In the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale written by Margaret Atwood, the story takes place in the Republic of Gilead. In this dystopian future, the women are seen as nothing more than children bearers. The novel is narrated by the character Offred, and her everyday life as a Handmaid. Handmaid’s are assigned to bear children for the elite classes who have trouble conceiving a child. The narration begins by Offred describing the place in which she was trained to be a Handmaid and patrolled by the Aunts, Sara and Elizabeth, who are meant to teach the Handmaid’s about the world before. In chapter two, Offred describes her life living with the Commander and his Wife, which whom she is trying to conceive for. She describes the home as having, “A sitting room in which [she] never sit[s], but stand or kneel only”(Atwood 9). This sitting room is where the …show more content…
Moira is considered an Unwomen because she is lesbian, and they are the lowest social class in Gilead. The Unwomen are lesbians, barren women, and prostitutes. Before the Republic of Gilead was formed, Moira and Offred would hang out all of the time along with her husband, Luke, and her daughter. During these flashbacks, Offred remembers the time she was drugged and she kept asking, “...Where is she? What have you done with her?”(Atwood 39). In her drugged state, Offred only gives hints about her daughter, and how she blamed the people who drugged her for killing her daughter. Finally, after these flashbacks, Offred begins to narrate her current life as a Handmaid. She is taken to a doctor in which she is to get her routinely check-up. During this check-up, however, the doctor tries to seduce Offred to give her a chance to bear another child. Even though the doctor does not threaten Offred personally, Offred is already aware of the harm that he can do to her reputation if she does not accept his
This is a post united states world and some people, in the story, have seen the changes of from United States of America to Gilead. In their dystopian world, the handmaids wear “Everything except the wings around my face is red: the color of blood, which defines us”(Atwood 8). This is an example of the Ordinary World, female servants are used for reproducing because if the decline birth rate due to sexual diseases. During the call to adventure, the reader can consider Offred going to the call of adventure before Gilead, as well as, after Gilead. Both of them relating to the mistreatment against women. Her friend Moira, before Gilead, showed her a world in which women were fighting for their rights in the 1970’s during the women's liberation movement. Her and Moira went to a rally where “(she) threw the magazine into the flames. It riffled open in the wind of its burning; big flakes of paper came loose, sailed into the air, still on fire, parts of women’s bodies, turning to black ash, in the air, before my eyes”. (Atwood 39). Offred was gaining some of her memory back, pre- gilead days, she knew her mother and Moira were apart of the feminist movement. In addition to the rise of the government, her and Luke needed to leave because she feared the safety of her daughter and her husband. In matter of fact, Offred was a bit precautious of entering a new world because she was scared of
Offred from The Handmaid's Tale uses different tactics to cope with her situation. She is trapped within a distopian society comprised of a community riddled by despair. Though she is not physically tortured, the overwhelming and ridiculously powerful government mentally enslaves her. Offred lives in a horrific society, which prevents her from being freed. Essentially, the government enslaves her because she is a female and she is fertile. Offred memories about the way life used to be with her husband, Luke, her daughter, and her best friend Moira provides her with temporary relief from her binding situation. Also, Offred befriends the Commander's aide, Nick. Offred longs to be with her husband and she feels that she can find his love by being with Nick. She risks her life several times just to be with Nick. Feeling loved by Nick gives her a window of hope in her otherwise miserable life.
In The Handmaid 's Tale by Margaret Atwood, readers are introduced to Offred, who is a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. As this novel is
Offred is a handmaid, in the novel The Handmaid’s Tale written by Margaret Atwood, who no longer desired to rebel against the government of Gilead after they separated her from her family. When Offred was taken away from her family the Government of Gilead placed her in an institution known as the Red Center where they trained her along with other women unwillingly to be handmaids. The handmaid’s task was to repopulate the society because of the dramatic decrease in population form lack of childbirth. Handmaids are women who are put into the homes of the commanders who were unable to have kids with their own wives. The Handmaids had very little freedom and were not allowed to do simple tasks by themselves or without supervision like taking baths or going to the store. There was an uprising against the government of Gilead and many people who lived in this society including some handmaids looked for a way to escape to get their freedom back which was taken away from them and to reunited with their families which they lost contact with. Offred was one of the handmaids who was against the government of Gilead before she was put in the Red Center, but she joined the uprising after she became a
She uses beautiful imagery but there is always a dark undertone beneath her words, in this case alluding to the violence of suicide :“A chair, a table, a lamp. Above, on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath, and in the center of it a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out. There must have been a chandelier, once. They've removed anything you could tie a rope to.”(pg.7). She uses informal diction to appeal to a large group of people and yet abstract sentences indicate a high level of intelligence within her character. She creates this dark atmosphere in a plain room because she remembers the way life was before. Her use of simile is there to represent the forceful nature of Gilead that has taken away from all women regardless of the social hierarchy between them. Violence is used to beat people into submission such as the use of it onto Moira after her attempted escape, “"I am still praying but what I am seeing is Moira's feet, the way they looked after they'd brought her back. Her feet did not look like feet at all. They looked like drowned feet, swollen and boneless, except for the color. The looked like lungs." (pg 91). Offred uses figurative language within this passage to compare Moira’s feet to a collapsed lung, she details it using adjectives like “swollen” to create a strong uncomfortable
Offred, among other women depicted in this novel, tries to overcome this dominion. In her own way, she attempts to do this by ensuring the Commander’s expectations of her behavior which could result in her freedom. Thus, there is a present power struggle between the Commander and Offred throughout The Handmaid’s
This makes her distinct from the other women in the book and is another example of her individuality. Another role of Moira's rebellious nature is to give hope to Offred and help her to survive. Following Moir... ... middle of paper ... ... was so important to Offred, and is no longer the stronger character, as she is also now trying to "save her skin" (P261). Although she has lost her rebelliousness, she retains her humour and teases Offred, "there's lot's of women around.
In The Handmaid’s Tale, a woman named Offred is introduced. Offred lives in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian and theocratic state that replaced the United States. (Atwood 21). In this state there is low reproduction rates so Handmaids are assigned to these exclusive couples in order...
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.
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.
Offred is one of the main characters in The Handmaid's Tale. She was the faithful wife of Luke, mother of an eleven month old child and a working woman, before she entered the Republic of Gilead. She was given the name "Offred", when she entered Gilead. This was to make it known that she was a handmaid. Offred becomes psychologically programmed in Gilead as a handmaid, and the mistress of the commander who is in power of all things. She was used for her ovaries to reproduce a child, because they are living in an age where birth rates are declining. Offred was ordered by Serena Joy, the handmaid's barren wife who develops some jealousy and envy towards her to become the lover of Nick. Nick is the family chauffeur, and Offred becomes deeply in love with him. At the end of all the confusion, mixed emotions, jealousy, envy and chaos towards her, she escapes the Republic of Gilead. Offred is given treatment and advantages by the commander that none of the there handmaids are given. During the times the commander and Offred were seeing each other secretly, he began to develop some feelings for her that he tried to hide. Somewhere along the times when Offred and the commander began having secret meetings with each other, Offred too began to develop some feelings for the commander. Offred is also a special handmaid, because she has actually experienced love, the satisfaction of having a child years before. She knows what it is to feel loved, to be in love and to have someone love you. That is all when she has knowledge, a job, a family and money of her own. That is when her life was complete. Because all of that has been taken away from...
Offred finds herself believing that she failed as a mother, seeing the photograph of her daughter, Offred realizes that she would be just as good as dead and considers herself as “erased”, this could lead to changes in her character by her thinking it’s futile to keep being suppressed by Gilead’s laws and try to challenge them. In the following chapter Offred is noticed taking a risk by accepting a request from the commander, she finds her life dull and boring even if she does communicate with the commander. In the novel Offred reaches her breaking point, “ I know without being told that what he’s proposing is risky, for him but especially for me; but I want to go anyway. I want anything that breaks the monotony, subverts the perceived respectable order of things” (Atwood 231). Offred decides to go on a date with the commander because she is tired of living an isolated, dull life, and all of this is caused by her believing she doesn’t have anything to live for since she lost connections with everyone in her past.
In The Handmaid’s Tale there are three types of women: handmaids (the breeders), wives (the trophies), and the marthas (servants.) The narrator of the novel is Offred, who is a handmaid. Handmaids are women with viable ovaries. Every two years, handmaids are assigned to a commander; the leader of the household. Weekly, the handmaid and Commander try and conceive a
Though Offred is developed as a character through her opinions on female sexuality, she is further characterized by her individuality and willingness to defy her social expectations as a female, assigned to her by her government. In Atwood’s work, the narrative is told by an intelligent individual named Offred who is oppressed by Gilead’s female expectations but is not afraid to defy these assigned roles despite not being a traditional heroine (Nakamura). Even as Offred’s previous identity is stripped away from her, she retains small pieces of her womenhood and individuality through defiant actions such as manipulating men with her feminity from swaying her hips slighty in their line of sight to making direct eye contact with certain men, which she is forbidden from. On the other hand, a major act of rebellion from
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.