Handmaid's Tale Identity

Often times, literary works can easily distinguish between a good character or an evil character. Other times, a character can be very complex, which makes it difficult to characterize the character as good or evil. This complex character complex is known as Moral Ambiguity. In other words, readers are discouraged from identifying a character as purely good or evil. One particular character that can be views as morally ambiguous is a woman named Edna Pontellier. Edna from Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening” can be perceived as morally ambiguous because of her affiliations with other men, and role-defying actions; however, both contribute to “The Awakening” as a whole.

Often times when a person is forced to outwardly conform while questioning themselves it leads to a struggle between their inner selves and what is expected of them. Outward conformity often oppresses a character’s true feelings of loneliness and being misunderstood. In The Awakening by Kate Chopin, the protagonist, Edna Pontellier, leads a dissatisfactory life. She is stuck in a loveless marriage, and has children, all in an attempt to conform to the social norm of the Victorian woman. However, she inwardly questions whether or not she should try to break free from this life to find her own independence and happiness. Edna continually questions whether or not she is destined to live a life of subordination or if she can find her own freedom. Edna Pontellier’s defiant nature is brought out

Often, we see a society’s cultural values reflected in its citizens. For example, the United States values equality, a standard that is shared in all facets including gender. The opposite is true of Gilead, a fictional society in Emily Bronte’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The novel’s main character, Offred, is subjected to degrading treatment simply because she is a woman. It becomes apparent that this repeated degradation has affected the protagonist’s mind. Through first-person point of view and the motif of eyes, Brontë establishes the effects of Gilead’s patriarchal society on Offred’s psychological and moral traits, revealing that the only way to survive in an oppressive society is to outwardly conform.

In the late 1800s society assigned to women a specific role to play. The role included bearing children, caring for them, and honoring their husbands. People saw women who took jobs outside of the home or who never married as deranged. Kate Chopin highlights the female duties of the time in her novel, The Awakening, through the use of foils Edna and Adele. Adele represents the model of how an ideal women of the 19th century should behave and feel. A wonderful mother, Adele also tends to her husband’s every need. Furthermore, she seems to enjoy this role, apparently thriving in it. Her friend Edna starts off like Adele but then realizes the role is drowning her. Edna and Adele are different people who, though dealt the same cards in life,

describing the transformation that Edna Pontellier undergoes as she realizes that the conventions of her society have been constraining her from becoming her true, independent self. Edna’s awareness of her duality of self, her private emotional life, and the loneliness that accompanies her newfound freedom are all clear evidence that she truly becomes enlightened and revived by the end of the novel. The inability of the other characters in this novel to hinder Edna’s transformation is a reflection of society’s complete powerlessness against the inner flame of emotion

It is common for people in everyday society to conform to society’s expectations while also questioning their true desires. In the novel, The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, the main protagonist Edna Pontellier is said to possess, "That outward existence which conforms, the inward life that questions." In other words, Edna outwardly conforms while questioning inwardly. Kate Chopin, uses this tension between outward conformity and inward questioning to build the meaning of the novel by examining Edna’s role as a wife, mother, and as nontraditional woman in the traditional Victorian period.

Irene Redfield starts the story off knowing her identity. She continues the story holding her identity tightly, and not bending from who she thinks she is, or what she thinks she is. She does not react well to change and likes things to be a certain way. Her problem in the story is not that she has not found her identity, but that she hasn 't done enough to develop her identity. She sees the world as black and white, and unlike Clare who sees the grey area, she is blinded to it. In the novel, the narrator says, "But Irene didn 't know and didn 't try to discover." (Larsen, 10), This quote represents how Irene isn 't trying to find herself, she just stays in the safe zone and doesn 't try to truly find her identity. She just stays with, what she perceives her identity

In the novel when the emperor was divine written by Julie otsuka. Otsuka describes the experiences of the Japanese internment. The relocation of Japanese-Americans into internment camps during World War II. while there was terror in Europe with the Nazis and Jews the Americans accused the American-japanese of being spies for japan. Julie uses different characters in the book to describe how the camps treated them, from their point of view.

Rejection can make one feel alone, helpless, and out of place, and it’s a feeling that can make someone feel like they are no good, or that they aren’t worthy of a good life. All throughout the story, we are given examples of how the young girl is shamed and rejected. She was never accepted for who she was and this made her do things, sometimes extreme to help out her family. She knew she would never fit in, and her actions proved just that.

This piece is called Loss of Identity, created with watercolor and colored pencil. Complementing the novel “The Handmaid’s Tale”, by Margaret Atwood, Loss of Identity focuses on one of the major themes of the dystopian world that Atwood displays through the Republic of Gilead: a loss of one’s self-image and

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.

For someone who is delicate and fragile, we don’t see often being attacked by others because they validate them as being weak. In this short story, the unnamed protagonist has a strong belief in her own identity, she sure knows what she wants and how to put an action towards

The majority of people ask the same question at some point in their life; who am I? The concept of identity is something many wrestle with their whole lives. Other individuals are confident of who they are. The Handmaid’s Tale follows a society that is stripped of individuality and identity. This question can no longer be asked because it cannot be answered. The society is functioning, but the morals of the system are questionable. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood uses the theme of identity to emphasize the power individuality, lack of identity results in rebellion and that identity is something you don't know you have until it's gone.

In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s it was incredibly difficult for a woman to express her thoughts simply because she was not a man. The two novels, The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, and The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton, use their writing to explore what it would be like for a woman to explore herself. The Awakening is a story about a woman, Edna, who is determined to find her true self no matter what it takes. In the story, Edna leaves her husband and begins living on her own, in her own house in order to find her independence. This search for independence is interesting because I believe that it is something that I can relate to, even in this day and age. In The House of Mirth, Lily struggles with whether or not she should get married like all the other women that she knows, or if she should just accept the fact that she will not have a husband. Both Wharton and Chopin’s stories use similar themes and ideas in order to show that regardless of whether women were trying to find themselves or save themselves, things were different for them simply because they were females.

Commander: The Commander is the most important male character in the novel. To Offred (The narrator), the Commander symbolizes control, domination and imprisonment. The character endured much development as the story went on. In the introduction of the story, the Commander is pictured as a tall, strong, unapprochable character with alot of authority. The readers are fully aware that the Commander is one of the founder of the Gilead and is reponsible for horrible acts. “The two others [hanged] have purple placards around their neck. Gender Treachery.” (80) and “Thats when they [the military] suspended the Constitution.” (260) are just two examples of the horrible crimes the Commander (and