Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
The handmaid's tale literary analysis
The handmaid's tale literary analysis
The setting of The Handmaid’s Tale – known as Gilead – is a totalitarian government, originally based on Old Testament patriarchy
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: The handmaid's tale literary analysis
Paula Hawkins, a well-known British author, once said, “I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head.” In Margaret Atwood’s futuristic dystopia The Handmaid’s Tale, a woman named Offred feels she is losing control over everything in her life. Offred lives in the Republic of Gilead. A group of fundamentalists create the Republic of Gilead after they murder the President of the United States and members of Congress. The fundamentalists use the power to their advantage and restrict women’s freedom. As a result, each woman is assigned a specific duty to perform in society. Offred’s husband and child are taken away from her and she is now forced to live her life as a Handmaid. Offred’s role in society is to produce a child for the Wives. A Handmaid that is unable to produce a child is sent to the colonies to clean toxic waste. In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred, Nick, and the Commander are unorthodox. To begin, Offred defies convention in many ways. The requirement of a Handmaid is to wear a loose, red dress that covers the woman’s entire body except her eyes. The Handmaids are not permitted to wear makeup and they are required to keep their faces covered. The Republic has these requirements in order to keep women from feeling vain. Vanity is seen as a sin in Gilead, and women are not supposed to be …show more content…
Offred’s desire to find her family leads her to make decisions that do not follow the rules of society. Nick’s attraction to Offred inspires him to go beyond his role as an assistant to the Commander and help her escape the Republic of Gilead. Finally, the Commander’s arrogance and desire to have an affair with Offred completely contradicts his leadership role in society. All three characters are clearly unorthodox, going beyond the expected behavior for their assigned roles in
Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale is a story heavily influenced by the Bible and has many biblical themes that are used to prove Atwood’s belief in balance. The novel is set in the Republic of Gilead, which was formerly the United States. The story is told through the perspective of a handmaid named Offred and begins when she is placed at her third assignment as a housemaid. Offred describes her society as a fundamentalist theocracy where the Christian God is seen as the divine Ruler over the Republic of Gilead.
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
Offred is one of the Handmaid’s in the Republic of Gilead. This used to be known as the United States of America but now it is Gilead, a theocratic state. Because of an issue that occurred, women lost all of their money and rights. Handmaid’s were then assigned to higher class couples that were unable to have children, that was the new job for the Handmaid’s. Offred was assigned to the Commander and Serena Joy, his wife. Offred was once married to a man named Luke and they had a baby girl together. When this issue started occurring and Offred lost her rights, her, Luke and their daughter tried to escape to Canada but were caught. Offred has not seen Luke or her daughter since that incident. In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the most unorthodox characters are Offred, Serena Joy, and The Commander.
There are two possible events that can occur with Offred's arrest and readers have the ability to open the book to new possibilities. If Offred is arrested, she will likely be tried for treason and killed. However, if she escapes into freedom, she will have a new lifestyle away from Gilead. She is different from Winston as she only wants to survive and survives because of her memories of her past Conclusion:
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.
Offred is consistently cautious when it comes to interacting with the Commander. She feels as though she has to present herself in a way that will allow her to gain his trust and utilize it in her favor. Offred says, “The Commander likes it when I distinguish myself, show precocity, like an attentive pet, prick-eared and eager to perform” (Atwood 183). When Offred poses herself in the way that the Commander expects, it shows how his power influences Offred’s actions. The connection of Offred to that of “an attentive pet” also shows how the Gilead Society has taken away her humanity. Without her humanity, Offred loses her sense of self-worth which leaves her vulnerable to the Commander’s power. Along with this constant fear of portraying herself in a manner that would upset the Commander, Offred is also afraid to give away too much information about herself which could potentially end with the Commander ceasing their private meetings together. Offred expresses, “And if I talk to him I’ll say something wrong, give something away. I can feel it coming, a
In the real world, different symbols are used to help people understand things, and to add different effects onto people’s lives. For example a pendent a women or man wears from the army helps someone understand what they’ve been through and helps portray them as a strong individual. In novels which may have complex story lines like The Handmaids tale it is important that these novels have some symbolism to help the reader decode what some details in the novel represent, helping them understand the plot more in-depth. Through the novel of the Handmaid Tale by Margaret Atwood, symbolism is present and that helps to enhance the story line, as well as contribute an important factor in which is helping the reader understand
She gives her the password of Gilead’s. She hasn’t used it for days. Also, Serena wants her to visit Nick because she know that the Commander, Fred is infertile. It doesn’t means that Serena is on her side, she’s doing this for herself. After the first night, Nick and Offred meet in his room, Offred continues sneak in his room every night. She stops visiting at the Commander’s place. Ofglen try to help again and give her the key to check the Commander’s office to see what they’re hiding. Offred silently declines her, she feel satisfied with Nick. (Atwood 270) This shows that she’s doing what she likes now. She refuses to break in Commander’s office. She was running out of the time and she decided to decline the opportunity of escaping the Gilead with Ofglen. That’s the symbol of non heroine where she only think about herself, not others.
From having all the freedom one could ever want to having to obey the government’s every order, most people were not happy with this change. Offred was one victim in particular who did not like the new changes. It split her family apart. Her husband Luke was either taken to an unknown place or killed, her daughter was given to a different mother, and she was put to use as a Handmaid. Offred’s life has changed in many detrimental ways.
...t create a feeling of disorientation towards the reader. Atwood does this to enable us to understand just how disjointed life is in Gilead. Offred continuously involves the reader, she directly addresses us and anticipates our response and even feels she has to justify some of her actions, she is a self-conscious narrator. Atwood is also preparing us for the revelation in the Historical notes that Offred is recounting her story into a tape recorder. The story is open ended; we are not told what exactly happened to Offred, Atwood does this in order to have more of an impact on the reader.
Throughout The Handmaid’s Tale, the author Margaret Atwood gives the reader an understanding of what life would be like in a theocratic society that controls women’s lives. The narrator, Offred gives the reader her perspective on the many injustices she faces as a handmaid. Offred is a woman who lived before this society was established and when she undergoes the transition to her new status she has a hard time coping with the new laws she must follow. There are many laws in this government that degrade women and give men the authority of each household. All women are placed in each household for a reason and if they do not follow their duties they are sent away or killed. Atwood bases the irrational laws in the Gilead republic on the many
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.
Offred’s journey is a prime example of the appalling effects of idly standing by and allowing herself to become a part of the Gilead’s corrupt system. This woman is a Handmaid which was recently placed within a new
Offred can not escape the fact that, in spite of the treatment from Serena Joy and the commander, that they both will have, if not already, an impact on her life. Not to mention Nick also. Nick gave her the comfort and the security that she wanted, and in the end nothing done to her by the commander or his wife mattered to her. Living in the Republic of Gilead will always be a memory that she will probably try to forget. & nbsp;
Though Offred is developed as a character through her opinions on female sexuality, she is further characterized by her individuality and willingness to defy her social expectations as a female, assigned to her by her government. In Atwood’s work, the narrative is told by an intelligent individual named Offred who is oppressed by Gilead’s female expectations but is not afraid to defy these assigned roles despite not being a traditional heroine (Nakamura). Even as Offred’s previous identity is stripped away from her, she retains small pieces of her womenhood and individuality through defiant actions such as manipulating men with her feminity from swaying her hips slighty in their line of sight to making direct eye contact with certain men, which she is forbidden from. On the other hand, a major act of rebellion from