Offred Essays

  • Free Handmaid's Tale Essays: Offred

    545 Words  | 2 Pages

    Offred of The Handmaids Tale        I have decided to analyze the main character Offred because she seams to feel trapped in this new society. She speaks very openly about the situation thats she's in and plays her actions very well. I will do an overall analysis of her actions. Offred is a very strange character. She follows the new rules of her society unlike her rebellious friend Moira. But you can also tell that Offred misses her family very much and she always goes back in her head to remember

  • Essay on the Character of Offred in The Handmaid's Tale

    1209 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Character of Offred in The Handmaid's Tale Offred is one of the main characters in The Handmaid's Tale. She was the faithful wife of Luke, mother of an eleven month old child and a working woman, before she entered the Republic of Gilead. She was given the name "Offred", when she entered Gilead. This was to make it known that she was a handmaid. Offred becomes psychologically programmed in Gilead as a handmaid, and the mistress of the commander who is in power of all things. She was used for

  • Imagery in the Handmaid’s Tale

    1680 Words  | 4 Pages

    relatively liberal mores and customs, and the second is Gilead, a totalitarian Christian theocracy which takes control of America in the late 1980's in order to “save” it from its pollution and dwindling birthrate. The novel's protagonist, Offred, uses two sets of images to document the history of these contrasting societies. She recounts to the reader with a startling poignancy and photographic clarity the images of her memories of her past life as an American woman, and those of her present

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

    850 Words  | 2 Pages

    but that is forbidden to say), are sterile. The women who are still fertile are recruited as Handmaids, and their only mission in life is to give birth to the offspring of their Commander, whose wife is infertile. The main character in the book is Offred, one of these unfortunate servants whose only right to exist depends on her ovaries’ productivity. She lives with the Commander and his wife in a highly supervised centre. Unlike men, women have been facing unique problems for centuries, and often

  • Comparing Brave New World and Handmaid's Tale

    932 Words  | 2 Pages

    women like the narrator of HMT, Offred. At one point lying in a bathtub and looking at her naked form, Offred states; " I used to thin of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplish of my will ... now the flesh arranges itself differently. I'm a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping." Offred contrasts the way she used to think

  • Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

    878 Words  | 2 Pages

    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. “We learned to whisper almost without sound. In the semidarkness we would stretch out our arms, when the Aunts weren’t looking, and touch each other’s hands across space

  • Rebellion in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

    2092 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Handmaid's Tale analyzes human nature by presenting an internal conflict in Offred: acceptance of current social trends (victim mentality) -vs- resistance for the sake of individual welfare and liberties (humanity). This conflict serves as a warning to society, about the dangers of the general acceptance of social evils and boldly illustrates the internal struggle that rebels face in choosing to rebel. Offred is a Handmaid in the republic of Gilead and while she seems unhappy about this, she

  • Feminism in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

    1097 Words  | 3 Pages

    eyes of Offred, the handmaid. Offred has been ripped away from her husband and daughter to become a breeder for someone whom she doesnít love. How does a person respond to this type of situation? Atwood reveals Offredís struggle by introducing the foil character, Moira. Moira doesnít get to tell the reader her story; rather, it is told through Offred. This narrative choice accentuates the difference between the two women. Both women dislike the situation in Gilead. However, while Offred resigns

  • Comparing the Rights of the Individual in Handmaid's Tale and Invisible Man

    985 Words  | 2 Pages

    individual. Offred, the protagonist of The Handmaid's Tale, and the narrator of Invisible Man are both invisible as individuals and are manipulated by society to become a dehumanized natural resource. The authors of these two works use the protagonist to criticize society's use of certain groups of people only as resources to reach a goal, ignoring the individuality of these people. The very names, or lack thereof, of the main characters indicate their invisibility in the eyes of society. Offred is named

  • Free Handmaid's Tale Essays: The Red Motif

    539 Words  | 2 Pages

    red is not just menstrual blood or blood resulting from birth; the red is a threat of death. Offred would later say, "I never looked good in red, It's not my color. "Red tulips are also a recurrent image in "The Handmaid's Tale." Tulips, often seen as llonic symbols in many works, can be interpreted this way also. Tulips are women, and red tulips are women cloaked in red, red blood. On page 12 Offred narrates: "The tulips are red, a darker crimson towards the stem, as if they have been cut and

  • Gilead: A Credible Society

    1122 Words  | 3 Pages

    time, nor is it for one to completely discard the idea. Instead, it's purpose is solely to warn us of the dangers already present in our own society, such as the uncontrollable violence that is going on, apparent on crimes, wars, racism, etc. Offred, the narrator, tells us about a society which came into existence in the early 80's as a direct consequence of overlooking the many problems in its previous society. Before the first steps were being taken to actually destroy the society that few

  • Essay on The Handmaid's Tale as a Warning to Society

    934 Words  | 2 Pages

    and mental oppression to make her point. Early on it is evident that the authority of this society has been changed from a theocracy to a totalitarian government. The first sentence reveals that the current living quarters of the main character, Offred, are located in "what had once been the gymnasium" (3). The narrator recounts the past fifty years in this place from felt skirts of the fifties to the green spiked hair of the nineties. Then she turns to describe its transformation into what resembles

  • Comparing Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Laurence's The Fire-Dwellers

    2469 Words  | 5 Pages

    outside influence.  In each of the books, we see the nature of the lost identity, the circumstances which led to this lost identity, and the consequences which occurred as a result of this lost identity. In The Handmaid’s Tale our main character, Offred, has her whole world stolen away by the government of Gilead.  This new society is sexually repressed and is founded by religious extremists.  Women are only used to produce children, and they have no rights at all in the new world of Gilead. In

  • Offred's Narrative Technique in The Handmaid's Tale

    1915 Words  | 4 Pages

    Offred affects every single aspect of "The Handmaid's Tale", so, in order to understand her narrative technique better, her character must also be considered. Offred is nostalgic, she longs for her pre-Gilead past with which she still identifies very strongly. She is, however, realistic in her longing; she knows that the past was not perfect, that it was no utopia, but she just longs for a situation preferable to her present one, "...We lived, as usual, by ignoring...". Another strong reason for

  • Essay on Appearance versus Reality in The Handmaids Tale

    730 Words  | 2 Pages

    images of Offred and other individuals parallel with the theme of appearance versus reality. These images such as food and nature are reoccurring to further stress the theme. The gustatory and olfactory images of food and perfume, as well as the kinesthetic and visual imagery of cutting flowers and sexual intercourse juxtapose the discontentment of Offred's life as a handmaid. Food is a symbol of fulfillment. As the novel opens, we are quickly associated with it as Rita asks Offred to pick up

  • The Handmaid's Tale

    1987 Words  | 4 Pages

    interaction between sexuality and politics. The main character within the novel is Offred, who also happens to be a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. Offred is not the Narrators real name; it is her handmaid name, which is derived from the word of followed by her Commanders name. Because of low birth rates, Handmaids are assigned to bear the children for the elite couples within Gilead, who have trouble conceiving. Offred serves the Commander and his wife Serena Joy. Serena was once an advocate for

  • The Importance of the Narrator of The Handmaid's Tale

    998 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Importance of the Narrator of The Handmaid's Tale The creation of Offred, the passive narrator of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, was intentional.  The personality of the narrator in this novel is almost as important as the task bestowed upon her.  Atwood chooses an average women, appreciative of past times, who lacks imagination and fervor, to contrast the typical feminist, represented in this novel by her mother and her best friend, Moira. Atwood is writing for a specific

  • Interpreting The Handmaid's Tale

    623 Words  | 2 Pages

    Interpreting The Handmaid's Tale 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

  • Essay on Food as a Control Mechanism in Handmaid's Tale

    833 Words  | 2 Pages

    control. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia are classic examples of psychological syndromes, related to control, that express themselves with eating disorders. Prisoners of war are denied food as the most basic method of torture and control. Like all humans, Offred, the main character of Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, finds that food is a central and important feature of life. Food has many meanings in the novel, nourishment, fertility, and luxury; however, this paper will focus on food as a control mechanism

  • The Handmaid's Tale

    939 Words  | 2 Pages

    its oppression had infiltrated the lives of unsuspecting people. Atwood individualises the character of Serena Joy, as her high status in the society demands power and the domination over the inferior members of the Commander’s household, such as Offred – a handmaid. This shows that Serena Joy has a sense of control, using this privilege to become “a woman who might bend the rules”; this is similar to the Commander, as Serena Joy is able to associate herself with the black market, for example “exchanging