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The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

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The Handmaid’s tale by Margaret Atwood is lined with symbolism and situations that can easily be translated to shared realities. A person can turn to any page and land on issues of sexual discrimination, feminism, power, rape culture, victim blaming, religious oppression and the list goes on. Through out this paper some of the topics will be addressed as they cross into our everyday reality be it with purpose or just because that is always how it has been. It is important to know that the setting of this book takes place in the dystopian society of Gilead. A religious driven patriarchal society. Reminiscent of some of the history in the United States where men were the leaders and in charge of all things relating to how society was directed …show more content…

Atwood seems to have made all of them, even Nick and Luke clouded with evil. They all oppressed women in some way. Luke didn’t seem to think it was so bad that Offred’s money was given to him as the takeover began. The commanders, Angels, Eyes and other men in the Gilead hierarchy were clearly demonized and Nick was portrayed similarly to Luke in that somethings were OK such as the relationship but what type of relationship was it really? Was it purely sexual or was there actual emotion as he put her in the hands of Mayday? Because of this continuing overtone throughout the book one could surmise that this is probably a reason that Atwood is often questioned about being a feminist. It also comes across as a clear bias against men in power positions. Works Cited Abendroth, A.-K., Melzer, S., Kalev, A., & Tomaskovich-Devey, D. (2017, January). Women at Work: Women's Access to Power and the Gender Earnings Gap. ILR Review. doi:10.1177/0019793916668530 Countries With A Theocratic Government Today. (2017, April 25). Retrieved from http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-theocratic-governments-today.html Lambert, C. A. (2017, July 18). What the Handmaids Tale Can Teach Us about Cohersed Women: Subjugation in the Home Today. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mind-games/201707/what-the-handmaids-tale-can-teach-us-about-coerced-women Speed, D., & Fowler, K. (2017). Empowerment or Dependency? The Religion/Religiosity–Mastery Relationship. Canadian Psychology, 58(4), 333 - 344. Retrieved December 7,

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