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Feminism in margaret atwood the handmaid tale
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Analysing the handmaid's tale by margaret atwood
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The Handmaid’s Tale by Margret Atwood takes place in a government imposed “utopia” with strict rules and constant surveillance, however; the system is anything but perfect. This utopia fails because it does not recognize that human nature demands a means of self expression. The lack of freedom to love whom you want, dress how you want, or create what you want leads this society to corruption and self destruction. With the deprivation of choice, people are no longer human. Virtually every decision a person makes is in an attempt to express their character, it may be in the clothes they wear or the music they listen to, but ultimately everyone just wants to be loved and understood. So because the there is no self-expression-- there can be no love or compassion which drives people to undermine the new society values eventually turning it into a hypocrisy.
In this dystopia, any white woman that is able to have children is labeled as a handmaid. Handmaids have only one purpose: to bare the children of Commanders. They live in a Commanders house and are obligated to take part in a “ceremony” one a month until they become pregnant. There is no emotion such as love or passion behind this act and, they are strictly forbidden of seeing another man. However, in the book Offred has an affair with the Commander. There is no love between him and his wife so he seeks Offred to satisfy that craving, but she does not love him. After just having been with the Commander, she comes to the conclusion that, “…nobody dies from lack of sex. It’s lack of love we die from” (103), while thinking of her own pain after Luke’s death. This quote shows how important it is to be able to love and be loved. It is that lack of love that drives the Commander ...
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...The government does not want these people to have their own thoughts or be influenced by any other source apart from the Bible. The power of language is also implied here – it is as if the absence of the word ‘free’ will prevent people from realizing that they are not free.
This group of people tried to create a perfect society by eliminating self-expression and replacing it with religious purpose. However, in doing so humans are deprived of their indivuality and will not simply do as their told. In the book the privileged and the powerful actually have a secret whore house where they go to have a good time. Provocative outfits are worn by the women and drugs and alcohol are a plenty. This place was started by the very same people who wanted sex to be strictly for procreational purposes. The night club Jezebel reveals the full hypocrisy of the rulers of Gilead.
Gilead were categorized and toyed with and dominated by the men. Gilead woman are used and
The Handmaid’s Tale, written by Margaret Atwood is a novel about a totalitarian state called Republic of Gilead that has replaced the United States in which the women of society have been taken away from their families and forced to be
The two texts Harrison Bergeron, written by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and The Handmaid’s Tale by Reed Morano explore the idea of individuality loss due to complete government control through similar and varied techniques. Both texts enable the audience to obtain an understanding that a society where there is no ability to express one’s own self, is ultimately dangerous in both execution and outcome. Throughout the two texts the authors explore individuality suppression through government control by utilising varied techniques such as motifs, similes as well the ideas of handicaps which are a result of the need for constant surveillance. The dystopian texts of futuristic, imagined universes display the illusion of perfect societies that are being created,
The second thing for you to realize is that power is power over human beings. Over the body—but, above all, over the mind” (Orwell 273). O’Brien argues that the Party and “Big Brother” had control over reality externally due to the fact that nothing exists outside the mind, and in cases of freethinkers, they would be taken care of by the teachings of “doublethink”. Doublethink is the power to hold two completely contradictory beliefs, for example holding up four fingers and claiming that you have five, and simultaneously making one accept both of them.
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
Margaret Atwood's renowned science fiction novel, The Handmaid's Tale, was written in 1986 during the rise of the opposition to the feminist movement. Atwood, a Native American, was a vigorous supporter of this movement. The battle that existed between both sides of the women's rights issue inspired her to write this work. Because it was not clear just what the end result of the feminist movement would be, the author begins at the outset to prod her reader to consider where the story will end. Her purpose in writing this serious satire is to warn women of what the female gender stands to lose if the feminist movement were to fail. Atwood envisions a society of extreme changes in governmental, social, and mental oppression to make her point.
This establishes how the society is controlled, tense, and lacks the freedom of knowledge. In this case, censorship reveals the act of silencing and the unimaginable thought of freedom permitted in order for individuals to follow the “ideal” society 's norm. In the novel Offred recalls, “I don’t know what the words are right. I can’t remember. Such songs are not sung anymore in public, especially the ones that use words like free. They are considered too dangerous.” (Atwood, 66). This quote portrays how Offred has been brainwashed to an extent that she does not remember some of the memories from her past such as the lyrics to a song. The government has made sure that after censoring information for many years, people soon forget the feeling of freedom and self expression. People no longer know what it is like to have an opinion about something, and they no longer feel that there is any importance in their lives. The only tasks that citizens of Gilead need to do, is repopulate; therefore, it is not important to live a free and joyful life. The government makes sure to censor words like "free" so that it does not trigger any memory or an idea for the citizens of
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...
The Handmaid's Dystopia The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood is a dystopian tale about a world where unrealistic things take place. The events in the novel could never actually take place in our reality." This is what most people think and assume, but they"re wrong. Look at the world today and in the recent past, and there are not only many situations that have ALMOST become a Gilead, but places that have been and ARE Gileadean societies. We're not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy! Even today, there are places in the world where there is a startling similarity to this fictitious dystopia.
Identity, Complicity, and Resistance in The Handmaid's Tale, PETER G. STILLMAN and S. ANNE JOHNSON, Utopian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1994), pp. 70-86
To deal with the desolation that he feels, he illegally seeks out to meet with Offred, his handmaid. They make “ an arrangement. It’s not the first such arrangement in history, though the shape it’s taken is not the usual one”(Attwood 154). The Commander puts their lives immediately in danger after the first time he asks Offred to join him in his room. She is not the first handmaid that the Commander has outreached to, and she soon realizes why his previous handmaid hung herself. He justifies his illegal desires with an excuse that he simply wants Offred’s life more bearable to her. She realizes that “the Commander exists in a different realm altogether (a realm of duty, obligation; a realm in which love does not exist)” and does not realize how miserable Offred really is (Miner 154). He does not offer her love in return for everything that she has lost, but he does allow her small physical freedoms like reading and lotion. The things that Offred wants, seem ridiculous to the Commander which “wasn’t the first time he gave evidence of being truly ignorant of the real conditions” that handmaids live under (Attwood 159). What he does not want to admit is that he needs Offred’s company as much as she needs his. The Commander uses Offred as someone to relax
Having a child in Gilead was no longer a pleasurable activity, but a privilege, and children were considered valuable commodities as well. Like categories of fruits and vegetables, children were divided into two categories based on their health: “keepers” and “unbabies”, just as women were deemed “woman” or “unwoman” based on their fertility. “There are only women who are fruitful and women who are barren, that’s the law” (Atwood 61). In Gilead, procreation is industrialized and the handmaids are reduced to one essential function: reproduction. All other aspects of the women’s sexuality and individualism are outlawed and repudiated. When called to meet with the Commander, Offred ruminates:
Utopia is a society that you really can’t wrap your head around. In Utopia it talks about Thomas, Raphael, Peter how they met and what they think they about the society. It ask you questions that really makes you think, would I want to live in this society? Utopia talks about how they are a perfect society but it makes you wonder if they really are. (More, 2011)
The novel, The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood focuses on the choices made by the society of Gilead in which the preservation and security of mankind is more highly regarded than freedom or happiness. This society has undergone many physical changes that have led to extreme psychological ramifications. I think that Ms. Atwood believes that the possibility of our society becoming as that of Gilead is very evident in the choices that we make today and from what has occured in the past. Our actions will inevitably catch up to us when we are most vulnerable.
To explore the concepts of Utopian theory, both political and social, one must first engender a concrete definition of what Utopia means. Sir Thomas More, the original creator of the term Utopia, signifies it as “no place”. However, More’s clever play on words seems ultimately to suggest that ”no place” is just no place right now. That is to say that Utopia is “an ideal place that does not exist in reality” yet (Murfin and Ray 529).