The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood Essay - 2490 Words

â€Å"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 freedom from,† (Atwood 24). The Handmaid’s Tale, written by Margaret Atwood, is a novel set in the near future where societal roles have severely changed. The most notable change is that concerning women. Whereas, in the past, women have been gaining rights and earning more â€Å"freedom to’s†, the women in the society of The Handmaid’s Tale have â€Å"freedom froms†. They have the freedom from being abused and having sexist phrases yelled at them by strangers. While this may seem like a safer society, all of the â€Å"safeness† comes at a drastic cost. Atwood depicts a dystopia in The Handmaid’s Tale†¦show more content†¦The main character, Offred, is a woman who lives in the Republic of Gilead. The Republic of Gilead overthrew the original United States governme nt and quickly began to take away women’s rights. As a result, Offred was forced to become a Handmaid, a fertile woman whose job is to bear children for a Commander who has an infertile Wife. The story follows Offred through her ordeals as a Handmaid with virtually no rights. She hopes that she will become pregnant so that she will not be sent away with the sterile Unwoman, who are exiled to the Colonies to clean up deadly pollution. Offred misses what the country used to be and struggles to survive in the dystopia that has erupted. A totalitarian regime is a very large piece of what is typically required for a dystopia, and it is certainly present in The Handmaid’s Tale. A totalitarian regime is a political system where the state has complete control and authority over the society. One way that the Republic of Gilead controls its citizens is through surveillance. However, the surveillance is not equal in who is monitored. In the critical essay â€Å"Sexual Surveillan ce And Medical Authority in Two Versions Of The Handmaid’s Tale†, Pamela Cooper states that â€Å"The Handmaid’s Tale thus brings together pre-Christian notions of absolute patriarchal authority—the omniscient, avenging God—with postmodernist theories of the objectifying and possessive maleShow MoreRelatedThe Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood954 Words   |  4 PagesImagine growing up in a society where all women are useful for is to reproduce. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is an excellent novel of what could potentially be the fate of the future one day. The main character, Offred, moves into a new home where she is there to perform â€Å"rituals† with the Commander, head of the house, so she can hopefully reproduce herself. Basically, she is a sex slave and birthing a healthy child is all she is wanted for. 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The charactersRead More Society in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood Essay2519 Words   |  11 PagesThe novel, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, by Margaret Atwood focuses on the choices made by those controlling the society of Gilead in which increasing the population and preservation of mankind is the main objective, instead of freedom or happiness. The society has undergone many physical changes that have extreme psychological consequences. I believe Atwood sees Gilead as the result of attitudes and events in the early 1980s, which have spiralled out of control. ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ reflects Atwood’sRead MoreCompare And Contrast The Handmaids Tale And Margaret Atwood1659 Words   |  7 PagesA dystopia is a common genre among many novels and all novels are able to capture the problems within the current society. These problems can vary and each different setting has different problems than the other. 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