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The Handmaid’s Tale continues to paint a dystopian future that reflects the present
The handmaid's tale analysis
The Handmaid’s Tale continues to paint a dystopian future that reflects the present
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Struggle with identity is a considerable matter in society today. Whether this is culturally or individually, it is shown many times through a core question in literature and philosophy, “Who am I?” People face obstacles when coming to terms with their own identity, in aspects of gender, sexuality, or when confronted with cultural or racial conflicts. While not always explicitly communicated, many individuals encounter these challenges on a daily basis. The struggle in creating or rooting oneself in their identity is made clear in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale with the main character, Offred. In the novel, the United States has collapsed following an environmental disaster, giving rise to a dystopian society. Offred is suddenly taken away from her life as a mother and wife. Being one of the few fertile women left in the society, she begins training at a center to become a handmaid, one who bears children for a Commander and his sterile wife. This sudden life change causes Offred to question her role as a person, with an internal struggle that has her …show more content…
For example, Atwood writes, “It’s a Saturday morning, it’s a September, we still have a car.” While the author could have broken this up into three separate short sentences, she instead chose to link them together into one. This section exhibits the stream of consciousness style that is seen throughout the novel, where Offred’s thoughts flow freely. In the passage, Offred thinks about her previous life and her previous name, wanting to believe that none of her old life matters and that she is a completely new person. Her new name paints a picture that she is now a possession, “Of-fred,” again stripping her of individualism. However, it is clear that she is fighting with admitting to her new identity. She thinks that one day she will return back to her old self but is presently battling with her sense of
The protagonists of Never Let Me Go and The Handmaid’s Tale come to believe that the self is all that can be known to exist, as they have lost their freedom and rights. In discussing issues of identity, it is important to consider what characters lose, such as names and value in society, and how they try and protect their sense of self, by holding memories dear and valuing their soul above their functional body. This is most poignant in the lives of Kathy H. and Offred. Atwood herself is known to have described The Handmaid’s Tale as ‘speculative fiction’, and there is nothing in the novel that could not happen in the present day. Equally, Ishiguro sets his novel in modern Britain. This means that the loss of identity in both novels holds true today, as with the increase of identity cards and proof of identification, it becomes increasingly important to be obsessed with who we are.
Often in life, people take their freedoms, a gift that allows them to express their individuality, for granted. However, in the dystopian societies of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, people are reminded of just how easily their freedoms and humanity can be stripped away. Attwood and Ishiguro urge people to never lose sight of the core values that define who they are. The compelling novels chronicle the life journey of two protagonists as they fight to define their own existence and worth in life. Offred, the central character in The Handmaid’s Tale is exploited as a baby making machine, while Kathy, the leading role in Never Let Me Go, is degraded as a lifeless android in a sea of clones. From Atwood and Ishiguro’s provocative coming-of-age novels emerge two beautiful and inspiring heroines. Whether it is through their remembrance of the past, their loss of innocence, their capability to hope, or their ability to establish relationships, Offred and Kathy prove that they are every bit as human as the rest of society. Ultimately, despite the many differences in their distinct masterpieces, Atwood and Ishiguro share the same intent in their haunting portrayal of the protagonists’ dehumanizabtion—to shed light on the true essence of what it is to be human.
Although Offred is the heroine of this story, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the hero’s journey can be found in many characters in the story as well. This story is breaking into shambles between the past and the present, however, through the story, readers can still see the signs of the hero’s journey that Joseph Campbell has studied. Offred, being a handmaid, has been thrown into a world where women are powerless and stripped away of their rights to read and write. Atwood illustrates a dystopian world where equality is a part of history, not in the present day Gilead. However, Offred is one of the main characters who ceased to live in a degrading world and find means to escape. Thus, Offred begins on her Hero’s Journey, which occurs
Much like women worldwide, the handmaids are alike in that they face a mutual dilemma. They are forced to accept an unjust reality and are changed greatly because of it. First Offred is forced to abandon her family and her societal role to assume a new one, she “[yearns] for the future,” where this reality no longer exists. The reds have a “talent for insatiability” that always remains “in the air”(3-4). Yet, this fundamental longing for change, for the progress of women, is one that has been present in culture for many centuries. Atwood’s depiction of Offred’s desire for a new reality is one that many individuals in society already aspire to obtain, for they currently face dystopian-like circumstances of being silenced much like the handmaids. Offred “[tries] not to think too much” because while she is intelligent
In Margaret Atwood’s novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the birth rate in the Republic of Gilead had dropped significantly, and women had lost their basic rights. Offred, a handmaid, adapted her new life but she still have to undergo the challenges that the society is giving her. She had to face the lost of freedom, not able to see her family, and forced to comply with new rules. After experiencing all those hardships, Offred successfully overcoming the obstacle of living in a dystopian society.
The screams of the crowd tremble to the sound of the tightening rope. Little by little the tension increasing, and for a moment there is a pause of silence. Snap. As the bodies falls, so do the hearts of the handmaids. This is a common view of a handmaid in Gilead. This spectacle is known as the “Salvaging” or saving any potential threat and purifying Gilead. This showing is a sharp reminder of things that Gilead will not tolerate these acts and wants the repercussions of such actions to be viewed and repressed. The Particicutions roots from the words “participation” and “execution” and are a modified salvaging where handmaids form into a group to assault any threat directly towards them. A prevalent example from The Handmaid’s Tale is the
In the book, The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood writes about an alternate universe about America that illustrates our worst fears. Some of the fears depicted in the book can be seen in the world today, such as the distaste for abortion and the mentality that men are supposed to have more power than women. These issues are not only known as social issues but also feminist issues. Feminism is the belief that women and men should be treated equally socially, politically, and economically. This book shows how these issues could get worse in our society. The author uses Offred, the protagonist in the story, to show how the world could change for the worst. Offred, a handmaid in The Handmaid 's Tale, showed how men and society had control over
In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Offred recounts the story of her life and that of others in Gilead, but she does not do so alone. The symbolic meanings found in the dress code of the women, the names/titles of characters, the absence of the mirror, and the smell and hunger imagery aid her in telling of the repugnant conditions in the Republic of Gilead. The symbols speak with a voice of their own and in decibels louder than Offred can ever dare to use. They convey the social structure of Gileadean society and carry the theme of the individual's loss of identity.
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.
The ending of the novel is intentionally lacking direction because the author wants the reader to ponder its ending. Were it not for the fact that we, the readers, know that Offred lives to tell her story, we would be left like the people of Gilead, without hope. However, Margaret Atwood's point is that just as naturally as a caterpillar weaves its cocoon to grow wings and fly free, so to must the wings of women be.
Identity is what makes a person unique. It is what distinguishes a person from the other seven billion people that inhabit the earth alongside them. Without an identity, one is another person in a sea of unfamiliar faces with nothing to make them special. The reader experiences this very phenomenon in Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, as the women have their identities stripped from them in the dystopian, war-stricken society and are forced to be just seen and not heard. Using the protagonist as her tool, Atwood presents the idea that the loss of an identity results in the loss of a person, and a person will do anything to fill the void that needs to be filled.
As the saying goes, 'history repeats itself.' If one of the goals of Margaret Atwood was to prove this particular point, she certainly succeeded in her novel A Handmaid's Tale. In her Note to the Reader, she writes, " The thing to remember is that there is nothing new about the society depicted in The Handmaiden's Tale except the time and place. All of the things I have written about ...have been done before, more than once..." (316). Atwood seems to choose only the most threatening, frightening, and atrocious events in history to parallel her book by--specifically the enslavement of African Americans in the United States. She traces the development of this institution, but from the perspective of a different group of oppressed people: women.
As The Handmaid’s Tale is considered an allegory of the social injustice women face against traditional expectations of their role in society, the symbolism of the Handmaids and other women as a whole for repressed feminine liberty and sexuality allows Atwood to connect her work to the theme between gender and expectations in her society. As Handmaids in the Republic of Gilead, females are stripped of their previous identity and are defined as a tool of reproduction for the men who is assigned them. At its core, these females are forced against their will to be mere tools, experiencing unwanted sex at least once a month, which Gilead names “The Ceremony”, hiding its true nature as a form of rape. Offred
What exactly is your identity, and where does it lie? What makes you, you and what does it mean to be yourself? These are many questions that come up when discussing and questioning one’s identity. Most answers come up include gender, preferences, beliefs, etc. In The Handmaid’s Tale, the identities of all women were stripped away and given new identities, beliefs, dress code, and rules to follow. The author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood used Offred’s character to show the theme of individual’s loss of identity in the Gileadean society. Atwood was able to plant this image in the reader's mind with every detail explaining the conditions of Gilead. Having to lose an identity is like being brainwashed. The people of Gilead are brainwashed
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a compelling tale of a dystopian world where men are the superior sex and women are reduced to their ability to bear children, and when that is gone, they are useless. The story is a very critical analysis of patriarchy and how patriarchal values, when taken to the extreme, affect society as a whole. The result is a very detrimental world, where the expectation is that everyone will be happy and content but the reality is anything but. The world described in The Handmaid’s tale is one that is completely ruled by patriarchal values, which is not unlike our society today.