The Theme Of Dystopia In The Novel The Handmaid's Tale

In Margaret Atwood's novel “The Handmaid’s Tale”, Atwood deploys a multitude of motifs and other literary devices in order to substantiate the realism of a dystopian society based on the downward course of our own. Author Margaret Atwood directs the reader toward a dark and foreboding situation that foreshadows themes such as, quelled masculine authority; by showing male doctors a previously hierarchal career being undermined by the portrayal of them as lifeless dolls with blank faces, Atwood also develops historical context for the semi-futuristic setting of Gilead and it’s quick descent into dystopia from a modern society. In this one passage several notable themes are present, those of flowers, red, and emptiness. Images are portrayed through the whole book, although this passage is strewn with them, alongside both similes and metaphors such the fixed bodies and their likeness to objects such as snowmen, dolls, incorporeal sacks, and zeros. In one such situation Offred

The transition of a “regular” society in terms of our own into Gilead’s dystopia is very quick, and for a society to enable a change of this magnitude key components for societal norms need to be removed, examples being words. “Each has a placard hung around his neck to show why he has been executed: a drawing of a human fetus” (32) in Gilead it is outlawed that any words or letters be accessible to handmaids and other such women figures, so instead drawings replace words. The removal of rights predominantly focuses on women as seen elsewhere in the book when the United States was being torn down one of the first orders was the suspension of all women’s rights. Another allusion Atwood draws to the passage of time is the mention of time travelers, feelings, and