; these metaphors compare their lives to objects only good for bearing children.

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Authority is enforced in the social structures of the Gilead and how people are treated based on their class. Control is established within the household amongst those in given power over those below them. Influence is manipulated amongst the handmaids over those with greater power in their interactions and needs. Atwood is able to bring power to readers’ attention in a variety of ways, ranging from straightforward to interpretive, guiding readers to question: Is power held in the perpetrator’s hands or the victim’s

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"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any. " - Alice Walker Margaret Atwood's novel, The Handmaid's Tale, explores a dystopian world where women are subjugated and forced into reproductive servitude. The novel is set in the Republic of Gilead, a theocratic society formed after a coup d'état in the United States. Atwood's work is heavily influenced by her own experiences as a feminist and her observations of historical and contemporary systems of oppression. The novel's themes of resilience and determination in the face of oppression are particularly relevant to contemporary society, where oppressive systems continue to exist.

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She never describes men as overtly more powerful than women and never includes how men have changed things, only women. Her sex life is completely regiment by Serena, giving her no room for intimacy without a witness. Atwood uses Serena’s intrusion to show “an early example of Atwood’s emphasis upon the body” in her novels about women to add a focus “with women’s position within power structures that seek to contain them” (Davies 61). This concern is exemplified in Serena’s imposition of an underground relationship on Offred. Atwood’s point in creating such an unusual dynamic of sexual control is a comment on women’s traditional role in society and how demeaning it is.

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It projects a patriarchy of elite white men who repress the majority of the population through sexist and racist policies. In this puritanical state, Commanders are political leaders and lawmakers who support and contribute to the rise of Gilead. Each Commander possesses a big house, a Wife, Marthas, a driver, and a Handmaid, epitomizing wealth and power. The Gilead society uses Biblical allusions to justify the role of the Commanders. During the Women’s Prayvaganzas, the Commander expresses, “For Adam was first formed, then Eve” (221) where Eve was made as a helper and to complement Adam as a servant rather than function as an equal.

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