The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood Restrictions

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“The Handmaid’s Tale”, by Margaret Atwood, is a documentary of the gender roles in the Gilead society and the quantity of restrictions placed on women. The purpose of Atwood’s book is to provide the readers a sense of reality. She attempts to convey the message that life can change in a moment and warns the inhabitants to not take advantage of the present day society. Readers of Atwood’s book should listen to her message because she wrote the book in a time period of the future so through her book she is making a prediction. Atwood argues the many restrictions placed on women in the Gilead society and is under the impression that the government is dehumanizing women. I concur with Atwood because the women are granted no means of interaction, the clothing makes them feel like nothing, and they have to follow a required agenda that is forced upon them. The same restrictions were placed on African Americans during the time of slavery, making them feel like machines, not people.
Atwood conveys her first resentment against the restrictions placed on women with the amount of interaction allowed amongst each other. Handmaid’s in the Gilead society were restricted to talking only with cultural greetings like “praise be or we’ve been sent good weather” (19). These greetings are allowed because it averts in depth conversation among the Handmaid’s but there is some interaction to prevent insanity and rebellion. The protagonist in “The Handmaid’s Tale” is Offred. Offred shows her resentment against interaction restrictions by relating their feelings to the book. Offred believes that the restrictions keep everyone in the dark about how the government is being run and what is going both inside and outside of the Gilead society. When Offred sa...

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... person showed how they were lower in class and the coloring clothing the handmaids wore showed how they were lower in class.

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986. Print.
"Color Meaning." Color Wheel Pro. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.
Hochschild, Jennifer L. "The Skin Color Paradox and the American Racial Order." The Skin Color Paradox and the American Racial Order. Harvard College Professor, 2013. Web. 14 Dec. 2013.
"The Life as a Slave." ThinkQuest. Oracle Foundation, n.d. Web. 09 Dec. 2013.
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"Nightjohn." Nightjohn. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Dec. 2013. .
"Plot Summary." IMDb. Echo Bridge Home Entertainment, n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
"Ravenous." Merriam-Webster Dictionary. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.

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