The Importance Of Identity In The Handmaid's Tale

839 Words2 Pages

Imagine living in a society where child births are low, the constitution gets suspended, and slow changes begin to occur, such as women get stripped of many things. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood creates a whole dystopian image that does not favor the women or men, but it doesn’t work against the men as much as the women. The process creates a society where the women get stripped of their name and their rights leaving them powerless and vulnerable. In this literature piece there are many points of views that can be argued, but we will focus on the absence of identity. As shown through the different ranks in the society and the daily lives of the women, the absence of identity leads to groups of women assigned to a certain role and each group working against each other.
In the novel, there are different statuses and stations therefore, it creates conflicts between the different positions. It is in people's nature to talk down to the lower stations …show more content…

The reader can make the assumption that the system is making sure the women turn against each other because of the way the ceremony has to happen. Atwood reveals how one of the wives feels during this time , “Serena Joy let’s go of my hands. ‘You can get up now’, she says. ‘Get up and get out.’ She’s supposed to have me rest …. There is loathing in her voice, as if the touch of my flesh sickens and contaminates her,” ( Atwood 95). The purpose of resting is to increase the chances of being pregnant, but instead the wife kicks Offred out because of what she is feeling. She just experienced her husband have sexual intercourse with another woman, how would you feel if you were a woman in her position? The loathing between each other is mostly to blame on the roles that they have to play under these new laws. What they are doing is making them turn against each other and not see the overall

Open Document