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Maiden in Distress Freedom. Everybody desires it, but not everyone has it. In third world countries, many people fall victim to slavery and many more do not have the freedom to seek what they want. In "The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood the main character, Offred, struggles to find freedom in her prison like home called the Red Center, her uniform chains her to the life given to her, and she carries a hope that she will one day escape the Red Center. Offred is a handmaid that lives in the Red Center, a building in which the handmaids, the marthas, the aunts, the housewife, and the commander live in. The Red Center is the place where the handmaids are impregnated by the Commander. Offred’s routine in the Red Center looks like as if she …show more content…
She is then separated from everyone she loves including her daughter and is sent directly to the Red Center. Throughout her stay in the center, Offred encounters in many secret scandals. For example, Offred has an affair with the Commander at night when everybody is asleep. After that affair Offred starts becoming reckless and agrees to have an affair with Nick, a guardian of Gilead, after seeing the Commander that same night. They both start seeing safety in each other, yet they are creating a great calamity.’ Handmaid 's Tale conveys these dangers in its representations of the effect on Offred of ``being in love ' ' and of the grammar according to which she articulates being in love. When in love with [Nick]; she does precisely the same with Nick, losing interest in Mayday and in the possibility of escape. She comments, ``The fact is that I no longer want to leave, escape the border to freedom. I want to be here, with Nick, where I can get at him. ' '…The novel wants to believe in ``love ' ' at the same time it expresses powerful reservations about how we typically realize this emotion. Finally, The Handmaid 's Tale is a story of love 's limitations, rather than its latitudes.’ In this dystopian society, freedom was taken away from everyone, especially women and the only way to keep sane was to hope for the best, even if that meant risking your own life. Women were encaged and had their liberties taken away and the Author, Margaret Atwood, focused on the perspective of a single handmaid (Offred) that experienced this
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 from The Handmaid's Tale uses different tactics to cope with her situation. She is trapped within a distopian society comprised of a community riddled by despair. Though she is not physically tortured, the overwhelming and ridiculously powerful government mentally enslaves her. Offred lives in a horrific society, which prevents her from being freed. Essentially, the government enslaves her because she is a female and she is fertile. Offred memories about the way life used to be with her husband, Luke, her daughter, and her best friend Moira provides her with temporary relief from her binding situation. Also, Offred befriends the Commander's aide, Nick. Offred longs to be with her husband and she feels that she can find his love by being with Nick. She risks her life several times just to be with Nick. Feeling loved by Nick gives her a window of hope in her otherwise miserable life.
In The Handmaid 's Tale by Margaret Atwood, readers are introduced to Offred, who is a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. As this novel is
Offred is a handmaid, in the novel The Handmaid’s Tale written by Margaret Atwood, who no longer desired to rebel against the government of Gilead after they separated her from her family. When Offred was taken away from her family the Government of Gilead placed her in an institution known as the Red Center where they trained her along with other women unwillingly to be handmaids. The handmaid’s task was to repopulate the society because of the dramatic decrease in population form lack of childbirth. Handmaids are women who are put into the homes of the commanders who were unable to have kids with their own wives. The Handmaids had very little freedom and were not allowed to do simple tasks by themselves or without supervision like taking baths or going to the store. There was an uprising against the government of Gilead and many people who lived in this society including some handmaids looked for a way to escape to get their freedom back which was taken away from them and to reunited with their families which they lost contact with. Offred was one of the handmaids who was against the government of Gilead before she was put in the Red Center, but she joined the uprising after she became a
Offred, among other women depicted in this novel, tries to overcome this dominion. In her own way, she attempts to do this by ensuring the Commander’s expectations of her behavior which could result in her freedom. Thus, there is a present power struggle between the Commander and Offred throughout The Handmaid’s
Many texts that were published from different authors have introduced topics that can be related in today’s society, but Margaret Atwood’s creation called, “The Handmaid’s Tale”, gives voice to the thoughts and revolves around the narrator Offred, a woman whose rights have been deprived due to political issues. However, the information shared by Offred to the reader to the text is not reliable for the reason that she only touches upon her own perspective. Through the text, Atwood depicted what the United States of America would be in the future based on the actions of humanity during 1980’s. The text is set up in an androcentric and totalitarian country called Gilead, where the government attempts to create a utopian society. Thus, in order to attain this society, the authorities generated their legislation from the teachings of the Holy Bible in an attempt to control humanity. The governing
Before the war handmaids had their own lives, families, and jobs but that’s all gone now; They have all been separated from their families and assigned to A Commander and his wife to have their child. Handmaids did not choose this life but it was forced upon them. 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
Offred is one of the main characters in The Handmaid's Tale. She was the faithful wife of Luke, mother of an eleven month old child and a working woman, before she entered the Republic of Gilead. She was given the name "Offred", when she entered Gilead. This was to make it known that she was a handmaid. Offred becomes psychologically programmed in Gilead as a handmaid, and the mistress of the commander who is in power of all things. She was used for her ovaries to reproduce a child, because they are living in an age where birth rates are declining. Offred was ordered by Serena Joy, the handmaid's barren wife who develops some jealousy and envy towards her to become the lover of Nick. Nick is the family chauffeur, and Offred becomes deeply in love with him. At the end of all the confusion, mixed emotions, jealousy, envy and chaos towards her, she escapes the Republic of Gilead. Offred is given treatment and advantages by the commander that none of the there handmaids are given. During the times the commander and Offred were seeing each other secretly, he began to develop some feelings for her that he tried to hide. Somewhere along the times when Offred and the commander began having secret meetings with each other, Offred too began to develop some feelings for the commander. Offred is also a special handmaid, because she has actually experienced love, the satisfaction of having a child years before. She knows what it is to feel loved, to be in love and to have someone love you. That is all when she has knowledge, a job, a family and money of her own. That is when her life was complete. Because all of that has been taken away from...
Throughout the novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood, she portrays how Offred and other characters desperately use desire, gender, and sexuality in the novel to convey the theme. She begins with the first-person narrator, Offred, by describing the old school gymnasium where she sleeps, and how she feels like she is lost in the atmosphere. She works in a house that is run by a married Commander, and the narrator has to have sex with the commander regularly everyday, in a standard Ceremony, by attempting to become pregnant and also provide the household with a child. She has a uniform that is a red dress because it represents blood and all the handmaids wear red. She has assigned tasks and very little freedom because she is basically in a prison. She is confined to her room except when she goes out, while she is being supervised and watched while she is shopping or going to prescribed events. Throughout the beginning chapters, she has frequent flashbacks to various times in her life. She reminisces about her husband Luke and compares how life is now from before, their daughter, and her mother. Offred has desperate desires towards knowledge and language that she is being denied by the regime. The main focus of the Gileadean regime is the control of sexuality, sex, and gender.
A loss of one’s self-worth and identity is a direct result of conforming to a dystopian society. Margaret Atwood showcases the emotional change one experiences when pinned amongst the unfavorable standards of a dystopia. The main character of The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred, has her identity stripped by the Gilead government. The dystopian society revokes her of the ethical morals she was once entitled to. Thus, Offred undergoes a transformation of identities, creating two separate identities within one mind. Her former self was identified with the use of her name, the dystopian version lacks this sense of selfhood derived from her name and encourages a burdensome past, as Offred is faced with the unwanted toll her memories entail. Overall, her
There are two kinds of freedom, “freedom from and freedom to” (31) throughout Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Freedom from is a negative liberty that involves external restriction to a person’s actions. On the other hand there is freedom to, a positive liberty the one can act upon their own free will. The two different categories of freedom are discussed and debated through a feminist view point. We explore and try to understand the way in which the difference between “freedom from” and “freedom to” is applied to females in society. This novel gives us two contrasting ways of liberal thinking. You are free if no one is stopping you from doing whatever you might want to. The story appears, in this sense, to be free. On the other hand, one can
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 to own their 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.
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
However, as Margaret Atwood warns in her novel The Handmaid’s Tale our reality is a dangerous one in which our complacency can result in the loss of every single one of these freedoms. Offred’s journey gives us a glimpse into what lies ahead for this country if we don’t take action. Her rights have been stolen from her and her family is taken away from her all as she is pushed into the role of a sex slave for the Gilead. Such a grisly depiction of the future is closer to the truth than what meets the eye. The inability to take a stand against this adversity is what is allowing it to begin with. Collectively, we must not stop the fight for actual justice for the oppressed of this country until we see them come to fruition. Inaction now will result in our own
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