Essays on The Handmaid's Tale

Whilst identity in the modern day setting is seen as a fundamental right, in the seemingly dystopian society of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, identity is robbed by the government to create a subservient society. As is common with totalitarian regimes, people are divided and...

Humans can only experience life subjectively: each of us is rooted in our own individual positions that cause us to perceive differing shades of reality. An awareness of this universal condition permeates Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, as June, the protagonist, constantly hints at the...

In Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, a range of narrative techniques are used to reveal the severity of life in Gilead, a dystopia foreshadowing the corrupt future of American society under a fundamentalist Christian regime. Published in 1986 whereby the ‘Religious Right’ had gained influence,...

Inspiration can often be found even in the darkest of times. Often, when people are going through difficult times, they find inspiration in things such as religion, books, and even other people. In The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Offred, the novel’s protagonist, lives in...

Are Winston, Julia and Offred eventually made into ‘reluctantly-selfish’ victims of totalitarian regimes or are they innately ‘pragmatically-selfish’ beings? Discuss in relation to The Handmaid’s Tale and 1984. Offred and Winston, the main protagonists of the two strikingly similar dystopian fictions, The Handmaid’s Tale and...

In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred describes her life as a concubine in a dystopic and patriarchal world, where fertile women are forced to provide children to their corresponding commanders. Most notably, women are not permitted to read or write in the Republic of...

Since the beginning of history, language has been the most important means of communication and development amongst humans. Because of language’s enormous significance, manipulating it to control a large group of people is extremely effective. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood creates Gilead, an imaginary...

‘If I wanted to say just one thing to one person, I would write a letter.’ – Margaret Atwood Given the feminist reputation of The Handmaid’s Tale – it has been called a “feminist dystopia” – it is convenient to make the facile assumption that...

Throughout the novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” readers can charter the increasing limitations the patriarchy places on the female identity through the experiences of the protagonist and the first-person narration Offred delivers along with her flashbacks to the society that preceded, conveying both the initial lack...

The narrator in The Handmaid’s Tale is Offred, whose real name is June, and the book is in her point of view, which is first person, because she explains and describes everything she sees. She describes her thoughts and if she is thinking of something,...

In Margret Atwood’s 1985 book, The Handmaid’s Tale, she uses flashbacks, appeals to pathos, and references to religion to show how important feminism is to America and how we shouldn’t let our future progeny grow complacent and forget the struggles their ancestors went through. Throughout...

When the general public studies and analyzes fiction, the plot, exposition of characters, climax, and resolution seemingly serve as the “critical” elements highlighted in its evaluation. Provocative literature, however, employs several less predictable but arguably more poignant characteristics. Description and symbolism flesh out the plot...

In The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Offred, the main character lives in Gilead, a dystopia where fertile women are solely used to reproduce children. Known as handmaids, these women are confined into prison-like centers and forced to fornicate with an aging commander. In this...

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is an epistolary fiction whose 300 pages allow the reader to induce the structure of an entire apocalyptic society through the story of one character. The novel explores the author’s speculation on how American society will evolve in the...

Myths are essential to the human race. The Greeks and Romans used them to explain nature, life and death. Abrahamic and Eastern religions use them to modify behavior and mollify human anxiety about what happens postmortem. In order to keep a myth alive, to retain...

Over the course of history many governments, political figures, religious groups, and other organizations have used language to influence the population of every geographical area. Understanding that language and how it can be used to not only influence decisions from simple choices like what to...

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale presents a disturbing future dystopia in which all power is stripped from women and left in a male-dominated power structure. Throughout the novel, betrayal remains the over-arching theme, seen in men’s betrayal of women as well as the reason behind...

There are countless disparities between the society of Gilead and 1980s America. In The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the citizens of this dystopian totalitarian state have unconventional reactions to life, death, sex, and violence. When we are first introduced to Offred, our protagonist describes...

“Better for some never means better for all.” In everyday life we encounter people who can be nice, moderate, or are just monsters. Those monsters are corrupt, inconsiderate, or badly-behaved people. In literature this person is called the antagonist, someone who makes the main characters...