Offred In The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a typical dystopian protagonist.

In the book The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood intended to base the story off the way she predicted our world would be in the future. Atwood believed that our world would be ran by a form of government in which oppressed all men and women, took away rights and freedoms, restricted independent thoughts, under constant surveillance, and completely changed the roles of women. What she pictured is something called an dystopian future. In her book, she wrote in Offred as the main protagonist who in her own way, rebels against the Gilead regime, the Commander and his wife, and the Aunts at the Red Centre. Atwood does portray Offred as a typical dystopian protagonist

The government used to be ran normally but now with the Gilead regime, it’s ruled by the Sons of Jacob, the Eyes, and the Guardians. Offred often questions why things turned out to be what they are now. Why she had to go jobless while Luke worked, why she had to leave everything behind in hopes of starting a new life, why did the Sons of Jacob see that this was a way to create order and power, making fertile women Handmaids? Offred seems to be a firm believer that the whole political and social system is corrupt because of the way they took over and divided their people. She hopes that maybe someday, there would be a Mayday for her and the rest of Gilead’s Handmaids. In the Commander’s house as well, Offred questions the power that the Commander and his wife, Serena Joy really have and tests this by her affair with the Commander. She knows that she isn’t supposed to be with him outside of the ceremonies but he wishes that she would join him, in which she does. She knows that it’s against the rules and punishable by death but, she realizes that she is more powerful than him because she is a Handmaid, he needs her to bear his child and if they were both caught, both would be sentenced to death not just her. In this, Offred says to

Without any freedom and anywhere to go on their spare time, they just sit in their rooms alone and ponder. Thinking back to the past, before Gilead, before the Sons of Jacob, Commanders, Handmaids, Eyes, etcetera. For Offred, this is her time to think about her past, her future, her feelings, and her plans of escaping. She quite frequently feels trapped and since she can’t physically escape, she tries to escape mentally. She sits and recalls memories about her daughter saying, “It's a Saturday morning in September. I'm wearing my shining name. The little girl who is now dead sits in the backseat, with her two best dolls.... I know all the details. They are sentimental details but I can't help that....I can't start to cry…”(Atwood 95) as well, she thinks about Luke saying, “...I must have patience: sooner or later he will get me out, we will find her... What has happened to me, what's happening to me now, won't make any difference to him, he loves me anyway, he knows it isn't my fault. It's this message… that keeps me alive. I believe in the message. (Atwood 120) Both Luke and her daughter play huge roles in Offred’s life. The memories of them keep Offred encouraged and motivated to finish her job, get out of there, and find them. Because she feels so trapped, Offred is desperate to escape and so when she doesn’t think about her family, she spends it on thinking