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.
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...
“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...
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,...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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
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 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....
“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...
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...
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...
In all societies exists some sense of spirituality. This may be religion or simply a sense of mindfulness and connection. While this aspect may be beneficial for communities, it may oppositely corrupt depending on in which ways it is enacted and received. In Margaret Atwood’s...
Literature written in our times is the most effective when they are able to give readers a message that can directly correspond to the real world they are living in today. Through contemporary literature, readers can be made aware of conditions in society the time...
Arthur C. Clarke Award, Environment, It Was Written, Literature, Margaret Atwood, Natural environment, Novel, Science fiction, Social issues, Social issues in the United States
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...
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