Essays on The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood is the promising Canadian author who has written a number of famous poems and novels. She is mainly known as a great novelist and champion of the cause of Canadian literature. Atwood focuses on the binarity of existential experience in Canada. Land and mind, wilderness and civilization, alienation and identity are the opposing elements in Canadian life and she has immensely tried to create a sense of existential experience in her works. She “spent much of her early life in the northern Ontario and Quebec bush country” (Oxford Companion 31). Atwood’s famous dystopian fiction, The Handmaid's ...

1) In her essay "The Five Sexes," Fausto-Sternling (1993) argues that there are multiple intersexes that exist between male and female. As opposed to the Western idea of having only two sexes, there are different groups inbetween; hermaphroditic and intersexual people exist and must be acknowledged. In the case of Levi Suydam, an intersexual man who wished to vote in 1843; since he was considered a woman, he was initially barred from voting, since women could not vote at that time.

Fausto-Sternling's primary argument is that there are many biological instances of the intersexual body that exist ...

In the modern world, several activists have called upon different stakeholders to ensure equality is maintained between the two genders. A lot of caution is taken in most sectors to ensure that both genders are presented with equal opportunities in any endeavor. This is very different from what the practice was some years back. Traditionally, men were considered to be superior to women. Such discrimination saw women reduced to objects whose purpose was to ensure men lived happily. To overcome these traditional myths, women have struggled hard to air their views. One of the ways they have aired their ...

The purpose why I would campaign against the banning of the Handmaid novel is due to its themes which has major implication on the current societies worldwide. (Atwood, p7) The main themes in this novel involve Feminism, the place of the individual in society, sexuality and power, the power of language, gender conflict and moral relativism. It is due to these themes which has hierarchical condemnation that drives those at authority feel sliced and thus intrigue the Bunning of this novel. My aim is to campaign against banning of this novel since it has consideration of individuals who are ...

In The Handmaid's Tale, there are many different social groups within Gilead, all of which have varying degrees of power. The Commanders of the Faithful are the ruling class of Gilead, and are allowed a Wife and a Handmaid, among others. It is their solemn duty to procreate in order to continue the ruling class, and they reached that level of power because of their responsibility to maintain the power structure of Gilead. The Angels are the officers in the Gilead military; they are given the most honorable duty of fighting in wars with the intent of protecting and expanding the ...

The Handmaid's Tale movie is an adaptation of the novel The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. It is directed by Volker Schlondoff and the screen play written by Harold Pinter. The movie is about the republic of Gilead. It was set in totalitarian future of America. It tells of Kate’s story as a handmaid where she is subjected to bear children so as to avoid facing criminal charges. Kate nicknamed as Offred is the protagonist in the movie who is trained to become a Handmaid and a concubine for one of the barren couple’s ruling the countries religious primary regimes. ...

Night by Elie Wiesel

In the book, Night by Elie Wiesel, the theme of “the individual and the state” resonates throughout the book. In every chapter, the struggle between the individual and the state is brought out by the narrator. The German occupation of Hungary, including Eliezer’s own, brings with it a horrifying experience. The narrator, once captured together with his family, is taken to holding camp where he is separated from his mother and sisters. The narrator and his father undergo a series of ordeals as they are forced to watch and experience death. All along, Eliezer and his father stay alive through ...

In The Handmaid's Tale, there are many different social groups within Gilead, all of which have varying degrees of power. The Commanders of the Faithful are the ruling class of Gilead, and are allowed a Wife and a Handmaid, among others. It is their solemn duty to procreate in order to continue the ruling class, and they reached that level of power because of their responsibility to maintain the power structure of Gilead. The Angels are the officers in the Gilead military; they are given the most honorable duty of fighting in wars with the intent of protecting and expanding the ...

Offred and Leah are characters in The Handmaid’s Tale and The poisonwood Bible Respectively. They are both women who live in a patriarchal society and have to submit to the interests and needs of men rather than their own, Offred as a Handmaid and Leah as the daughter to a missionary. They struggle to survive this society, one by rebellion, the other by blending with the society. This paper seeks to provide a link between the Poisonwood Bible and the Handmaid’s Tale, as well as, the characters, similarities and differences in the books. The Handmaid tale was written by Margaret ...

Offred is the storyteller and the leading role of the novel, and we are narrated to the whole tale from her opinion, recognizing happenings and reminiscences as vibrantly as she does. She narrates the chronicles as it occurs, and illustrates to us the journeys of her mind via flashbacks and parentheses. She is clever, insightful, and kind. She has sufficient liabilities to make her human, but not so numerous that she turns into an insensitive individual. She also entails a sinister sense of humor that is a cemetery wit that creates her accounts of the dreary terrors of Gilead tolerable, even ...

Introduction

Offred is a patronymic name meaning Of Fred – referring to the man that the woman is serving. Offred is of a class of individuals who are kept as concubines mainly for reproductive purposes by the ruling class. Offred lost her autonomy to her husband by indoctrinating into the life of a handmaid.

Since Offred’s main purpose in the life of the commander was for reproduction purposes, and the commander was sterile, she strikes a deal with the commander’s wife to have sex with her driver in an effort to get her pregnant.

Offred who is the protagonist was separated from her ...