Theme Of Identity In The Handmaids Tale

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The Handmaid`s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a novel that displays a vast amount of issues. One of those main themes in the novel is identity. In the Handmaid`s Tale the main character and narrator of our story deals with issues of identity. She battles throughout the story trying to find out who she is and remembering who she was. She constantly makes comparisons and contrasts with the life she is living in Gilead to the life she lived before the regime. As readers we notice the lack of identity of this character since the beginning. The narrator often tries to resolve her issues of identity by rebelling and finding a sense of purpose for her life. She does this by maintaining illegal relationships and reminding herself who she was. Towards the They were prohibited from communication to any other human. In this novel we find that women had a dress code even. Depending on their rank they wore a certain color. Wives wore blue, handmaids wore red and Martha’s wore green. The distinction of colors tells us a lot about color symbolism in the book. The narrator is a handmaid so she had to wear red. Red can represent love and passion even power. In this case the color red for the handmaids is merely represented as fertility. The main character didn’t quite like the idea of the dress code. Powerless and without a say in the way she should dress she thought red was not as bad for her color skin. The handmaids were deprived from all human communication and individualism. On page 22 she says: “ I enjoy the power; power of a dog bone, passive but there”(Atwood, 22). She was referring to the way she could move her hips as she passed by in front of the guards to attract their eye. She again was striving not only for hope and desire of the future but also from individualism and power. The power in this quote is referred more as control. She felt like her actions could make the guards look at her and enjoy the attention. She could control the way she moved and have a reaction from the men that were looking. She was needed that control, power and attention to make her feel alive

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