The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood Offred

Try to fathom living in a dystopian world where fertile women are forced into sexual servitude to be able to conceive a child and repopulate the world. In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood Offred, being one of the handmaid’s is determined to survive this terrifying world, in search to find her daughter that was taken from her. Throughout this journey, Offred narrates her daily life in Gilead and frequently slips into flashbacks. In which the reader can visualize the sexual servitude that Offred and the other Handmaid’s go through in Gilead. In the novels society the Handmaid’s are portrayed as one of the most powerful figures, meanwhile, they live in a dystopia of cultural feminism. The dystopian culture causes the Handmaid’s to go through a loss of identity and become degraded as women.

Throughout the novel, Offred describes the various rules that the Handmaid’s have to follow on a daily basis. These rules regulate them from having freedom, as well as forcing them to cooperate with the inhuman actions they undertake by conceiving a child with the commanders they live with. When the novel begins the narrator describes her surroundings by emphasizing to the reader the visualizations of the setting. The ending of the chapter the narrator informs the reader by saying “we aren’t allowed out, except for our walks, the football field is enclosed by a chain link fence topped with barbed wire.” (Atwood 4). The reader does not know if the Handmaid’s are either being nurtured or imprisoned. These women in the novel being restricted to go outside and only for walks degrades them as women causing them to undergo through a loss of