What Is The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood Characterize Women

In today’s news we see many disruptions and inconsistencies in society, and, according to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, humankind might be headed in that direction. The deterioration of society is a concept often explored biologically in novels, but less common, is the effect on everyday social constructs such as the position of women as a item that can be distributed and traded-in for a ‘better’ product. The Handmaid’s Tale elaborates the concept that, as societal discrimination towards women intensifies, gender equality deteriorates and certain aspects of societal freedoms are lost. Offred’s experience with serving Gilead demonstrates a victim’s perspective and shows how the occurring changes develope the Republic.

From the outset of 'The Handmaids Tale' the reader is placed in an unknown world, where the rights and freedom of women have been taken away. We follow the narrative journey of a handmaid, named Offred.

The Handmaid’s Tale is a story told in the voice of Offred, who is the character of the “handmaid”, which is described best by women who are being forced and used for reproduction because they can make babies. In the Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood uses symbolism, which is the use of symbols to represent ideas, to show the reader the handmaid’s role in society of Gilead. The handmaids were women who had broken the law of Gilead, and forced into having sex and reproducing for the higher class. They had no rights and were watched constantly so this created a very nervous atmosphere. This horrible way of living is most likely why Offred never fully made the reader aware of the horrible life she was forced to live because

Despite the little dependence on women, they are still objectified and subjected to injustice because of their gender, regardless if they were a female in general or as a poor female. As something as simple as what a person is born with affects the respect that is given to them. Margaret Atwood formulates Offred’s personality much like any other handmaid in the community. Offred becomes familiar with the functionality and role of women in the community, therefore she adjusts herself in order to be up to par with the unethical standard. “I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born. (Atwood, 75). To be what is required of her, Offred must act unhuman because the expectations of females exceed the

The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood describes the story of Offred, a Handmaid, that is a woman ascribed a breeding function by society, and who is placed with a husband and wife higher up the social ladder who need a child. Through Offred's eyes we explore the rigidity of the theocracy in which she lives, the contradictions in the society they have created, and her attempts to find solace through otherwise trivial things. The heroine is never identified except as Offred, the property of her current Commander, she was a modern woman: college-educated, a wife and a mother when she lost all that due to the change in her society. The novel can be viewed from one perspective as being a feminist depiction of the suppression of a woman, from another

First, it is symbolized by the handmaids' patronymic names. Their names are formed with the possessive preposition, 'of,' and the first name of the 'Commander' for whom they are to bear children (for instance: 'Of-Fred'). The handmaids are moved to a new posting after three attempts to bear child for the 'Commander' and his wife; at each new location, they drop their former name and adopt their new Commander's name. Thus, while the narrator's name is currently Offred, she may later become Ofglen, Ofwaren, or some other such patronym. Like their names, the handmaids have no personal identity and they lack stability; like their names, they are interchangeable and replaceable with each other (LeBihan 102).

The Handmaid's Tale, a film based on Margaret Atwood’s book depicts a dystopia, where pollution and radiation have rendered innumerable women sterile, and the birthrates of North America have plummeted to dangerously low levels. To make matters worse, the nation’s plummeting birth rates are blamed on its women. The United States, now renamed the Republic of Gilead, retains power the use of piousness, purges, and violence. A Puritan theocracy, the Republic of Gilead, with its religious trappings and rigid class, gender, and racial castes is built around the singular desire to control reproduction. Despite this, the republic is inhabited by characters who would not seem out of place in today's society. They plant flowers in the yard, live in suburban houses, drink whiskey in the den and follow a far off a war on the television. The film leaves the conditions of the war and the society vague, but this is not a political tale, like Fahrenheit 451, but rather a feminist one. As such, the film, isolates, exaggerates and dramatizes the systems in which women are the 'handmaidens' of today's society in general and men in particular.

Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, follows the story of Offred, the protagonist and narrator, living in a dystopian New England set in a near future America. The overthrown totalitarian government called the Republic of Gilead now concentrates on women, depriving them from their rights and ranking them by class, and returning to a more primitive time period. The handmaids, a position that Offred has been assigned to, now must serve for reproductive purposes for the barren elite ruling class. Atwood uses the female body as a theme throughout her book as a way to _.

Throughout history, women have been treated inferior and have been viewed as less powerful than their counterpart, and therefore were removed from essential societal events because of the harsh and authoritarian treatment placed upon them. In our society, as time progressed most countries began to give women their proper rights, however in the in the novel “A handmaid's tale,” by Margaret Atwood, the audience sees that their version of progression turned out to be counteractive. In a restricted, oppressed society like the one displayed by Atwood, the audience experiences controversial scenarios relating to sexism which limits the characters opportunities, these constraints influence people to take risks when the timing is right in order to create meaning in their life. Overall, the women in “A handmaid's tale,” are taken advantage of, oppressing them further. The assigned roles in their civilization such as the ‘aunts,’ are used as a psychological device to convince the handmaid's that they are lucky, by stating manipulative phrases to persuade the handmaid's into believing that where they are is not a “prison”, but actually a “privilege,” in the hopes of making them accepting of their role as the republics breeding device,

In the Republic of Gilead, women are deprived of their individuality, only valued for childbearing; Offred is only allowed to have sex with the Commander to make children for the government. With children as rare commodities, the Offred and many other women are separated from their families and must live in repressive, communal societies as a Handmaid. If she fails to reproduce,

Handmaids, a systematically oppressed group of women are used in the Gilead society for only one purpose, to give birth to children. The Handmaid’s are forced into invisibility, they do not have the rights the Wives and the Marthas obtain, Handmaids are not supposed to be able to have anything that can entertain them. They are reeducated in the Red Center, a “boot camp” that manipulates women becoming Handmaids, to believe the only importance they acquire is their fertility. Offred and the other Handmaids are classified as just “two-legged wombs, that’s all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices” (Atwood, 176). If they cannot or are unable to give birth to a healthy baby they are severely punished or executed by the Gilead regime.

In "The Handmaid's Tale", Margaret Atwood tells a saddening story about a not-to-distant future where toxic chemicals and abuses of the human body have resulted in many men and women alike becoming sterile. The main character, Offred, gives a first person encounter about her subservient life as a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, a republic formed after a bloody coup against the United States government. She and her fellow handmaids are fertile women that the leaders of Gilead, the Commanders, enslave to ensure their power and the population of the Republic. While the laws governing women and others who are not in control of Gilead seem oppressive, outlandish and ridiculous, they are merely a

From the days of the cavemen to now, societies have systematically oppressed people for various reasons. Oppression has happened to Jews in Germany, slaves during Christopher Columbus’s days, slaves in the early 1900s in America, etc. When people systematically oppress one another, it leads to internal oppression of the oppressed. This is evident in Margaret Atwood’s book, The Handmaid’s Tale. This dystopian fiction book is about a young girl, Offred, who lives in Gilead, a dystopian society. Radical feminists complained about their old lifestyles, so in Gilead laws and rules are much different. For example, men cannot wink at females, females cannot expose too much, etc. Females are protected from any harassment; however, there are downfalls: the government runs and sees everything. The government decided that Offred’s role in society is to be a handmaid, who is a person that is assigned to have sex for the sole purpose of reproduction. In The Handmaid 's Tale women consistently live in fear because they have a distinct role that is predetermined by a radical form of government, and when people are systematically oppressed, they will be internally oppressed.

The display of a dystopian society is distinctively shown in The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood. Featuring the Republic of Gilead, women are categorized by their differing statuses and readers get an insight into this twisted society through the lenses of the narrator; Offred. Categorized as a handmaid, Offred’s sole purpose in living is to simply and continuously play the role of a child-bearing vessel. That being the case, there is a persistent notion that is relatively brought up by those leading the Gileadean regime; women have gained more than they have lost. Yet, this is a clearly distorted idea being that women in this society are excessively restricted from freedom. Women are restricted to the freedoms that they once had.

In The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood explores the role that women play in society and the consequences of a countryís value system. She reveals that values held in the United States are a threat to the livelihood and status of women. As one critic writes, “the author has concluded that present social trends are dangerous to individual welfare” (Prescott 151).