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Key facts Margaret Atwood’s novel was originally titled Offred. The atmosphere of paranoia in Atwood’s novel was inspired by Orwell’s 1984 as well as her experience of feeling as if she was being spied on when she was writing the novel in 1984 in West Berlin before the fall of the Berlin wall. The novel won the … Read more
The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian feminist and speculative/science-fiction novel written by the Canadian author Margaret Atwood in 1985. The novel is presented in a disjointed form that shifts from past to present and that allows for most of the events of the story to occur and be pushed forward through the psyche of the narrator and … Read more
The novel begins as Offred remembers her time at the Red Center where Handmaids are trained and conditioned which is situated in an old school. Offred comes back to the present and informs the readers of her new job working for the Commander and his wife Serena Joy. Handmaids are allowed no freedom except for … Read more
Main Characters and Analysis Offred She is the protagonist and the narrator of the story, although her reliability is questionable as she does try to alter the stories to make them better for her readers. She is not outspoken, nor is she submissive. Even as a handmaid she still has power over the men who … Read more
“Now we walk along the same street, in red pairs, and not man shouts obscenities at us, speaks to us, touches us. No one whistles. There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given … Read more
Themes Patriarchy The republic of Gilead is a patriarchal regime and upon its rise to power, women are its first victims. The laws implemented by Gilead start by firing all women from their jobs, then transferring their funds to the male of the family, then depriving them from education. Even the Aunts who are the … Read more
The creation of Offred, the passive narrator of Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids 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 … Read more
This is a futuristic novel that takes place in northern USAsometime in the beginning of the twenty-first century, in the oppressive and totalitarian Republic of Gilead. The regime demandshigh moral, retribution and a virtuous lifestyle. The Bible is theguiding principle. As a result of the sexual freedom, freeabortion and a high increase of venereal diseases … Read more
In The Handmaids Tale, much use is made of imagery; to enable the reader to create a more detailed mental picture of the novels action and also to intensify the emotive language used. In particular, Atwood uses many images involving flowers and plants. The main symbolic image that the flowers provide is that of life; … Read more
In Margaret Atwoods, The Handmaids Tale, our eyes are open to an oppressive society of which seems to be the near future. Widespread sterility has led to the rich controlling young women of childbearing age, who are called handmaidens. The tale is narrated by Kate, also known as Offred, her handmaid name. She relates her … Read more
In the course Y2k and The End of The World, we’ve studied apocalyptic themes, eschatology, and for some, teleology. Apocalypse, which is to unveil or reveal, eschatology, which is a concept of the end, and teleology, the end or purpose to which we are drawn, are all themes used in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. … Read more
In Margaret Atwoods novel, “The Handmaids Tale”, the birth rate in the United States had dropped so low that extremists decided to take matters into their own hands by killing off the government, taking over themselves, and reducing the womens role in society to that of a silent birthing machine. One handmaid describes what happened … Read more
The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel in which Atwood creates a world which seems absurd and near impossible. Women being kept in slavery only to create babies, cult like religious control over the population, and the deportation of an entire race, these things all seem like fiction. However Atwood’s novel is closer to fact … Read more
The utopian society in The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood is very different from what most people would consider a utopian society. The power of this society rests upon a small percentage of the population. In this society, men are superior to the women. Women have virtually no rights or say in what goes on … Read more
Within freedom should come security. Within security should come freedom. But in Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood, it seems as though there is no in between. Atwood searches throughout the novel for a medium between the two, but in my eyes fails to give justice to a womans body image. Today’s society has created a … Read more
In the olden days, religion and politics went hand in hand. The church either ran the land or had a strangle hold on the people. If the church thought there was one way to do something, one had to do as the church requested or suffer great penalty. To go against the church was to … Read more
In Margaret Atwoods novel, “The Handmaids Tale”, the birth rate in the United States had dropped so low that extremists decided to take matters into their own hands by killing off the government, taking over themselves, and reducing the womens role in society to that of a silent birthing machine. One handmaid describes what happened … Read more
In Margaret Atwoods, The Handmaids Tale, our eyes are open to an oppressive society of which seems to be the near future. Widespread sterility has led to the rich controlling young women of childbearing age, who are called handmaidens. The tale is narrated by Kate, also known as Offred, her handmaid name. She relates her … Read more
In Margaret Atwoods novel, “The Handmaids Tale”, the birth rate in the United States had dropped so low that extremists decided to take matters into their own hands by killing off the government, taking over themselves, and reducing the womens role in society to that of a silent birthing machine. One handmaid describes what happened … Read more
In the two books Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and Margaret Laurence’s The Fire Dweller’s, the protagonists are very different in character. However, both of these women lost their identity due to an outside influence. In each of the books we see the nature of the lost identity, the circumstances which led to this lost … Read more
In the course Y2k and The End of The World, we’ve studied apocalyptic themes, eschatology, and for some, teleology. Apocalypse, which is to unveil or reveal, eschatology, which is a concept of the end, and teleology, the end or purpose to which we are drawn, are all themes used in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. … Read more