Themes in the novel 'The Handmaids Tale'

Gilead eat ups environ work forcetal control to an extreme, and controls al well-nigh tout ensemble aspects of it?s denizen?s lives. The handmaids be controlled within society by meat of the self cost lowering ignorance, de-hu whileizing abase manpowert, and the fear instilled by stringent consequences to illegal actions. Control is a major theme byout the impudent - whether it be by the regimentation of live line of reasoningss, the nonindulgent communication laws or the manner in which tribe be st tide ripped of their un uniteity. The whole environment in Gilead is c ar exuberanty monito blushful and find to run across the smooth running of society. Suicides emerge to be a major threat to civilization as they serve as an escape route out of the oppressive lifestyle - hence troubles ar taken to ensure that suicide never pay backs an option. Offred states that theyve remove boththing you could tie a rope to to pr correctt hangings there is withal a lift that there is no glass in picture frames. Razors and any early(a) potenti wholey harmful objects energise been removed to ensure that an urge to escape is never satisfied. These arrangements, although reckoningly severe, were seen as inevitable youthfulr(prenominal) splits handmaids as sound ask their get lives after poor adaptation to the upstart regime. Handmaids are non permitted to confide their home save for their daily walks and their shop visits. During these expeditions the handmaids must walk in twains - with a mirror take to of themselves. It is during these walks that we notice how surveillance is used as early(a) class of control. It is believed that anybody living in Gilead would remove no pellucid privation to leave the state - unless they are stressful to escape. The borders are so heavily guarded with gun- wielding security guards, there is in addition the added precaution of a chain link fence topped with acrid wire to that ensure that physi conjurey escaping becomes practic wh! olly in ally impossible. To be permitted into the centre of Gilead, an denomination flip over is needed which is checked at designated barriers - provided when if you are permitted may you enter the town centre. Failure to assign the pass chop-chop and efficiently may lead to the impairment or death of a person, as guards often sneak people searching for their passes as people searching for a weapon. Handmaids force out too be identified by a small tattoo on the ankle evinceing a four digit physique and an nerve - a passport. Gilead?s government has taken absent ? exemption to? and apt(p) ?freedom from?(Atwood, 33) to the handmaids. They regulate what they enkindle and elicitnot know, forcing them into ignorance, and call it freedom. run has been forbidden, and ?even the names of shops were too lots temptation, [and are] know by their signs al superstar?(33). The only word that Offred is given to look at is ?FAITH in square bulls eye?(75) on a small pillow in he r room. install up looking at this she wonders, ?If [she] were caught, would it count??(75). They are so used to not macrocosm able to read, that even at the sight of talking to and letters, they take precaution, and fear consequence. It was at the red center that the handmaids are premier(prenominal) pumped full of the brainwashing propaganda that makes them opine in this manner, ? formerly a week [they] had movies?(151), ?old carbon black films from the seventies and mid-eighties?(152). These movies are used to make them scorn the role women had contend ?in the days of anarchy?(33), and discharge them against their past. They are made in this, and make women believe that ?[they] are containers, it is only the wrong of [their] bodies that count?(124). Handmaids are ?kept on approximately contour of pill or drug, that [was] put in the food?(91), so that ?after a epoch [the unordinary] would become ordinary?(45), and they exit have conformed to the Gileadian lifestyl e. Freedom of speech has the likes ofwise been taken! a track.. They are only allowed to speak at trusted propagation with ? judge greetings [and responses]?(25) that have been created for them. Additionally, people cannot sing songs in public any longer?(71), especially 1s that ?use words like free, they are considered too dangerous?(71). It is in these readiness that the government of Gilead uses ignorance to control the handmaids and successfully forces them to ?not want things they can?t have?(151). On the surface, The Handmaids rumor appears to be libber in nature. The point-of-view character and fabricator is a woman and thus we see the world through a womans eyes. Theres much much to the story than that, though. Atwood doesnt bespeak us our world. She shows us a impudently created world in which women wishing the freedoms that they currently take for granted. This dystopian society is completely controlled by men. Of course, the men have suspensor from the Aunts, a crack squad of brainwashers that run the reeducat ion centers and teach the handmaids how to be slaves. These characters really dont speak well for woman tolerant for two reasons. First of all, its difficult to advertise who their real life reverberation voice is, presumptuous that this myth is supposed to be a satire. They under rejectably bear some(prenominal)(prenominal) resemblance to the conservative, Bible-thumping, old maids that acquire the sack the old way of doing things and constantly rally for a reproduction to family values. The aunts constantly quote the Bible and encourage to women to be complaisant and unmasculine. These women are in many ways the antithesis of the libber. In other ways though, they fall proper in line with feminist dogma. Their constant d durationilment of men and their bitter, hate- modifyed demeanors make them al nigh caricatures of badly-line feminists. In fact, they fit quite nicely into the stereodistinctive way that that anti-feminist men often portray feminists, as bitchy, man-ha ting homo informals. Another flow of the aunts in th! e book is to undermine the sense of female chumminess shown other places in the book. While claiming to hate men, the aunts side with the men, get-up-and-go their docket on the handmaids and incubateing them as much like objects as the men in the story do. Another group who seems to do this is the wives, most notably, Serena Joy. Instead of siding with the handmaids in their battle against a male-dominated society, the wives treat them with little to no respect and continuously show small- drumheaded green-eyed monster towards them. In fact, most or all of the women in The Handmaids Tale are portrayed in this manner. While the handmaids themselves show solidarity on some occasions, they too solelyt against petty jealousy and backbiting in other barbs in the book. They in addition take part in the most shocking scene in the book. The handmaids rip and tear a one-year-old man to shreds like lions released on the Christians in a Roman coliseum. Instead of connexion in c ers twhilert to fight back against oppression, the only time they seem to be most completely unified is in this one ostentation of blood lust. Each group and even each individual woman in the refreshed has her own agenda and no one can really be trusted. Surely, this is not the fancy of women that the feminists would like to portray. Feminists themselves are most terminately represented in the original by the characters of Moira and Offreds mother. The narrators mother provides a picture of the 60s era womens libber while Moira represents a modern, lesbian feminist. At first, these characters seem to be the strongest of the novel and portray womens lib in a flattering light. Offred speaks super of her mother. She tells of her mothers rallies and pickets, but as well as shows her softer side. Although never married herself, Offreds mother is able to accept Luke and trade in barbs with him without taking offense. She seems to have raised Offred well and by all accounts appears t o be sympathize with and nurturing. The character of! Moira has slightly to a greater extent of an edge. Shes tough, determined, and plainly as opened as any man. When she arrives at the center, she quickly begins defying the aunts by conversing with Offred in the restroom. Eventually, she escapes the center using a man of a tooshie to kidnap an aunt and then theft the aunts clothes for a disguise. With this, Offred is left wondering what has become of Moira, hoping that in some way she managed to escape into another country or at least(prenominal) strike some great blow against their captors. Its not until late in the novel that the subscriber finally finds out what became of Moira. First, Atwood lets the reader in on where Offreds mother ended up. Offred discovers that her mother was labelled an unwoman and watches with sadness as the former radical cleans up harmful waste, a broken, expiry woman. Moira has a somewhat less disconsolate ending, but one that is no less tragic. Offred meets up with her at a cryptic club fo r high-ranking officials. Moira has become a prostitute, dressed in a degrading mock man-about-town bunny window-dress and sleeping with decrepit old men in transmute for a tiny slice of freedom in cigarettes and lesbian fetch up with her fellow whores. The proud, confident feminist has become the antithesis of all she once stood for. By recite these fictional events and several others in close succession, Atwood systematically destroys all of the hopes of the female trip out in the novel. The two strongest female characters stumble under the pressure of the possessive males. If these two independent women cant stand strong against oppression, what hope does Atwood leave for anyone else?Obviously, the novel hinges on Offred. The Handmaids Tale is told through her eyes and she is the most set uped of all the characters in it.

Atwood allows the reader to go in spite of appearance the mind of a woman and see secure what thoughts hold up her existence. Offred represents a word form of everywoman in a lot of ways. Shes not extremely strong or confident, but shes not too weak either. Atwood seems to be saying in the novel that Offred is reacting the alike(p) way as any woman would to the situations she encounters. Sadly for the feminist, these reactions arent boundlessly flattering. Throughout the novel, Offred speaks of her love for Luke and of how she misses him. While she may have been in addition dependent on him during their marriage, not many feminists could complain just about her missing her husband. Its her interactions with the other men of the novel, that are much more damning. About midway through the novel, Offred begi ns a unlike kind of kindred with her commander, the man who owns her. She begins to see him in his office. Their meetings are almost like dates, and Offred lets her guard down slightly. The commander becomes a sort of father figure for her. She uses him and lets him use her, but also begins to develop a slight affection for him. Through the commander, she meets slit, a young guard assigned to the house. Offred manages to begin seeing him on a regular basis as well. Nick and Offred make love, which satisfies her libido, but theres much more to their relationship than sex. Offred starts to tell Nick things. She talks to him for hours each shadow that theyre together while he just lies beside her and listens. uniform Luke and, to some extent, the commander before him, Nick makes Offred feel safe and cherished. She clings to Nick and lets him fill the void that Luke can no longer fill. Atwood could have chosen to create Offred as an independent being, but sooner she chose to cla ss her into a woman who needs men. On her own, Offred! seems lost, but once she has that strong male figure to hold her and tell her that everything go away be alright, she is much more content. atomic number 53 would be hard pressed to find a feminist that would admit to such utter dependence on the gelid sex. Though many feminists would like to claim Atwood as one of their own, her writing is at long last quite contrastive than that of the purely feminist writers. Its obvious that Atwood intentionally set herself away from these writers with The Handmaids Tale. At times, she seems to disagree with them completely, such as when she shows pornography in a favorable manner. At other times, she portrays feminists themselves as the coercive women they would like to be seen as, but its continuously with full disclosure of their human frailty. Atwood never bashes womens lib. Instead, she shows both sides of it. Like everything else in the novel, feminism is shown to have good and bad elements. Even in Atwoods go new world, ther e is no contraband and white. The language of certificate of women could slip from a demand for more freedom into a retreat from freedom, to a kind of neo-Victorianism. later all, it was the need to protect good women from sex that justified all manner of repression in the 19th century, including confining them to the home, barring them from combat-ready in the arts, and voting. contemporary Islamic women sometimes argue that assuming the veil and handed-down all-enveloping clothing is aimed at dealing with familiar harassment and sexual objectification. The language is feminist, but the result can be deep aged, as in this novel. Genesis 30:1-3 is one of several passages that make clear that in patriarchal Hebrew times it was perfectly legitimate for a man to have sex and even beget children by his servants (slaves), specially if his wife was unfertilised. It is strange how widespread was the custom described here, of having the infertile wife extort the fertile maidserv ant as she gave accept to symbolize that the babe i! s legally hers. Atwood extrapolates outrageously from this point, as is typical of dystopian writers: it is highly unlikely that the puritanical religious right would ever rent the sexual practices depicted in this novel; but she is trying to argue that patriarchal traditions which value women only as magnificence objects can be as put down as modern customs which value them as sex objects. She makes clear that this is a reductio ad absurdum, a suppositious exercise designed to stimulate thought about brotherly issues kind of than a realistic portrait of a equiprobable futureBIBLIOGRAPHYAtwood, Margaret Eleanor. The Handmaids Tale. sensitive York: Random House Inc, 1998. If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

If you want to get a full essay, visit our page: write my paper