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Hamlet And The Handmaids Tale Analysis

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MIP Rough Draft The play “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare and the book, “The Handmaids Tale” by Margaret Atwood, both create a fall of power in society and this loss of leadership opens the door for corruption to take over. Both authors have created this instability in society and use the motifs: loss of power, religion, and relationships to explore characters’ innermost selves. This exploration of characters proves that one will submit to anything in order to obtain stability in a corrupt environment. Both Shakespeare and Margaret Atwood immediately pull the rug out beneath from the characters in their work, creating instability not only in the character’s mind but in the reader’s mind as well. Each author starts their story in medias …show more content…

There is nobody to assist them, and the beliefs that have sustained them previously are now of no value”(Satô, Saburo1 The Father-Son Relationship in Tôson Shimazaki's "The Broken Commandment" and William Shakespeare's “Hamlet.”). The protagonists in the play “Hamlet” and the book “The Handmaids Tale” face the same issue of trying to find stability and ultimately survival when their previous society has been overtaken by new power and the way they used to live no longer applies. The need to know and withhold information is crucial to Offred and Hamlet, after this loss of government power in society in an act to provide stability for themselves. The desperation for knowledge is strongly shown through Hamlet when he shouts at Marcellus and Horatio, “By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me! I say, away! Go on. I’ll follow thee.”(Shakespeare 1.4.29) Knowledge of what the ghost wants from Hamlet, is offering him stability after his father's death and Hamlet values knowledge even over his own life, expressing “Why, what should I fear? I do not set my life at a pin’s fee” (Shakespeare 1.4.28). Hamlet needs this information in order to feel stable within himself, while corruption takes over Elsinore, saying to Horatio the news is “O wonderful!”(Shakespeare 1.5.34) suggesting that he has a positive response to withholding this new information that now brings stability to his life. Hamlet uses “the dumb play” as a hidden message that can be sent to Claudius but has huge underlying significance. This use of the murder in the play allows Hamlet to reveal if Claudius truly murdered his father and does this at the cost of Claudius knowing Hamlet knows his guilty deed and making Hamlet a threat. This suggests again that Hamlet’s will to obtain stability in knowledge overcomes his own life. Offred trades sex in return for knowledge of her daughter's whereabouts.

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