Offred Quotes

The rebellious, the dictators, the submissive, each character balances the results of negative power. Aunt Lydia is a woman in charge and submissive to the ways of the Christian extremists. She is in charge of the handmaids in Offred's area, she educates the girls on why they are chosen to be handmaids, and how their lives shall play out. This quote explains aunt Lydia's ora, and her motives with the handmaids, “She wears a khaki dress and lectures about what behaviors are decent and which are inappropriate, filling the women with disgust for the dangers of outlawed practices, such as pornography and abortion, while encouraging admiration that borders on awe toward pregnancy.” (Cavalcanti). When the girls were first captured they were kept

Aunt Lydia beat Offwarren until she completely lost eyesight in one of her eyes and required a permanent eyepatch. Offred, the protagonist, is an intelligent, perceptive and gentle handmaid. Offred balances between the poles of unsympathetic and too sympathetic, Offred has a disappointing history, and her emotions tell us a true authentic story. Offred like most of the handmaid’s is just a regular woman with a life and a family beyond the quarters of Gilead in an horrific situation. The story of The Handmaid’s Tale is not an epic story or a tragedy in the eyes of Aristotle, Offred is not a hero, she does her part in attempting to make change for the handmaid’s of Gilead but after many failed attempts she diloutes her efforts of striking back at the corrupt government. Offred being the main character tells us the tales of Gilead as it happens, she experiences Gilead in the flesh, and her accounts to her previous life gives us a stronger understanding of how the prison she lives in has affected

The people in conflict of Gilead are fundamentalist Christians who run a dictatorship lead country called Gilead. Atwood herself has said that Gilead is not an ideal place to live but it is not in fact out of the realm of possibility, it is in fact a mimic of the Islamic Republic after the revolution in the late 1970s, and Gilead is a place close to reality for many countries in the future. The radiation and pollution has gotten so bad in America that women are failing to conceive, men are failing to stay fertile and babies are failing to stay alive. Gilead's ruling class is in trouble with the low birth rates, if they want to maintain power they need to raise their next generation to carry on with the country. To keep children flowing into the system the state sends each couple of the ruling class a handmaid which is responsible for giving birth to the commanders baby for them to raise. Atwood makes it understood that the rulers of Gilead are Christian extremists, the woman, and men refer to god as being the reasoning for Gilead. Many wonder what keeps the women of Gilead inline, and the answer is the Colonies, all the threats and violence end up in a torturous death in the Colonies. The Colonies are places that have been contaminated by pollution and radioactive