Comparing Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Laurence's The Fire-Dwellers

Loss of Identity in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Margaret Laurence's The Fire-Dwellers

The protagonists in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Margaret Laurence’s The Fire-Dwellers are very different in character. However, both of these women lose their identity due to an outside influence. In each of the books, we see the nature of the lost identity, the circumstances which led to this lost identity, and the consequences which occurred as a result of this lost identity.

In The Handmaid’s Tale our main character, Offred, has her whole world stolen away by the government of Gilead. This new society is sexually repressed and is founded by religious extremists. Women are only used to produce children, and they have no rights at all in the new world of Gilead.

In The Fire Dwellers our main character, Stacey MacAindra, has been thrown into a life of responsibility. She has an uncommunicative husband who means well, but shows her no love, as well as four children who she feels are being ruined by her every action. She feels that life has much more to offer than the tediousness of every day routine.

The nature of Offred’s lost identity is very drastic. Before the new religious group of Gilead took over the world, she was a very normal every day woman. She did what was expected of her time and continued to do so after the take over. She had a husband and a daughter who she loved very much. In the new society in which she lives, however, love is not permitted. “ If I thought that this would happen again I would die. But this is wrong, nobody dies from lack of sex. It’s lack of love we die from. There’s nobody here I can love, all the people I could love are dead or elsewhere”(page?). **Are these words spoken by Offred? ** Offred also had the choice of free will before her civilization changed, but then slowly women began to lose all of their rights and were no longer allowed to have jobs or even to use money.

“Sorry, he said. This number is not valid.”

“That’s ridiculous, I said. It must be, I’ve got thousands in my account.”

“It’s not valid, he repeated obstinately. See that red light? Means it’s not valid,”(p.