This is a TV series broadcasted starting with April 2017 by the streaming TV network Hulu. The TV series is based on the similarly titled best-selling novel by Margaret Atwood and portrays a dystopian world which faces a massive infertility crisis. The power in US has been taken by a...religious radical group which discriminates against women and uses fertile women as surrogate mothers to give birth to babies for the society’s top class. Essays on this TV series are especially relevant since the latter is a good reminder of how fragile democracies are if people don’t do enough to protect their civic rights in time. Check out the essay samples in this rubric for more inspiring topics.
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,...
“Feminist readings often discuss the “jobs” that are traditionally assigned to women, such as tending a home, caring for a husband, and bearing children, and the ways in which these jobs are used to keep women in a powerless position. Female sexuality, and the way...
‘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...
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...
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...
Through a focus upon gender, both Elia Kazan’s film of Tennessee Williams’ original play, A Streetcar Named Desire (Warner Bros, 1951) and Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale (Vintage, 1986) effectively manage to mirror the concerns of both time and place. Despite differing contextual influences,...
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...
Camus wrote that “the world is ugly and cruel, but it is only by adding to that ugliness and cruelty that we sin most gravely”. Dystopian novels can be both a mirror and a magnifying glass, reflecting our world and exaggerating aspects of it to...
“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...
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...
Texts are, by nature, cultural artefacts, intrinsically influenced by the societys from which they emerge. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) offers a “twist of today’s society” – the phallocentric Gileadean dictatorship, as seen through the eyes of narrator Offred. Set in a totalitarian and...
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...
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 world of literature, it is all about your reputation. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, an Orwellian romp into the near future lead by a female protagonist, received both the kiss of death and the gift of notoriety when it was labeled a “feminist...
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...
Kindness, when given out, is habitually expected to be returned. More often than not it is seen that kindness, in fact, is given so that something else of value may be returned. Kindness is often exchanged for similar invaluable things like favouritism and prosperity, making...
Arthur C. Clarke Award, Cat's Eye, Gilead, Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake, Resistance during World War II, Resistance movement, Science fiction, The Handmaid's Tale
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...
Arthur C. Clarke Award, Cat's Eye, Communication, Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake, Patriarchy, Republic of Gilead, Science fiction, Sex organ, 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...
Arthur C. Clarke Award, Cat's Eye, Gender role, Gilead, Government, Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake, Republic of Gilead, Science fiction, The Handmaid's Tale
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...
Every piece of literature has already been written; the reason for this is the phenomenon of archetypes. Archetypes are symbols, images, characters, ideas, and themes that are occurring all throughout literature. Carl Joung believed that these archetypes are due to the human unconsciousness. He stated...
Archetype, Arthur C. Clarke Award, Cat's Eye, Collective unconscious, Color, Gilead, Jungian archetypes, Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake, Republic of Gilead
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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 Handmaids Tale is a piece of literature that teaches the reader universal truth as well as life lessons. The novel has been banned in some school for being too offensive to Christians and sexuality explicit. Other think the novel should be read by many....
Numerous writers have used a narrative form to convey their predictions of the future, they criticise their current society by asking questions based on their contextual values and concerns. The main purpose of these dystopian worlds is to warn audiences about the path the writer...
Introduction The conflict between pursuing personal desire or choosing to conform is a common human experience that is explored in both Stephen Daldry’s film “Billy Elliot” and Margaret Atwood’s best-selling novel “A Handmaids Tale”. Both composers present the protagonists with situations of heightened adversity to...
In harsh circumstances, people try to hold onto a thought or memory of a person or idea that gives them long lasting hope. This inspiration lets the hopeless party believe that their situation will improve. In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale written by Margaret Atwood,...
Margaret Atwood’s novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale” is set historically and geographically in the American 1980s, with its “liberal anxieties” concerning women’s and civil rights. It is a representation of the individualistic and pluralistic feminism of the late 60s and 80s. Encompassing a span of “feminine...
Offred, The Commander, Serena Joy, Ofglen, Nick, Moira, Luke, Professor Pieixoto, Aunt Lydia, Cora
Symbols/motives
Rape and sexual violence, religious terms used for political purposes, similarities between reactionary and feminist ideologies, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University, the Handmaids’ red habits, a palimpsest, the Eyes
Themes
Women’s bodies as political instruments, language as a tool of power, the causes of complacency
Quotes
"The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil."
"We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it."
"You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself."
"We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?"
"You can't help what you feel, but you can help how you behave."
Interesting facts
In November 2018, Atwood announced a sequel titled The Testaments, which was published in September 2019.
The American Library Association ranked The Handmaid's Tale 37th in their "100 Most Disputed Books of 1990-2000".
In 2019, The Handmaid's Tale still ranks as the seventh most problematic book due to profanity, vulgarity, and sexual innuendo.
In writing the novel, Atwood was also inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1978-79, when a theocracy was established that drastically curtailed women's rights and imposed a strict dress code on Iranian women, much like that of Gilead.
Most essays are graded by GradeFixer's experts
