The screams of the crowd tremble to the sound of the tightening rope. Little by little the tension increasing, and for a moment there is a pause of silence. Snap. As the bodies falls, so do the hearts of the handmaids. This is a common view of a handmaid in Gilead. This spectacle is known as the “Salvaging” or saving any potential threat and purifying Gilead. This showing is a sharp reminder of things that Gilead will not tolerate these acts and wants the repercussions of such actions to be viewed and repressed. The Particicutions roots from the words “participation” and “execution” and are a modified salvaging where handmaids form into a group to assault any threat directly towards them. A prevalent example from The Handmaid’s Tale is the …show more content…
Control based on fear is widely effective in controlling a large group of people, like in Gilead. Based on history in places like North Korea and Communist Russia, fear is the only reason why a communist state can stay in power. Just like North Korea and Communist Russia, Gilead uses fear tactics to control the public. Gilead is just like McCarthyism in the U.S. and The Crucible in the way that everyone can snitch on each other and no one is safe. In The Handmaid’s Tale, the Eyes (spies) have great influence on the actions and thoughts of the handmaids. They are afraid to do anything against Gileadean rules because anyone can be eyes and turn them in. It was a usual sight that “Two Eyes, in gray suits, leap from the opening double doors at the back. They grab a man that is walking along,…, slam him back against the black side of the van.”(Atwood 195) For what reason? Was there a reason or was he just a scapegoat? These are the questions the Handmaids think about every day. This fear itself and the chance of being
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood takes place in the totalitarian theocratic regime of Gilead with a first person narration of the main character, Offred. This society used biblical language and omission of valuable information to manipulate the general public into submission. Offred has a powerful understanding of how language can influence the population as she experiences it firsthand and uses the same power as a recorder. The recorder has a power that contrasts with her role in the Commander’s household. As the recorder of her own story she controls its presentation, the reader is subject to her unconscious bias. The experiences she has had define the way the reader will think about Gilead. She conveys her intense emotions throughout
In the two books that we have read this year there has been one common theme, exile. In The Book Thief and in A Handmaid’s Tale, important characters were exiled. For example in The Book Thief, Max was exiled from his country, and in A Handmaid’s Tale, Offred was exiled from the government. The character’s experiences with exile were both alienating and enriching, because they were both of them went through times when they felt out of place and times when they were enhancing their life. The character’s experiences were both similar in the way that they were both exiled by a larger power, such as the government of the country that they live in. But they were also very different because in Max’s situation it was life or death, and in Offred’s situation she had a required place to be, she was going to live. Also the experiences of Max and Offred shed a light on their books, because it gave a different meaning behind them something deeper that was not shown on the surface of the pages. Lastly, from the beginning of the books to the end, Max and Offred’s home place changed, and the home in the beginning became an other place to them.
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 caricature of past and present laws and traditions of Western civilization. "The Handmaid's Tale" is an accurate and feasible description of what society could be like if a strict and oppressive religious organization gained dominant power over the political system in the United States.
Throughout The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, Offred persistently deals with the political and social issues of the Republic of Gilead. Gilead is a completely new society that lacks love, expression of ideas, and advanced technology. Throughout the novel, Atwood uses symbolism and flashbacks to explore the political and social problems within the republic, which enhance the story’s central message.
After reading the Handmaid's Tale, I felt that Societal Complacency was the most critical aspect to the success of the Gilead Society. The Republic of Gilead is a run by a strict Old Testament religious doctrine. This government does not tolerate anyone who does not conform, it is run mostly by fear. Fear of death or the wall or being sent to radioactive colonies. This new government is cruel towards women, it robbed them of their humanity under the guise of protecting them. This new republic has forced women to give up jobs, forbidden them from reading, they control or regulate sexual activity as well as reproduction and birth, they have also prohibited or limited speech between women and even renamed women so that it fits in with a more biblical society. The Governments goal is to turn women into dumb subservient slaves dependent on men. The Republic of Gilead is based on "traditional values" with the households being strictly patriarchal. The sexes are strictly divided in this book both men and women have strict protocol they must follow. Both men and women are separated by class and social status defined by the color they wear.
The threat of physical abuse is huge. Being woman is enough of a crime, but “any crime can result in an execution and a public hanging on ‘The Wall’” (Cameron 3). A woman can be hung for just about anything. If they defy the people in charge they can get hurt. The women are constantly abused. The Gilead government is in charge of what goes on in this society. If a woman has an affair with a different man they are taken and possibly tortured or hung. The Red Center, which is where they were taught how to be Handmaid’s, the women were constantly tortured. They had Aunts that looked over them. These aunts were not nice and, “they had electric cattle prods slung on thongs from their leather belts” (Thomas 91). The aunt’s view was all that was needed was the Handmaid’s baby making parts. The women did not need their feet, hands, or any part other than the torso. When the woman did something wrong or tried to run away th...
In the novel The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood the themes of Religion and inter-human relationships are the themes that are most evident in the text. This novel shows the possibility of the existence of an all-powerful governing system. This is portrayed through the lack of freedom for women in society, from being revoked of their right to own any money or property, to being stripped of their given names and acquiring names such as Offred and Ofglen, symbolizing women’s dependant existence, only being defined by the men which they belong to. This portrayal of women demonstrates the idea that individuals are unimportant, that the goals of the society as a whole are more pertinent. “For our purposes, your feet and your hands are not essential” (chapter 15) is a quote revealing that Gilead denies rights to individuals and to humankind. In The Handmaids Tale, handmaids are only considered of value for their ability to reproduce, otherwise they are disposable. Religion is an aspect very prominent in the society of Gilead. We see this in chapter 4, where Ofglen and Offred meet and th...
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 ability to create life is an amazing thing but being forced to have children for strangers is not so amazing. Offred is a handmaid, handmaid's have children for government officials, such as Commander Waterford. Offred used to be married to Luke and together they had a daughter but then everything changed; Offred was separated from her family and assigned to a family as their handmaid. The society which Offred is forced to live in shaped her in many ways. In The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood uses cultural and geographical surroundings to shape Offred's psychological and moral traits as she tries to survive the society that she is forced to live, in hopes that she can rebel and make change.
The setting of The Handmaid’s Tale – known as Gilead – is a totalitarian government, originally based on Old Testament patriarchy. This structure forbids rival loyalties or parties, so all loyalty must be for the group of men that govern the State. Such a structure means that women are assigned ‘roles’ according to their biological ‘usefulness’.
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.
Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaids Tale belongs to the genre of anti-utopian (dystopian) science fiction where we read about a woman's fictive autobiography of a nightmarish United States at the end of the twentieth century when democratic institutions have been violently overthrown and replaced by the new fundamentalist republic of Gilead. In the novel the majority of the population are suppressed by using a "Bible-based" religion as an excuse for the suppression. How does this work and why can the girls, the so called Handmaids, be considered the victims of society? Also, in what way does Gilead use biblical allusions? That is some of the questions this essay will give answers for.
Fear is power. Fear is ever-present in Gilead; it is implemented through violence and force. It is through fear that the regime controls the Gileadian society. There is no way Offred, or the other Handmaids can avoid it. The dead bodies hanging on the wall are a relentless reminder of what rebellion and conflict result in. The abuse of power is also present in chapter fifteen after Moira attempts to escape, she is taken to the old science lab and has her feet beaten with steel frayed wires and is then left on her bed, ‘’Moira lay on her bed as an example.’’ (pg. 102 ) She is an example of what rebellion results in. Therefore, creating fear in the other Handmaids to prevent them from rebelling.
"The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood is a dystopia 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 any more, Dorothy!
As The Handmaid’s Tale is considered an allegory of the social injustice women face against traditional expectations of their role in society, the symbolism of the Handmaids and other women as a whole for repressed feminine liberty and sexuality allows Atwood to connect her work to the theme between gender and expectations in her society. As Handmaids in the Republic of Gilead, females are stripped of their previous identity and are defined as a tool of reproduction for the men who is assigned them. At its core, these females are forced against their will to be mere tools, experiencing unwanted sex at least once a month, which Gilead names “The Ceremony”, hiding its true nature as a form of rape. Offred