Journal Topics for Erica Joan Dymond´s The Handmaid’s Tale

981 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: handmaid's tale feminism literary criticism

Journal 1, Option 1 Erica Joan Dymond, author of “Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale” (2003), asserts that the theme of the oyster/pearl relationship is the most prevalent them in the book and leads the plot. Dymond uses a plethora of concrete details and quotes from the text, using them to analyze the meaning of this oyster/pearl theme and relationship. Erica Dymond’s purpose is to explicate the prevalence and significance of this theme in the novel in order to show its importance to readers of the book who may have overlooked this crucial aspect. Dymond aims this criticism towards those who have read The Handmaid’s Tale and have not recognized the significance of the oyster and the pearl. Her tone is scholarly, yet not overly so to allow for a greater audience. Erica Dymond’s critical essay accurately describes the weight and symbolism Atwood places on the oyster/pearl relationship in the book. By using extensive concrete details, she creates ethos and shows her thorough knowledge of the book. The oyster and pearl references can go unnoticed by one who is not searching for it as they are lightly sprinkled throughout the book, and, although emphasis is not placed on them, they carry great significance. Journal 2, Option 2 The assigned gender roles in The Handmaid’s Tale are hyperboles of traditional roles that the genders play. In Gilead, the women stay home and men run important things like the government, which includes business and military. The assignment of the roles and the strictness of them seems legitimate to the majority of Gilead’s population, and they come as an accepted result of physical differences between men and women to them. Almost all of the women in the population and many of the men have been sterilized due to... ... middle of paper ... ...r women in the society, but she longs for her freedom and for the life she once lived. Because she was caught trying to run away to Canada at the beginning, she is scared to attempt escape again. When the Commander first shows interest in Offred, he, to her surprise wants a friendship from her and not just a sexual relationship. He hides away with her and they play board games, which is double forbidden as women are strictly not allowed to read, and normal friendships between men and handmaids are also forbidden. The Commander’s wife is unable to have children, so his relationship with her is supposed to be only sexual and only for the good and existence of the population. Offred is happy to rebel against the Gilead rules and happy to do so with the Commander. He gives her forbidden presents and asks for romantic gestures as to hint as his true feelings towards her.

Show More
Related

  • Class Discrimination in Gilead

    1196 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Free Handmaid's Tale Essays: The Struggle of Women

    850 Words  | 2 Pages

    Offred from The Handmaid's Tale uses different tactics to cope with her situation. She is trapped within a distopian society comprised of a community riddled by despair. Though she is not physically tortured, the overwhelming and ridiculously powerful government mentally enslaves her. Offred lives in a horrific society, which prevents her from being freed. Essentially, the government enslaves her because she is a female and she is fertile. Offred memories about the way life used to be with her husband, Luke, her daughter, and her best friend Moira provides her with temporary relief from her binding situation. Also, Offred befriends the Commander's aide, Nick. Offred longs to be with her husband and she feels that she can find his love by being with Nick. She risks her life several times just to be with Nick. Feeling loved by Nick gives her a window of hope in her otherwise miserable life.

    Read More

  • The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

    1307 Words  | 3 Pages

    The role of a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead is ultimately to breed, and nothing more. Cooped up in a nondescript room with nothing but her own thoughts and painful memories for company, the narrator, Offred, shows many signs of retreating further and further into her own world, and becoming slowly more unstable throughout the course of the novel as her terrible new life continues.

    Read More

  • sfsdf

    1194 Words  | 3 Pages

    .... Since Wives do not have the ability to have a baby, they ask Handmaids to sleep with their husbands once a month to bear a baby. Their husbands cannot see Handmaids except for every month’s Ceremony. Because the husband cannot kiss and touch Handmaids when they have sex, the husbands go to night clubs to dally with Jezebels. In this society, women each have a function and become the victims of patriarchal ruling. Once we lapse in dealing with the gender relationship, what will the situation be for the entire human society? In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood puts this worry into her feminist dystopia, a real nightmare. Although the sufferings everyone undertakes in the novel will not occur in the real world, the novel conceives a unique, horrible social panorama, exaggerating and magnifying the gender tension in the real world, containing the criticism of reality.

    Read More

  • Interpreting The Handmaid's Tale

    623 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Handmaid's Tale is distinguished by its various narrative and structural divisions. It contains four different levels of narrative time: the pre-Revolution past, the time of the Revolution itself, the Gileadean period, and the post-Gileadean period (LeBihan 100). In addition, the novel is divided into two frames, both with a first person narrative. Offred's narrative makes up the first frame, while the second frame is provided by the Historical Notes, a transcript of a lecture given by a Cambridge professor. The distinctions in structure and narrative perspective parallel the separation of Gileadean residents into different social roles.

    Read More

  • The Handmaid's Tale

    904 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Comparing Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Michael Radford's Film, 1984

    1191 Words  | 3 Pages

    Margaret Atwood’s depiction of the future in The Handmaid's Tale is extremely bleak and forlorn; this oppressive atmosphere has been created by the development of an independent nation - Gilead - inside the U.S, which is governed by a totalitarian fundamentalist Christian sect. This dystopian text is the brainchild of a series of experimental social ideas which have given birth to a science-fiction novel, which satirises mainly the folly of human characteristics rather than the misuse of technology.

    Read More

  • Allusions In The Handmaid's Tale

    1333 Words  | 3 Pages

    Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale provides a look into a dystopian world of complete male dominance. Women have been entirely denied of their basic needs, and are no longer able to live as individuals. For decades preceding the creation of Gilead, women were regarded as subordinate to men. These inequalities often led women to believe they were inferior and lacked the knowledge and power men seemed to display. They were not granted access to voting rights, equal wages, or job opportunities. As the years progressed, women fought for equal rights; however, these accomplishments were soon revoked with the transition of the United States, into a totalitarian region known as The Republic of Gilead. The new Republic’s regime resulted in the demise

    Read More

  • Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

    878 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale, women are subjected to unthinkable oppression. Practically every aspect of their life is controlled, and they are taught to believe that their only purpose is to bear children for their commander. These “handmaids” are not allowed to read, write or speak freely. Any type of expression would be dangerous to the order of the Gilead’s strict society. They are conditioned to believe that they are safer in this new society. Women are supposedly no longer exploited or disrespected (pornography, rape, etc.) as they once were. Romantic relationships are strongly prohibited because involving emotion would defeat the handmaid’s sole purpose of reproducing. Of course not all women who were taken into Gilead believed right what was happening to their way of life. Through the process of storytelling, remembering, and rebellion, Offred and other handmaids cease to completely submit to Gilead’s repressive culture.

    Read More

  • The Role Of Totalitarian Government In The Handmaid's Tale

    725 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the novel, The Handmaid 's Tale, by Margaret Atwood, a totalitarian government in the Republic of Gilead conducts an important role throughout the novel. The government attempts to completely isolate women. Women in the society are completely separated from reality, having little touch with the outside world, and are then segregated further under their gender. Offred, a main character throughout the novel, is an example of how badly Gilead considered women. Women are under severe control with many limitations such as the need of a headscarf and the incapability to wear makeup. The severe control and limitations also need women to have the children of the society by having sex with their commanders. Due to the totalitarian government in the

    Read More

  • Control In The Handmaid's Tale

    1850 Words  | 4 Pages

    Welcome to Gilead, here “women are tortured and killed for disobeying the law - a society where religious beliefs, the political structure, and the sexual identity are so intertwined as to justify and require the control of women’s freedom, the sexual victimization of women, and the torture and murder of women who do not comply” (Cameron 298). The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood plots the dystopian society of Gilead in which “all men are not created equal: some men are second-class citizens and all women are third class citizens” (Callaway 48). Because of this “women are seen as potentially threatening and subversive, and, therefore, require strict control” (Callaway 48). In order to maintain the control, Gilead families are torn apart,

    Read More

  • The Handmaids Tale: Oppression of Women for Male Political Gain

    1779 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Handmaids Tale is a poetic tale of a woman's survival as a Handmaid in the male dominated Republic of Gilead. Offred portrayed the struggle living as a Handmaid, essentially becoming a walking womb and a slave to mankind. Women throughout Gilead are oppressed because they are seen as "potentially threatening and subversive and therefore require strict control" (Callaway 48). The fear of women rebelling and taking control of society is stopped through acts such as the caste system, the ceremony and the creation of the Handmaids. The Republic of Gilead is surrounded with people being oppressed. In order for the Republic to continue running the way it is, a sense of control needs to be felt by the government. Without control Gilead will collapse.

    Read More

  • Atwood's Handmaid's Tale

    896 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Handmaid's Tale Analysis

    1334 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...ader. Furthermore, Offred’s social status as a handmaid and her literary status as the main narrator helps the reader to better understand what the handmaids go through. The reader witnesses the handmaids’ experience of reproducing with the commander. Also, since Offred is a woman, we witness what its like to be a woman in this strongly patriarchal society. Given that “The Handmaid’s Tale” is written from the point of view of a handmaid, we feel empathy towards the oppressed women.

    Read More

  • Free Handmaid's Tale Essays: The Struggle of Women Handmaid's Tale Essays

    525 Words  | 2 Pages

    Offred from The Handmaid's Tale uses different tactics to cope with her situation. She is trapped within a distopian society comprised of a community riddled by despair. Though she is not physically tortured, the overwhelming and ridiculously powerful government mentally enslaves her. Offred lives in a horrific society, which prevents her from being freed. Essentially, the government enslaves her because she is a female, and she is fertile. Offred's reminisces about the way life used to be by remembering stories about her husband Luke, her daughter, and her best friend Moira, provides her with temporary relief from her binding situation. Also, Offred befriends the Commander's aide, Nick. Offred longs to be with her husband and she feels that she can find his love by being with Nick. She risks her life several times just to be with Nick. Feeling loved by Nick gives her a window of hope in her otherwise miserable life.

    Read More

More about Journal Topics for Erica Joan Dymond´s The Handmaid’s Tale

Open Document