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What Is The Abuse Of Power In The Handmaid's Tale

1610 Words7 Pages

The Handmaid's Tale, by Margret Atwood, tells the story of a new type of government that has overthrown the United States government, called The Republic of Gilead, which is a theocratic and totalitarian system. Because of the low reproduction rate, handmaids are selected based on their age and fertility and sent to “elite couples'' who cannot reproduce. Their government has strict rules, which they believe will help them achieve their main goal; the control of women and their reproduction. The main character, Offred, serves for the Commander and his wife, Serena Joy. Every single month during her menstrual cycle, she is forced to have meaningless sex with the Commander, while Serena sits behind her, in hopes to conceive a baby. This is just …show more content…

All of these things that are happening in this can be seen as threats to different people. Margret includes this in the novel to show us what could happen if people don't treat women with the same respect and have the same standards as men. In the novel, The Handmaid's Tale, Margret Atwood uses the treatment of women and the abuse of Power to represent different threats to American Democracy. In The Handmaid's Tale, Margret Atwood uses the treatment of women to represent different threats to American Democracy. To this day, we still see different types of discrimination toward women. Discrimination is defined as the prejudiced outlook, treatment, and action towards a group of people. This starts in the mind then people reach out and make it a part of their everyday lives. This is a serious problem in The Handmaids Tale and in our world today. Whether it's different pay wages, different health care laws, and unfair treatment in our everyday lives. In America, having an …show more content…

As we know, The Republic of Gilead is totalitarian and revolves around certain people of certain classes. The laws and rules are designed and enforced to control the freedoms and rights of a selected group of individuals, mainly women. Offred shares “This is the one good thing about these evenings, the evenings of the Ceremony: I'm allowed to watch the news. It seems to be an unspoken rule in this household: we always get here on time, he's always late, Serena always lets us watch the news. Such as it is: who knows if any of it is true? It could be old clips, it could be faked. But I watch it anyway, hoping to be able to read beneath it. Any news, now, is better than none” (82). Under this government, they use their power to make sure women can think for themselves because if they did the thought of escaping would come across their minds. This is mental abuse towards the Handmaids and they take advantage of this as much as they can. This makes me think about how North Korea does the same thing. Elizabeth Anderson from AMERICAN UNIVERSITY'S UNDERGRADUATE POLICY MAGAZINE

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