The Color Purple And The Handmaid's Tale

In both The Color Purple, and The Handmaid’s Tale, Steven Spielberg and Margaret Atwood explore the everyday struggles faced by women within societies ruled by men. While The Color Purple is a film and The Handmaid’s Tale a book, both authors use techniques associated with their text type to explore the structures of the societies and how the societies can be damaging to the women within them. Setting is explored by both authors in different ways, as The Color Purple is based on events in US history, while The Handmaid’s Tale is an imagined future. The two authors have also used their respective protagonists as a narrative voice throughout their texts as a way to explore the injustice that the women face and to influence the audience to identify

Atwood uses nomenclature to place the women in The Handmaid’s Tale within the possession of the men around them. Offred, literally means Of-Fred, as in, The Handmaid Of Fred. By taking the women’s names away the society places them in the possession of their commanders. Which is exactly how the commanders see their handmaids, the commanders see the handmaids as a vessel for life that they must sleep with once a month during the ceremony. The women are forced to have sexual relations with their commanders and are sent away when they do not conceive a child. By placing the women of the society completely into the power of men, Atwood encourages the reader to see the injustice of this act and encourages the reader to identify with the cause of women. Each category of women must dress in the colour of their group so they can be identified by the outside world. Handmaids, like Offred must wear red, a colour associated both with shame and with ripeness and fertility. Similarly in The Color Purple, a period drama, based on a book with the same title by Alice Walker, women are categorised by the society they live in.

Atwood, in The Handmaid’s Tale, uses the voice of Offred to explore the juxtaposition between life before The Society of Gilead came into power and the life during the society’s power. Through flashback Offred frequently retells stories from her old life, the reader is able to see the discrimination that the women now face and the unfairness of this. Offred seems to live half in The Society of Gilead, and half in the past. Only in memory does she have any sort of freedom. The reader empathises with Offred and the injustice of her situation. Although Offred can remember the old ways she is happy that she has been given a chance in The Society of Gilead, ‘Humanity is so adaptable, my mother would say. Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.’ This encourages the reader to empathise with Offred’s lack of freedom. The reader can see that Offred is unhappy, but they can also see that she believes she could be worse off and that she is happy that she has a place within the society. Similarly, in The Color Purple, Spielberg uses the narration by Celie to influence the viewer to identify the cause of women. The narration by Celie establishes the views that the society has, and how those views can be damaging to the women of the society. It also shows how control can affect a person. ‘She said she write, she