Gilead: A Credible Society
In Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale, a society whose purposes are functional and practical roles is depicted. In Atwood's eyes, a society like Gilead's was perfectly credible, and in many ways I agree with her. The purpose of writing about such a radical society is not for one to panic into thinking that this could happen any time, nor is it for one to completely discard the idea. Instead, it's purpose is solely to warn us of the dangers already present in our own society, such as the uncontrollable violence that is going on, apparent on crimes, wars, racism, etc.
Offred, the narrator, tells us about a society which came into existence in the early 80's as a direct consequence of overlooking the many problems in its previous society. Before the first steps were being taken to actually destroy the society that few knew was already on the edge of becoming anarchical, there was foreshadowing of what would happen right beneath the eyes of everyone. Riots were going on all the time, people were vanishing, and later women lost their jobs and their money. All these things happened without people's objections, because they were simply ignoring it, possibly hoping that it could not get worst. As Offred later describes how they faced up to those problems, "We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it" (74). This quote described what people did when they were fearsome of something, which they had already permitted to become the usual, bothered them. Ignoring what one fears makes that thing seem normal, and usually one becomes less afraid of things as they become normal. However, if things are ignored to an extreme and one does not care to draw the line, things can get out of hand when it is already too late. Offred regrets having been like the rest of the society that was banished, because looking back, what was happening then was in fact foreshadowing the future,
Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it. There were stories in the newspapers, of course, corpses in ditches or the woods, bludgeoned to death or mutilated, . . . The newspaper stories were like dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others . . . they were awful without being believable. . . . they had a dimension that was no...
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...illions of Americans crying out. Nor would it be possible that someone kill the president by simply entering his house. The problem is that these differences mean little when there are also many similarities. The purpose Atwood saw in her book is to warn us of our own dangers, not to compare them to a fictitious story and keep ignoring things. As I said before, I do not think we will ever have such an awful transformation in our lives, but I do not think something similar is impossible to occur. Because we are all being blind, like the other society was blind, and we ignore things like violence, we are building ourselves a path with no solid foundations. If we continue doing so, the tendency is for this path to fall apart. Even if this actually happened, it does not necessarily mean that we would have to give in to losing what is ours by all rights. Nevertheless, if we fall in a trend where everything is so casual that we ignore what is going on, something else could happen where we could forget to draw the limit and make it stop, as the society preceding Gilead did.
WORKS CITED
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. 28th ed. New York: Ballantine Books, 1991.
As you can see there are many reason why a society can fail or get destroyed and it can perpetuate destruction of a society also. When people don’t question authority and when they are ignorant or naive it can lead to the destruction of a society as seen through the two texts of Night and Fahrenheit 451 we can see that it is clearly evident that the destruction of a society is clearly happening if these to are evident.
Thesis: In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood characterizes Handmaids, as women with expectations to obey the society’s hierarchy, as reproducers, symbolizing how inferior the Handmaid class is to others within Gilead; the class marginalization of Handmaids reveals the use of hierarchical control exerted to eliminate societal flaws among citizens.
Many texts that were published from different authors have introduced topics that can be related in today’s society, but Margaret Atwood’s creation called, “The Handmaid’s Tale”, gives voice to the thoughts and revolves around the narrator Offred, a woman whose rights have been deprived due to political issues. However, the information shared by Offred to the reader to the text is not reliable for the reason that she only touches upon her own perspective. Through the text, Atwood depicted what the United States of America would be in the future based on the actions of humanity during 1980’s. The text is set up in an androcentric and totalitarian country called Gilead, where the government attempts to create a utopian society. Thus, in order to attain this society, the authorities generated their legislation from the teachings of the Holy Bible in an attempt to control humanity. The governing
In the novel The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood the themes of Religion and inter-human relationships are the themes that are most evident in the text. This novel shows the possibility of the existence of an all-powerful governing system. This is portrayed through the lack of freedom for women in society, from being revoked of their right to own any money or property, to being stripped of their given names and acquiring names such as Offred and Ofglen, symbolizing women’s dependant existence, only being defined by the men which they belong to. This portrayal of women demonstrates the idea that individuals are unimportant, that the goals of the society as a whole are more pertinent. “For our purposes, your feet and your hands are not essential” (chapter 15) is a quote revealing that Gilead denies rights to individuals and to humankind. In The Handmaids Tale, handmaids are only considered of value for their ability to reproduce, otherwise they are disposable. Religion is an aspect very prominent in the society of Gilead. We see this in chapter 4, where Ofglen and Offred meet and th...
Margaret Atwood's renowned science fiction novel, The Handmaid's Tale, was written in 1986 during the rise of the opposition to the feminist movement. Atwood, a Native American, was a vigorous supporter of this movement. The battle that existed between both sides of the women's rights issue inspired her to write this work. Because it was not clear just what the end result of the feminist movement would be, the author begins at the outset to prod her reader to consider where the story will end. Her purpose in writing this serious satire is to warn women of what the female gender stands to lose if the feminist movement were to fail. Atwood envisions a society of extreme changes in governmental, social, and mental oppression to make her point.
The oxford dictionary refers to the word “utopia” as being a place of “paradise, heaven on earth” as well as perfection. It can be labeled as a place that is the most desirable in any nation on earth and can sum up what we as humans search for. “A Handmaid’s Tale” depicts a twisted, yet not to far off, version of our country not to long ago when we lived in the opposite of this so-called paradise. No word can describe this story better than the opposite of utopia, a “dystopian” society. The entire U.S. government fell into a dystopian-type ruling when the very laws created by the government served to treat women as no more than maids and harlots. In this chaotic story, Margaret Atwood depicts a society where men and women fall into the rules of the old testament based on older beliefs describing women as lesser individuals compared to men. Atwood shows the similarities between the Republic of Gilead and the way we used to see the roles of women as well as some aspects of society today. Her overall reason for creating this story is to show her readers around the world the scary truth and effects of the belittlement of women and disregarding them as more than just wives and housemaids.
The ability to create life is an amazing thing but being forced to have children for strangers is not so amazing. Offred is a handmaid, handmaid's have children for government officials, such as Commander Waterford. Offred used to be married to Luke and together they had a daughter but then everything changed; Offred was separated from her family and assigned to a family as their handmaid. The society which Offred is forced to live in shaped her in many ways. In The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood uses cultural and geographical surroundings to shape Offred's psychological and moral traits as she tries to survive the society that she is forced to live, in hopes that she can rebel and make change.
The Handmaid's Tale has definitely fulfilled Atwood's purpose of creating a strong dystopian society. It seems as though throughout the entire novel, all the things that Gilead has reformed to make a more perfect society has backfired. In effort to make the world better, it has actually gotten worse. The strong use of Gilead's language points directly to the dystopian way of life. Atwood's use of characters and symbolism lets the reader know that the whole setting of the novel is in a strong dystopian society.
In Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood creates a society of oppression in which she redefines oppression in common culture. Gilead is a society characterized by highly regulated systems of social control and extreme regulation of the female body. The instinctive need to “protect and preserve” the female body is driven by the innate biological desires of the men. The manipulation of language, commodification, and attire, enhances the theme of oppression and highlights the imbalance of power in the Gilead society.
Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaids Tale belongs to the genre of anti-utopian (dystopian) science fiction where we read about a woman's fictive autobiography of a nightmarish United States at the end of the twentieth century when democratic institutions have been violently overthrown and replaced by the new fundamentalist republic of Gilead. In the novel the majority of the population are suppressed by using a "Bible-based" religion as an excuse for the suppression. How does this work and why can the girls, the so called Handmaids, be considered the victims of society? Also, in what way does Gilead use biblical allusions? That is some of the questions this essay will give answers for.
Imagine a country where choice is not a choice. One is labeled by their age and economical status. The deep red cloaks, the blue embroidered dresses, and the pinstriped attire are all uniforms to define a person's standing in society. To be judged, not by beauty or personality or talents, but by the ability to procreate instead. To not believe in the Puritan religion is certain death. To read or write is to die. This definition is found to be true in the book, The Handmaid's Tale (1986) by Margaret Atwood. It is a heartbreaking story of one young woman and her transformation into the Gilead society, the society described above. In the book, we meet Offred, the narrator of the story. This story is not the first to create a society in which the only two important beliefs in a society are the ability to procreate and a strict belief in God. It is seen several times in the Old Testament, the Bible. The Biblical society is not as rigid as the Republic of Gilead, which Margaret Atwood has built, but it is very similar. The Handmaid's Tale holds several biblical allusions.
The society established by the Republic of Gilead in “The Handmaid’s Tale” is founded on and sustained by false doctrine. They intentionally twist and skew the Bible in order to justify their actions and brainwash the women who are involuntarily participating in their indoctrinated society. The Gilead does not treat the Bible as the divine word of God. Instead, they exploit its authority and use it as a tool for their own benefit. The very framework of the Gilead’s social hierarchy is in sharp contradiction to everything the Bible teaches, but because they are so corrupt and only use the Bible for their own advantage, they seem not to care. Instead of abiding by the teachings in the Bible and letting them shape how things are done, they hand-select and contort certain parts of it to match the framework of their own aspirations and beliefs, which are by no means Christian. Every piece of scripture that the Republic customizes is specifically suited to help them achieve their ultimate goal: indoctrinating an entire society for the purposes of personal power and authority. The end product is the unethical, dysfunctional society that is depicted in “The Handmaid’s Tale.” The Republic of Gilead is by no means a true religious group, but they do use religion and skewed religious text as a reference for the foundation, justification, manipulation, and enforcement of their new society.
The novel, The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood focuses on the choices made by the society of Gilead in which the preservation and security of mankind is more highly regarded than freedom or happiness. This society has undergone many physical changes that have led to extreme psychological ramifications. I think that Ms. Atwood believes that the possibility of our society becoming as that of Gilead is very evident in the choices that we make today and from what has occured in the past. Our actions will inevitably catch up to us when we are most vulnerable.
In recapitulation, then, Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" presents misogyny within Gilead as a government policy that debases women in order to promote functionality. Such extreme implications, as Atwood suggests, are echoed in the cultures preceding Gilead, and even those cultures that are present in our world. Atwood's writing also proposes that sexism is prevalent and deeply embedded in society, even outside of Gilead where it's embedding may not be intentional.
"The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood is a dystopia about a world where unrealistic things take place. The events in the novel could never actually take place in our reality." This is what most people think and assume, but they're wrong. Look at the world today and in the recent past, and there are not only many situations that have ALMOST become a Gilead, but places that have been and ARE Gileadean societies. We're not in Kansas any more, Dorothy!