Control In The Handmaids Tale

The Handmaid 's Tale is one of Margaret Atwood most famous novels written during the spring of 1984, when the Berlin wall was still standing. Atwood creates a dystopia, which mostly consists of gender gap and oppression. The Handmaid 's Tale effectively portrays the United States as the modern-day totalitarian society of Gilead, which was illustrated as perfect by using the book of Genesis. Although the authors ideas are inherently and completely fictional, several concepts throughout his book have common links to the past and present society which the author herself calls a speculative fiction. The author uses a totalitarian system which includes aspects of Soviet system, to describe, deprivation, repression and terror with the use of

In Margaret Atwood’s novel, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, Moira is depicted as the symbol for resistance to authority and represents hope to the Handmaids. Atwood presents her as a polar opposite to Offred. She is independent, strong-willed, and outspoken. Conversely, the pair can be argued to be doubles in the fact that they both ‘resist’ to the oppressive Republic in Gilead.

In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Offred has a continuous search for justice for her daughter, in a society in which her idea of justice is starts as one concept and changes to one that she never expected.

Rebellion; the action or process of resisting authority, control, or convention. The Handmaid’s Tale written by Margaret Atwood is a novel. The novel takes place in Gilead a dystopian society. Everyone in Gilead has an important role to play within the society, however, it seems as if none of the characters seem content with their role, due to the restrictions they face. In the novel, the lack of freedom leads to rebellion as shown by the characterization, interior dialogue, flashbacks, and foreshadowing.

Regina Carla L. Silva 2015-01293 The Handmaid’s Tale The novel is set in the Republic of Gilead which is formerly the United States of America. The name comes from a place from the Bible. It is a totalitarian, theocratic government.

There are two ways people will react to when their freedom is taken away. They will either accept it or rebel against it, which is what a lot of the female characters in Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale accomplished. Shown through Offred’s repetition of certain events, Moira’s tone of being a fighter, and Serena Joy’s desperation, the reader can see that lack of freedom leads to rebellion.

So, generally speaking, the people of Gilead are so passive about the way that they are treated because this is the only way for them to continue to survive. Offreds passivity is something that is touched on several times throughout the novel, but she does not just learn this skill on her own, but is taught by a woman named Aunt Lydia. “Aunt Lydia said it was best not to speak unless they asked you a direct question. Try to think of it from their point of view she said, her hands clasped and wrung together, her nervous pleading smile.

Conflict can be described as the struggle between two opposing forces, whether the forces being person vs person, person vs self or person vs society. Good examples of conflict can be found in almost any book. Margaret Atwood’s novel, the Handmaid’s Tale is a source of all three types of conflicts. The Handmaid’s Tale is about a society where females are given specific duties and are restricted from reading, writing, talking to others and looking at themselves in mirrors. The protagonist, Offred whom is also the narrator in the novel faces conflicts with herself, with other people, and the society that she lives in. Offred’s conflict with the commander’s wife Serena Joy only escalates throughout the book, as the two did not like each other

By the Civil War, there were a number of public hospitals and facilities for the mentally ill. Document 6, however, represents her vocal campaigning for the refining of the prison system. She claimed the need for prisoners to be taught good and bad. Specifically, the officers she be the first example of good

The women were often arrested on made up charges and were jailed when they refused to pay fines. They were sent to Occoquan Workhouse, a prison in Virginia (Carol, Myers, Lindman, n.d., National Woman 's Party, Picketing and Prison section, para 2). The women staged hunger strikes and “were forcibly fed in a tortuous method” (Carol, Myers, Lindman, n.d., National Woman 's Party, Picketing and Prison section, para 2). The women were beaten and thrown into “cold, unsanitary, and rat-infested cells” (Carol, Myers, Lindman, n.d., National Woman 's Party, Picketing and Prison section, para 2). Eventually prison officials moved Alice to a sanitarium to get her declared insane but the news of her treatment, along with the other women, became public.

A young woman pushed forward, said she had already been there. They had no clean water, she said, no oxygen, no medications, no electricity. “There is nothing there.” “That’s where you go,” the guard said”(p. 306). The women are treated as if their welfare is unimportant because women are thought of as a mere decoration to the society and are considered useless enough to not pay any attention to.

In the Handmaid 's Tale power is used to control the women and sort them into certain gender roles. Each women in the society of Gilead is assigned a certain job that is stereotypical of a woman 's job such as cooking, sex, and reproduction. These women are the lowest class in Gilead and have no control. The men have superior power of the women but the women such as Ofgeln and Offred gain control in power in their lives.

Albert Camus once said, “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” In this quotation, Camus brings about an important interpretation of how the way of surviving in a world without freedom is to rebel. Once you are completely free your existence is considered an act of rebellion. In Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, freedom is taken away from both men and women but mostly women. The novel reveals that lack of freedom leads to rebellion and breaking rules as shown through the symbol of the match, the use of flashbacks, and the characterization of men.

Despite their endeavors to escape their bondage, the women behind the bars could not escape because the men found alternative tactics to keep them in confinement. The bars strangle and cut off the heads of the women that climb out of the pattern, “it turns them upside down and makes their eyes white!” resonating to an envision of a crazy woman. The narrator herself is a great example of how effective men were at establishing alternative tactics like this. The narrator was classified as having hysterical tendencies, like most women of the nineteenth century, were when they complained of pain, anxiety, fatigue, or depression, as a source of suppressing their agency through prescribed isolation and prohibited writing.

In different examples, detainees may pressure the staff in conveying booty into jails by posturing dangers of brutality against companions or