Compare And Contrast The Handmaid's Tale And Handilac Girls

A Comparative Analysis: The Handmaid’s Tale and Lilac Girls “The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it” (Roseanne Barr). The struggle for power between individuals, races, genders, sexualitites, and nations is a part of the history of the world since its creation. Engrained in the psyche of the human mind is the desire for power and control over one’s self. However, in man’s ever evolving quest to achieve power and control over their own lives they have discovered the benefits of controlling others. When one maintains ultimate control over another human they protect themselves from ever allowing that human to control them. A prime example of one person or group controlling another is the systematic oppression

Feminists express their opinions through marches, speeches, facebook posts, tweets, artwork, and even literature. Examples of the use of feminism in literature are the authors Margaret Atwood and Martha Hall Kelly and their novels The Handmaid’s Tale and Lilac Girls. These two novels and their female centered plots portray the idea that even when society takes one’s power away they will always find a way to regain it and retaliate. This message in the novels is portrayed through the use of various literary devices. Firstly is the use of character foils which work to create the district female characters in each novel. Another literary device used is the setting of each novel which sets the background for the treatment of the women within them. Finally, point of view is used to immerse the reader within the emotions of the female characters as they face disturbing and degrading situations. These devices come together to create the theme that one must discover their own power in

By creating differences between the main characters within a novel those traits that are contrasted become more prominent than those traits which they share, and small similarities are given even more meaning. In the case of The Handmaid’s Tale and Lilac Girls character foils create a diversity in the female characters within the novels that shows the ways in which society may force a woman to take power for herself and those who succumb to the standards that society