In the Days of Anarchy To live in a country such as the United States of America is considered a privilege. The liberties that American citizens are entitled to, as declared in the Constitution, makes the United States an attractive and envied democracy. It would be improbable to imagine these liberties being stripped from American society. However, Margaret Atwood depicts the United States as a dystopian society in her novel The Handmaid’s Tale. The first society is modern America, with its autonomy and liberal customs. The second, Gilead, a far cry from modern America, is a totalitarian Christian theocracy which absorbs America in the late 1980s in order to salvage it from widespread pollution and a dwindling birthrate. The principal flaw in Atwood’s Gileadian society is the justification of human rights violations. This justification only limits the liberties citizens experience, and taunts their once freeing rights, such as the prerogative to explore sexuality. Gilead’s only freedom, is freedom from all other liberties, or as Aunt Lydia would describe, freedom from the anarchy that unveiled in the first society. The novel’s protagonist, Offred, uses two sets of images to recount the vast difference between a “freedom to” society, and a “freedom from” society. She recalls to the reader a photographic clarity of her previous life as an American woman with liberties, and also those of her present life as a handmaid, or slave to the Republic of Gilead. Aunt Lydia, who is responsible for teaching the enslaved women of Gilead how to be handmaids, attempts to fill the women with disgust for the dangers of outlawed practices, such as pornography, adultery, and abortion, while encouraging admiration towards the only reason for handmaid’s at all, fertility and pregnancy. These outlawed practices that Gilead forbid however, are human rights that the citizens of the first society, modern America, were given “freedom to.” Offred has the “freedom to” explore her sexuality in modern America. Though she would have been hanged in Gilead for her adulterous acts with Luke, Offred was able to be absorbed by passion and love in the former United States. According to Aunt Lydia, free love and lust however, are some of the reasons anarchy occurred. "There's more than one kind of freedom," she tells the handmaids: "Freedom to and freedom from.” “In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underestimate it" (Atwood, 24).
In a world where women have no freedom, it is essential to discover one’s self. Margaret Atwood portrays this idea in The Handmaid’s Tale. The protagonist, Offred, is an imprisoned Handmaid in this new world of the Republic of Gilead and has to rediscover her own past for the benefit of finding herself. There are various moments in this book when Offred is reminded of her past. When this happens, it helps her discover herself a little more.
Although Offred is the heroine of this story, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the hero’s journey can be found in many characters in the story as well. This story is breaking into shambles between the past and the present, however, through the story, readers can still see the signs of the hero’s journey that Joseph Campbell has studied. Offred, being a handmaid, has been thrown into a world where women are powerless and stripped away of their rights to read and write. Atwood illustrates a dystopian world where equality is a part of history, not in the present day Gilead. However, Offred is one of the main characters who ceased to live in a degrading world and find means to escape. Thus, Offred begins on her Hero’s Journey, which occurs
In The Handmaid 's Tale by Margaret Atwood, readers are introduced to Offred, who is a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. As this novel is
Imagine a country where choice is not a choice. One is labeled by their age and economical status. The deep red cloaks, the blue embroidered dresses, and the pinstriped attire are all uniforms to define a person's standing in society. To be judged, not by beauty or personality or talents, but by the ability to procreate instead. To not believe in the Puritan religion is certain death. To read or write is to die. This definition is found to be true in the book, The Handmaid's Tale (1986) by Margaret Atwood. It is a heartbreaking story of one young woman and her transformation into the Gilead society, the society described above. In the book, we meet Offred, the narrator of the story. This story is not the first to create a society in which the only two important beliefs in a society are the ability to procreate and a strict belief in God. It is seen several times in the Old Testament, the Bible. The Biblical society is not as rigid as the Republic of Gilead, which Margaret Atwood has built, but it is very similar. The Handmaid's Tale holds several biblical allusions.
Offred, among other women depicted in this novel, tries to overcome this dominion. In her own way, she attempts to do this by ensuring the Commander’s expectations of her behavior which could result in her freedom. Thus, there is a present power struggle between the Commander and Offred throughout The Handmaid’s
In life, people don’t always stand up for what they believe in in order to avoid exclusion – this is called apathy. In specific situations, people will blindly follow a primitive ideology without any regard for morality. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is an excellent example of how apathy can affect an entire population. This novel is by and large a feminist novel that addresses the ignorance in imperialistic and religious ideologies, but also addresses the issue of human apathy. In this novel, Atwood offers a disturbing look into what could be. The alterior motive of the society is to purify and improve the country as a whole. However, it is not only nationalism and imperialism
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.
In Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaids Tale’, we hear a transcribed account of one womans posting ‘Offred’ in the Republic of Gilead. A society based around Biblical philosophies as a way to validate inhumane state practises. In a society of declining birth rates, fertile women are chosen to become Handmaids, walking incubators, whose role in life is to reproduce for barren wives of commanders. Older women, gay men, and barren Handmaids are sent to the colonies to clean toxic waste.
The Handmaid's Dystopia The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood is a dystopian tale 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 anymore, Dorothy! Even today, there are places in the world where there is a startling similarity to this fictitious dystopia.
Alienation is a key motif that is presented throughout Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. Alienation can be defined as the state of feeling “estranged or separated” from the rest of society. In The Handmaid’s Tale, multiple characters have been alienated from various aspects of their lives as a result of the Republic of Gilead and the enforcement of its rigorous new rules; particularly Handmaid’s. A prime example of the alienation faced by the Handmaid’s is following the birth of their children. Janine, also known as Ofwarren, is alienated when she is forced to turn their children over to the commander’s wife and “placed ceremoniously” in her arm arms. The word “ceremoniously” is significant as it alludes to the wife being rewarded for her ‘hardwork’; this further alienates Janine as she is both unable to bring up her child and is not celebrated for her achievement, one which every Handmaid aspires to. Through language, such as “unwomen” Gilead is able to deprive individuals of their humanity that further reinforce the social expectations and duties that women are obligated to perform. Handmaids are also alienated through the clothes that are enforced on them; the “white wings …... keep [them] from seeing, but also from being seen”. Thus, their clothing of “red cloak” and “white wing” is a physical barrier which isolates them from the outside world; consequently isolating handmaid’s such as Offred. The alienation of the Handmaids can be interpreted as a way of Gilead forcing Handmaid’s to conform to the roles and keep them from rebelling. The handmaids are further alienated by the fact they are unable to communicate with each other openly in public for fear that the other might report them as a traitor if they did not accept the new society. Therefore, Handmaid’s such as Offred become isolated from society; whereby they may find themselves
There are two kinds of freedom, “freedom from and freedom to” (31) throughout Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Freedom from is a negative liberty that involves external restriction to a person’s actions. On the other hand there is freedom to, a positive liberty the one can act upon their own free will. The two different categories of freedom are discussed and debated through a feminist view point. We explore and try to understand the way in which the difference between “freedom from” and “freedom to” is applied to females in society. This novel gives us two contrasting ways of liberal thinking. You are free if no one is stopping you from doing whatever you might want to. The story appears, in this sense, to be free. On the other hand, one can
Throughout The Handmaid’s Tale, the author Margaret Atwood gives the reader an understanding of what life would be like in a theocratic society that controls women’s lives. The narrator, Offred, gives the reader her perspective on the many injustices she faces as a handmaid. Offred is a woman who lived before this society was established and when she undergoes the transition to her new status she has a hard time coping with the new laws she must follow. There are many laws in this government that degrade women and give men the authority to own their household. All women are placed in each household for a reason and if they do not follow their duties they are sent away or killed.
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
Offred’s journey is a prime example of the appalling effects of idly standing by and allowing herself to become a part of the Gilead’s corrupt system. This woman is a Handmaid which was recently placed within a new
Unmistakably, fertility and motherhood are associated together, yet Gilead seems to detract them from each other, just like they dismember the bodies of all their citizens. The fact that they make women believe that they are ‘powerful’ because they are fertile is what keeps them from escaping from Gilead.