Social Issues In The Handmaid's Tale

“The Handmaid’s Tale”, a speculative fiction novel written by Margaret Atwood that describes an authoritarianism society created after the United States government was overthrown and became the Republic of Gilead. The objective of this takeover was to improve the environment, economy, and reverse the falling numbers in healthy births.
All women’s rights were removed. They could not read, write, speak freely, or be in love. Their lives were controlled completely by Gilead. We are introduced to Offred, not her real name whose previous life with a husband, child, job, and money have all been taken away. The story begins when she is at the Red Center which is in a school gymnasium, it was here that she and the other woman, known as handmaids

Set in what resembled Cambridge, Massachusetts, although never specifically identified as such. The women of this new world were subjected to strict and often harsh treatments. Their every move and interaction was controlled. They were separated, or classified, by what they brought to the new government. Woman who could reproduce were assigned to the homes of the higher elite to reproduce for them. Woman who were old, fragile, or could no longer bear children were sent to live terrible lives or killed. This new world for women especially was depressing, dark, and dangerous. For the men, especially the higher ups it was also without excitement and was very routine. They often took some risky chances to gain some personal freedom. All people of the Republic of Gilead were not free to engage in normal relationships. There were no marriages, no families raising their own children, and no loving relationships. All healthy children born to handmaids were given to the commanders and their wife’s to be raised as their own.
Point of View
The point of view of this story was in the first-person narrator. This was done by Offred, a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She tells the story in both the present time however shifting back to the past in flashbacks of a life she had before Gilead. Much of her narration was done emotionally which are affected by the memories a happier past. The reader was only given her view point on the place, setting, and characters within the story. This leaves the reader to only know about things at her level.