The handmaid 's tale is a dystopian fiction novel written by Margaret Atwood in 1984. It is a bestselling book and was an instant classic. The plot behind the book is a terrifying one, women no longer have rights and are forced by the controlling government to become essentially baby makers and nothing else. Margaret Atwood borrows heavily from biblical texts to demonstrate societies and people being controlled by religion. Margaret Atwood has scattered so many biblical references throughout her novel.
Evelyn Reynoso Butiu English 11 21 February 2018 Literary Analysis Essay You are a successful women, success covered in the droplets of your blood, sweat, and tears. Suddenly, your success no longer holds your value and your fertility now defines you. In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, American society took multiple steps backwards, drastically changing the lives of all citizens for good as illustrated when Offred lost her financial and property rights in a matter of short time. Formally the United States, the totalitarian Christian society of Gilead is the reflection of future America if oppression of women, environmental damage, and disagreement of religion and politics continue. Women continue to be be oppressed by
The conflict in the dystopian novel arises from the central idea of the novel, an idea that becomes a commanding passion and moves the plot ahead. Margaret Atwood 's The Handmaid 's Tale revolves around the revival of religious fanaticism and how this conservative totalitarian theocracy has made its citizens more or less captives. Thus the novel becomes the study of survival. Similarly Huxley builds the plot of Brave New World on the idea of staying human in the high-tech and materialistic society. Huxley 's vision moves on the premise whether the satisfaction of material wants and mindless pleasures would overpower the
In The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, there are many moments that establish Gilead, the fictional world the novel is set in, as a corrupt society. Gilead is incredibly segregationist, with minorities and women specifically being targeted. It has an incredible lack of reproductive rights for women, and sexual shaming and blame are very prevalent. Margaret Atwood herself stated that she based The Handmaid's Tale only on events that have happened in the past, so aspects of the novel will always exist and can happen again (Atwood Emma Watson interviews). Like Atwood predicted, themes in this novel are still relevant in today's society.
However, Margaret Atwood 's novel, The Handmaid 's Tale, demonstrates how the regime uses religion to create authoritarian laws to control the people of Gilead and maintain order within the society. Nevertheless, most, if not all, characters have been insubordinate towards the laws of Gilead. Therefore, rigid religious influences in society lead to corruption, as proven through the characterization of both Serena Joy and the Commander and the role that the brothel plays within the
Imagine a nation, in which its government commands by a religion where women are separated into different titles and must conceive children for their commander. Their rights from before this regime, and anything deemed unholy by the government, are a thing of the past. This situation is the one depicted in the Republic of Gilead, where the rules of society and its traditions are not taken lightly if broken. In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood shows that an oppressive government leads to the inevitable neglect and remiss of the law through Offred’s characterization, irony, and flashbacks. Offred's character development can show that her attitude towards the law changes over the course of her experience in the Republic of Gilead.
The two texts illustrate how society brings about the oppression of women and this exacerbates the commodification of women. These texts demonstrate the societal issues involving oppression of women, women’s sexual role and their status. The Handmaid’s Tale depicts the rigid societal structure whereby women are forced to serve in various aspects and functions in the society. The boundaries of the context set are in Gilead, a totalitarian state dominated by Christian fundamentalists, indicating that Gilead enforces conformity among its citizens. In a simply put manner, one’s social position is fixed.
The Religion Influences in The Handmaid’s Tale Word Count: 1563 This purpose of this essay is to establish and explain connections between the Christian Religion and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. It is not attempting to point out flaws or discriminate against the religion. Margret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is a dystopian novel, that centres around the themes of corruption, oppression, and theocracy. Told in the first person, the novel follows the female ‘Offred’ in her daily life/activities and past experiences in the newly founded “Republic of Gilead”. From my personal research, the events in the novel were influenced by negative situations that involved the American society prior to the 1980’s.
A major theme in The Handmaid 's Tale by Margaret Atwood is how restriction of women 's sexuality leads to loss of power and is inherently anti-feminist. This is shown primarily in two major topics- ban of abortion and censorship of pornography; both topics are depicted differently in the classic novel and modern televised adaptation. Atwood’s writing shows strong pro-choice themes by incorporation of historic events in the context of the novel. Her dystopian society, Gilead shows the life of June, a Handmaid surviving in an oppressive society where women have been stripped of all rights and are forced to continually try for conception. The treatment of women in Gilead reflects past and present views of women in reference to abortion and
Introduction Canadian author Margaret Atwood describes in her futuristic speculative novel The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), a story about a handmaid, with a patronymic name Offred, who witnesses, experiences and recounts a transformation of her country. The country has turned from the land of freedom to the totalitarian theocracy, where tyrannical dictatorship, oppression, Christianity and Biblical speeches held sway over people, in particular, over women. Aiming to return things to “Nature’s norm” (THT 232) and “traditional value” (17), a group of men called “Sons of Jacob” has established The Republic of Gilead, “after the catastrophe, when they shot the President and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency” (183). Like the New England Puritans of the seventeenth century, Gilead is against women’s education, “second marriage, non-marital liaisons adulterous” (316), divorce, second marriage, homosexuality, pornography, abortion, and sterilization. The last one is the serious problem, which threatens the continuation of the future Gilead: [T]his was the age of the R-strain syphilis and also the infamous AIDS epidemic, which [...] eliminated many young sexually active people from the reproductive pool[.]