Handmaids Tale: Destruction of Family

In society today families are falling apart and getting divorced. Not all families of course but the percent rate is higher year after year. Destroy means “to wreck; ruin” (Webster’s 169). This is what most people would say about their family if their parents were no longer together. In Gilead this is what all families are saying. The government has destroyed the families by taking away the women and giving them to other families like a piece of property.

In Gilead most of the wives can no longer have children. Keeping a town alive requires reproduction. In order to do this the government groups all the women able to have children together. They are called handmaids and they are basically like a mistress, “they are continual reminders of the Wives’ failures to conceive” (Callaway 55). When the handmaids go to the commander’s room there is only one thing it is for. They are trying to get pregnant. During the intercourse of the commander and the handmaid the wife is in the room watching. Not only does she watch but she holds the handmaids hand. “Serena Joy grips my hands as if it is she, not I, who’s being fucked” (Atwood 94).

The government in Gilead is afraid that because there are not many women able to reproduce that the town is going to fall apart. They have come up with a solution to make sure there is enough reproduction every year to make a town. Piling all the women together and sending them to different homes to reproduce is what they thought was best. Once the handmaids have a child with a commander then they give up the child to the commander’s wife.

Nobody wants to see their husband with another woman. They especially do not want to sit in a room and watch them have sex with that woman. Which is what they are forced...

... middle of paper ...

...nships. Everybody would be left single and just sleeping around in order to get children to make the community grow. Of course this would be an organized sleeping around. With everybody separating and giving up their children to be raised by someone else, the town would fall apart. One needs a relationship to make one’s self feel better. One wants to have those friendships, but with everybody being with everybody it is hard to be able to trust another person.

Works Cited

Atwood, M. (1998). The Handmaid's Tale. New York: Anchor Books.

Callaway, A. A. (2008). Women Disunited: Margaret Atwood's The handmaid's tale as a critique of feminism. SJSU ScholarWorks , 48-58.

Cooper, P. (n.d.). Sexual Surveillance and Medical Authority in Two Versions of The Handmaid's Tale. 56.

Guralnik, D. B. (1983). Webster's New World Dictionary. New York: A Warner Communications Company.