The Handmaid's Tale

In the Handmaid’s Tale, it begins with Offred presenting the situation that handmaids are in. Handmaids are to not have contact with any other caste in the system. They are suppose to bare children for Commanders. The handmaids are constructed by the Aunts in the households. The Aunts carry electric cattle prods for their enforcement. However, the only people with guns are the guards. The handmaids are usually given the right to leave when going for food and they must be in pairs when shopping.…

In Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaids Tale, women are treated as if they are toys. In the Republic of Gilead love, equality, and disrespect are banned. For the reader, the aspect that is most pronounced is symbolism. The way Atwood shows symbolism could tell a story by itself. In the Republic of Gilead there are four major classes of people; beginning with the handmaids, the commanders, the eyes, and the wives. The republic has individual households that hold all of these classes, with…

In her novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood explores the poor ideals and horrors of a futuristic patriarchal society. The story is set in Massachusetts at an unspecified time in the future and tells the story of a young lady’s struggles through a change in the way of life after America was taken over by another governing body, Gilead. By Gilead’s traditional rules, women were not allowed to work and own property, and men were far superior to the women. In the story, procreation was…

George Bernard Shaw once said “There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart 's desire. The other is to gain it” (Man and Superman). Within Margaret Atwood’s (1985) dystopian fiction The Handmaid’s Tale, desire is shown to be a omnipresent aspect in the theocratic military dictatorship of Gilead. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, desire can be defined as “a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen” (388). Within this novel, desire is…

In Margret Atwood’s dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, a new theocracy style of government has taken over the United States of America. It is now known as the Republic of Gilead, and entails a strictly structured caste system. The newly formed government has only been around for a few years, and the narrator, Offred has been casted as a handmaid. This position requires her to attempt to conceive a baby for the Commander and his wife by having sex with the Commander while she holds his wife’s…

Many characters in Margaret Atwood's fiction novel The Handmaid’s Tale break various rules. These characters consist of people high up in ranks like commanders to people low in ranks like handmaids. Even characters who you would not expect to break the rules do. For example, Serena Joy she is the commander's wife and also high in ranks but as soon as we meet Serena Joy in the novel she breaks one of Gilead's laws by smoking which is forbidden. During the novel, it reveals that breaking the rules…

The Wall in the Handmaid's Tale is built right next to the church where they are both as old as a hundred years or more. The wall has sentries that will rip through anyone that tries to climb over and barbed wire on top if anyone even gets close. However, there are bodies hanging on the wall by their necks and their hands tied behind them. Atwood writes, “Sometimes, they’ll be there for days, until there’s a new batch, so as many people as possible will have the chance to see them” (Atwood 32)…

treated merely like cattle. The reason how Hitler became so successful with his plans was because he took advantage of his own country by using propaganda in order to gain power and turn the people living there against each other. In the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale portrays the similarity between their totalitarian society called The Republic of Gilead and the Holocaust. In the story there is a resemblance to how the women are treated versus how the Jews were treated. The Commander who wasn’t as…

While the first chapter of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is not even two pages long, it introduces two key components to the story--oppression and women. The novel takes place in the Republic of Gilead, a dystopian society that has taken over the United States of America. Where there are oppressors, there are the oppressed, and this group is primarily made up of women. Offred, the narrator, gives insight into her new life, as well as the lives around her. While they are sent to Red…

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood shows an imaginative attempt to conceive a future where women have lost their autonomy and rights, and where the American government is run by conservative moral and religious ideals. Atwood creates a dystopian story which frames itself through Michel Foucault’s Panopticon. The panoptic establishment relies upon complete visibility, a hierarchical organization of power, and an enclosed space. These three concepts are all prevalent throughout the novel. The…