The purpose of this essay is to analyse and compare the narrative situations proposed by Franz Stanzel in the dystopian novels Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. For this aim, I am going to focus on the aspects focalization (reflection), relationship reader-narrator, narrative distance, knowledge, and reliability and demonstrate that they affect the interpretation of the novel by readers in a significant way. In the end, I will draw conclusions on how these techniques serve to alienate the narratives from their science fiction setting to set even more disconcerting issues about human’s existence.
To start with, in both novels the narrator is clearly a first person protagonist and coincides with the reflector. Their perspective (focalization) is internal since they exist in the fictional world they recreate. On the one hand, Kathy H. is a narrator who is identified by her name and age and that addresses the reader as a fellow “carer” from the very beginning: “My name is Kathy H. I'm thirty-one years old, and I've been a carer now for over eleven years.” (Ishiguro 5) This immediately involves the reader and creates intimacy between him and the narrator. On the other hand, The Handmaid’s Tale begins with a description of the setting told by a voice belonging to one of the healthy fertile women but the reader is not directly addressed. Moreover, we know the name of Atwood’s narrator in a conversation with Serena Joy rather late in the story but it is conventionally chosen according to her master’s name. We can infer that her identity has been stolen by the social regime in Gilead and have a premonition that the narrator is going to be one of the oppressed people. (Pei-ning Lee 3) In both ...
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The novel “The Handmaid’s Tale written by Margaret Atwood shows the way of life for women in the
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
Often in life, people take their freedoms, a gift that allows them to express their individuality, for granted. However, in the dystopian societies of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, people are reminded of just how easily their freedoms and humanity can be stripped away. Attwood and Ishiguro urge people to never lose sight of the core values that define who they are. The compelling novels chronicle the life journey of two protagonists as they fight to define their own existence and worth in life. Offred, the central character in The Handmaid’s Tale is exploited as a baby making machine, while Kathy, the leading role in Never Let Me Go, is degraded as a lifeless android in a sea of clones. From Atwood and Ishiguro’s provocative coming-of-age novels emerge two beautiful and inspiring heroines. Whether it is through their remembrance of the past, their loss of innocence, their capability to hope, or their ability to establish relationships, Offred and Kathy prove that they are every bit as human as the rest of society. Ultimately, despite the many differences in their distinct masterpieces, Atwood and Ishiguro share the same intent in their haunting portrayal of the protagonists’ dehumanizabtion—to shed light on the true essence of what it is to be human.
Thesis: In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood characterizes Handmaids, as women with expectations to obey the society’s hierarchy, as reproducers, symbolizing how inferior the Handmaid class is to others within Gilead; the class marginalization of Handmaids reveals the use of hierarchical control exerted to eliminate societal flaws among citizens.
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.
The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel in which Atwood creates a world which seems absurd and near impossible. Women being kept in slavery only to create babies, cult like religious control over the population, and the deportation of an entire race, these things all seem like fiction. However Atwood's novel is closer to fact than fiction; all the events which take place in the story have a base in the real world as well as a historical precedent. Atwood establishes the world of Gilead on historical events as well as the social and political trends which were taking place during her life time in the 1980's. Atwood shows her audience through political and historical reference that Gilead was and is closer than most people realize.
The worlds of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Road are complete opposites; One is an anarchical society where there is no societal structure while the other is a very well-structured world with a thoroughly defined hierarchy. Despite this, it could be argued that these two worlds are simultaneously also very similar due to the way they approach the topics of patriarchy, misogyny, and survival. Atwood and McCarthy accomplish this differently, but they achieve it using the same literary techniques and, despite one of the worlds being dystopian while the other is post-apocalyptic, making heavy usage of descriptive writing.
The protagonists of Never Let Me Go and The Handmaid’s Tale come to believe that the self is all that can be known to exist, as they have lost their freedom and rights. In discussing issues of identity, it is important to consider what characters lose, such as names and value in society, and how they try and protect their sense of self, by holding memories dear and valuing their soul above their functional body. This is most poignant in the lives of Kathy H. and Offred. Atwood herself is known to have described The Handmaid’s Tale as ‘speculative fiction’, and there is nothing in the novel that could not happen in the present day. Equally, Ishiguro sets his novel in modern Britain. This means that the loss of identity in both novels holds true today, as with the increase of identity cards and proof of identification, it becomes increasingly important to be obsessed with who we are.
‘The Handmaids Tale’ is a blunt warning to modern society, Atwood underlines that all the points in her novel have occurred in the world previously, and if propaganda establishes itself it could take place again.
The Handmaid’s Tale (Contemporary Classics). Journals Bertens, H. (2001) Literary Theory: The Basics, The Politics of Class: Marxism. Abingdon, Routledge. Sourced in AQA Critical Anthology LITB4/PM Issued September 2008.
In Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood creates a society of oppression in which she redefines oppression in common culture. Gilead is a society characterized by highly regulated systems of social control and extreme regulation of the female body. The instinctive need to “protect and preserve” the female body is driven by the innate biological desires of the men. The manipulation of language, commodification, and attire, enhances the theme of oppression and highlights the imbalance of power in the Gilead society.
Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. Cliff Notes on Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Lincoln: Cliff Notes, Inc., 1994.
Neuman, Shirley. "'Just A Backlash': Margaret Atwood, Feminism, And "The Handmaid's Tale.." University Of Toronto Quarterly 75.3 (2006): 857-868. Academic Search Elite. Web. 24 Apr. 2014.
The Handmaid's Tale presents an extreme example of sexism and misogyny by featuring the complete objectification of women in the society of Gilead. Yet by also highlighting the mistreatment of women in the cultures that precede and follow the Gileadean era, Margaret Atwood is suggesting that sexism and misogyny are deeply embedded in any society and that serious and deliberate attention must be given to these forms of discrimination in order to eliminate them.
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a compelling tale of a dystopian world where men are the superior sex and women are reduced to their ability to bear children, and when that is gone, they are useless. The story is a very critical analysis of patriarchy and how patriarchal values, when taken to the extreme, affect society as a whole. The result is a very detrimental world, where the expectation is that everyone will be happy and content, but the reality is anything but. The world described in The Handmaid’s tale is one that is completely ruled by patriarchal values, which is not unlike our society today. The proposal that the world described in The Handmaid’s Tale could be a vision of the future may seem far-fetched to some readers.