Dystopian Societies In The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

The government enforces laws and regulations in order to maintain peace and harmony in society. Laws are meant to ensure the safety of all citizens; however women can be forced to face extremities if the laws and government are patriarchal. The novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood recites the story of a totalitarian government that consists of strictly men who dominate the women based on Christian ideologies. The government uses the fertile women called “handmaids” merely for breeding purposes because of a decrease in birth rate. The women in the nation have limited freedom and are restrained by the male authorities in their lives which makes The Republic of Gilead a dystopian society. Atwood uses elements of Biblical Allusion, flashback,

In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood describes a chaotic world where women find themselves conforming to a very new, but rather harsh idea of normality that a totalitarian regime has forced them to succumb to. The moral destruction caused by Gilead has allowed women to feel unworthy, insecure, and lost- emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. It has allowed them to become victims of dehumanization and has caused them to reminisce on who they were rather than who they are now because who they were is part of a much better world that is hopelessly too far gone. The act of wrongdoing and injustice have conjured an impeccably non-idealistic view of society. Atwood provides these two quotes throughout the novel that seem to perfectly justify the entirety of the story that focuses on the course of

We sse this today with the way certain celeberties such as Kanye West dress and how they seemingly are able to wear any "hat" they wish. We look at the rich to be role models simply because of their money and refuse to look at the heart of a person. She hit on the fact that those with little money do all they can to look like something they are not. She talked about the struggle of haveing womens club in the poor neighborhoods as many wouldn't leave a home adress or even attend becase everyone knew they finacial situation but they were going to differnt parts of town to those that didn't to seem like they were a person who were very well off in life. The piece hit om the fact that these chidren were often asked to stop their develepment and work to help the family and for some parenst it was an expectation that the children would care for them. LAstly she talked about war and how it preys on the untutered and poor to fight a battle they knew nothing about. One huge theme of the pieces were that we cannot keep using history and old customs to justify our shortcomings in

The government enforces laws and regulations in order to maintain peace and harmony in society. Laws are meant to ensure the safety of all citizens however; women can be forced to face extremities if the laws and the government are patriarchal. The novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood tells the story of a totalitarian government that consists strictly of men who dominate women based on Christian ideologies. The government uses fertile women called “handmaids” for breeding purposes because of a decrease in birth rate. The nation of the Republic of Gilead is a dystopian society in which women have limited freedom and are restrained by the male authorities in their lives. Freedom is a term by which the identity of a person or nation

Margaret Atwood establishes a dystopian, futuristic society in her novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, where the people have specific roles to follow. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a dystopian society is “an imaginary place or condition in which everything is as bad as possible” (“Dystopia”). This “bad as possible” seems to be very demeaning for the Handmaids, upsetting for the Commanders’ wives, and confusing for the Commanders themselves; however, delving into Atwood’s mindset while she was writing the novel, it is clear that she only uses conditions that have previously been employed by governments across the world (Atwood, “Haunted by”). This draws attention to the flaws of society as a whole, as it begins to question the practices

The dystopian society of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a society where women are subjected to a life of childbearing. The toxins produced by humans themselves are the cause of infertility in most cases. To keep the population alive, the few fertile women are forced into a life where they are raped in order to bear children. These crude rapings are thought to be validated from the Bible. Genesis 30:1-3 is a passage that is relative to the Gileadean rationale, “And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die. 2 And Jacob 's anger was kindled against Rachel: and he said, Am I in God 's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? 3 And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her.”

As the strange traditions and laws present in Gilead are portrayed, the reader is able to see the effects oppressive policies can have on the thoughts and actions of the characters as they find ways of escaping the conformity forced upon them. Atwood’s creates a dark dystopia with reactive characters to reveal that even in the face of oppression, individuals will find ways of quietly expressing their identities, and the bravest individuals might even choose the freedom of death over oppression. The Handmaid’s Tale serves as a painful consideration into the effects of tyranny on the

Dystopian societies brainwash the minds of the people by limiting their freedom to think for themselves. “When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man” (Burgess). These societies deprive its people from expressing their individuality. By having a form of expression, it allows people to have radical ideas. This could lead to rebellion and could overthrow the government. To keep this from happening, dystopian societies limit its people’s free will. The CorpSeCorps in Oryx and Crake makes sure that the no individual acts against the regime. When someone is under suspicion of questioning the government and society, they take action by extracting them from the compounds and eventually killing them. It is not uncommon for the CorpSeCorpse to

It must be terrifying being deceived into living in a utopian community where everything seems perfect and later discovering that you are living in a dysfunctional dystopian society. In the novel, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, the country of The United States was corrupted by the government and renamed the Republic of Gilead. The country changed drastically; the government believed they had turned it into a perfect society. Unfortunately, in contrast to the government's belief, most people believed it was the complete opposite. The entire society turned upside down and nobody could do anything about it. This novel conforms to the dystopian genre to demonstrate that the government is being oppressive and wants everything by his rules.

She shows what are the expected stereotypes that many of us have when we think of women, and how they act in families in some of the economic classes. Wants also elaborates on the lives of everyday women and how women have different interests from men. Women are more focused on things in life such as marrying a man for the rest of their lives, while some men only dream of buy a boat. To some aspect, this has become stereotypical because when many people think of a woman, they think of a wife that will have kids and take care of her family. Now in society, many women have become more independent.

15 Feb. 2016. In Shirley Neuman’s literary criticism of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the critic begins by characterizing the Republic of Gilead as, “one logical outcome of what she termed the 'strict theocracy' of the 'fundamentalist government' of the United States' Puritan founding fathers” (Neuman 1). Neuman explains Gilead’s methods of maintaining its power and supremacy during Atwood’s dystopian setting. She continues to depict the power of society to destruct an individual by stating how Offred sees her social value as reproduction.

Dreams of Utopia and The Reality of Dystopia One of America’s Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson once said, “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery” (Andrew 99) . Humanity can learn how history repeats itself as the past often has ironic relevances to the present and future. Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale and the director Neill Blomkamp’s film Elysium both posit stories of oppressed, authoritarian societies, where the upper classes live in a life of luxury and harmony while controlling and dehumanizing the much larger lower class. Ironically, it is similar to that in real world dictatorships in certain countries as well being quite conceivable to happen in the future for today’s developed nations.

The Handmaid’s Tale is the title of a feminism novel, written by Margaret Atwood, and it is about a theocratic system that practices fundamental Christianity. The name of a republic which replaced what is now United States is The Gilead Republic. The system came to power by a coup, which is the way that many dictator systems have done to get their power. They justifies that women have become infertile due to pollution and radiation (Atwood 122). Also, women have forgotten what their nature is for, and some became lazy sluts as Aunt Lydia states (Atwood 123). Their main aim is to increase birth rate and bring back gender roles to their nature. They started the system by using force as it is done by other dictatorships. The theocratic systems

Alter, A. (2017, January 27). Uneasy About the Future, Readers Turn to Dystopian Classics. New York Times.

In a supposed perfect society, how can we keep every single individual on the line and still manage to make them happy? Well, in the book Handmaid's Tale, the Gilead society does something similar except for permitting everyone happy. The system created by this society is rather interesting as we consider that no social interaction is allowed under any circumstances, women became a tool for the government, and free will be fully censored. If social interaction is so much forbidden, how do events essentially taking part of two people having mutual direct contact like copulation, takes place? Women are administrated as tools for Gilead, how each woman performs their role and why they do that? Free will is primordial in human nature, so why did Gilead society occluded it? Those are topics to be discussed about this so intriguing dystopian society.