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Desire In The Handmaid's Tale

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Robert A. Heinlein once said, “I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them.” In human nature, people tend to act upon the way they feel, and those feelings are often a result of their surroundings, the world they live in. The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian novel, written by Margaret Atwood reflects this. The novel reflects how the more something is implemented, the greater the temptation is to do otherwise as shown through the Commander and Offred’s relationship, the society’s desperation for a baby, and the novel’s first person point of view. Even after all the rules Gilead has, the Commander and Offred still managed to create some sort of relationship. In the novel, it is quite ironic how the Commander, considering who he is and what power he holds, still managed to fall into that temptation that has been created through the way the society in Gilead is. However, the Commander was not the only one who caved into the temptation, so did Offred. “There is supposed to be nothing entertaining about us, no room is to be permitted for the flowering of secret lusts; no special favors are to be wheedled, by them or us, there are to be no toeholds for love”(Atwood 136). Both the Commander and Offred were well aware of the fact that what they were doing was wrong, yet that temptation of wanting something you can’t have, in this case was worth the “risk”. Throughout the novel, Offred and the

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