Margaret Atwood s The Handmaid s Tale - 1544 Words

Feminism as we know it began in the mid 1960 s as the Women s Liberation Movement. Among its chief tenants is the idea of women s empowerment, the idea that women are capable of doing and should be allowed to do anything men can do. Feminists believe that neither sex is naturally superior. They stand behind the idea that women are inherently just as strong and intelligent as the so-called stronger sex. Many writers have taken up the cause of feminism in their work. One of the most well known writers to deal with feminist themes is Margaret Atwood. Her work is clearly influenced by the movement and many literary critics, as well as Atwood herself, have identified her as a feminist writer. However, one of Atwood s most successful books, The Handmaid s Tale, stands in stark contrast to the ideas of feminism. In fact, the female characters in the novel are portrayed in such a way that they directly conflict with the idea of women s empowerment. On the surface, The Handmaid s Tale appears to be feminist in nature. The point-of-view character and narrator is a woman and thus we see the world through a woman s eyes. There s much more to the story than that, though. Atwood doesn t show us our world. She shows us a newly created world in which women lack the freedoms that they currently take for granted. This dystopian society is completely controlled by men. Of course, the men have help from the Aunts, a crack team of brainwashers that run the reeducation centers andShow MoreRelatedThe Handmaid s Tale By Margaret Atwood1357 Words   |  6 PagesOxford definition: â€Å"the advocacy of women s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes† (Oxford dictionary). In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood explores feminism through the themes of women’s bodies as political tools, the dynamics of rape culture and the society of complacency. Margaret Atwood was born in 1939, at the beginning of WWII, growing up in a time of fear. In the autumn of 1984, when she began writing The Handmaid’s Tale, she was living in West Berlin. The BerlinRead MoreThe Handmaid s Tale By Margaret Atwood1249 Words   |  5 PagesDystopian Research Essay: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood In the words of Erika Gottlieb With control of the past comes domination of the future. A dystopia reflects and discusses major tendencies in contemporary society. The Handmaid s Tale is a dystopian novel written by Margaret Atwood in 1985. The novel follows its protagonist Offred as she lives in a society focused on physical and spiritual oppression of the female identity. Within The Handmaid s Tale it is evident that through the explorationRead MoreThe Handmaid s Tale By Margaret Atwood1060 Words   |  5 Pagesideologies that select groups of people are to be subjugated. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood plays on this idea dramatically: the novel describes the oppression of women in a totalitarian theocracy. Stripped of rights, fertile women become sex objects for the politically elite. These women, called the Handmaids, are forced to cover themselves and exist for the sole purpose of providing children. The Handmaid’s Tale highlights the issue of sexism while also providing a cruel insight into theRead MoreThe Handmaid s Tale By Margaret Atwood1659 Words   |  7 Pagesbook The Handmaid s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the foremost theme is identity, due to the fact that the city where the entire novel takes place in, the city known as the Republic of Gilead, often shortened to Gilead, strips fertile women of their identities. Gilead is a society that demands the women who are able to have offspring be stripped of all the identity and rights. By demeaning these women, they no longer view themselves as an individual, but rather as a group- the group of Handmaids. It isRead MoreThe Handmaid s Tale By Margaret Atwood1237 Words   |  5 Pages 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 thoseRead MoreThe Handmaid s Tale By Margaret Atwood1548 Words   |  7 PagesIn Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, The theme of gender, sexuality, and desire reigns throughout the novel as it follows the life of Offred and other characters. Attwood begins the novel with Offred, a first person narrator who feels as if she is misplaced when she is describing her sleeping scenery at the decaying school gymnasium. The narrator, Offred, explains how for her job she is assigned to a married Commander’s house where she is obligated to have sex with him on a daily basis, so thatRead MoreThe Handmaid s Tale, By Margaret Atwood1629 Words   |  7 Pages Atwood s novel, The Handmaid s Tale depicts a not too futuristic society of Gilead, a society that overthrows the U.S. Government and institutes a totalitarian regime that seems to persecute women specifically. Told from the main character s point of view, Offred, explains the Gilead regime and its patriarchal views on some women, known as the handmaids, to a purely procreational function. The story is set the present tense in Gilead but frequently shifts to flashbacks in her time at the RedRead MoreThe Handmaid s Tale By Margaret Atwood1540 Words   |  7 Pages Name: Nicole. Zeng Assignment: Summative written essay Date:11 May, 2015. Teacher: Dr. Strong. Handmaid’s Tale The literary masterpiece The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, is a story not unlike a cold fire; hope peeking through the miserable and meaningless world in which the protagonist gets trapped. The society depicts the discrimination towards femininity, blaming women for their low birth rate and taking away the right from the females to be educated ,forbidding them from readingRead MoreThe Handmaid s Tale By Margaret Atwood1256 Words   |  6 Pageshappened 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 cannotRead More The Handmaid s Tale By Margaret Atwood1667 Words   |  7 Pagesrhetorical devices and figurative language, that he or she is using. The Handmaid’s Tale, which is written by Margaret Atwood, is the novel that the author uses several different devices and techniques to convey her attitude and her points of view by running the story with a narrator Offred, whose social status in the Republic of Gilead is Handmaid and who is belongings of the Commander. Atwood creates her novel The Handmaid’s Tale to be more powerful tones by using imagery to make a visibleness, hyperbole