System Change In The Handmaid's Tale

System Change

Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale”, published in 19 shows the story of the Republic of Gilead, ruled by men, where women’s role depends on their social status. Still, they lost their freedom that any human being should have: freedom to love, freedom to choose, freedom to feel. We have noticed that throughout the history, a system change can make a huge difference in the way people live their lives. An example would be the communist system in the Soviet Union: in that period, people lost a lot of their rights and they were living their life as the dictator wanted. In Atwood’s bestseller novel, women were used as baby-maker machines, were kept captive, the ones who were too old or infertile, were considered Unwomen and were at the bottom of the Gilead society; the women were not allowed to read, talk or love who they wanted to love; also, they had been separated from their children and their lover and they did not know where they were or what had happened to them. In chapter 9, Offred talks about how things have changed when the system changed and how she misses the freedom that she had before and how much she misses Luke and her

She realizes the privilege that she had after she lost it and now she wants it back, at least for a second. Now, she is craving freedom, freedom that she used to have before. Offred talks about the room that she lives in now, but she doesn’t call it “her room”. She remembers about the hotel rooms that she used to live in with her husband, about all the rights that she used to have, saying: “It seems like something so impossible now, like something you’d make up” (Atwood 50). After men took over Gilead, the past seems like people are talking about fairytales, like it is something made up. The actual reality in Gilead made them lose hope and brainwashed them, so that there would be no