The Handmaid's Tale Comparative Essay

The gendered experiences of Jacobs and Douglass are also reflected in their writing styles. Jacobs writes with a lot of emotion, using mental images to project her experiences. She also uses an inconsistent structure in her narrative, constantly moving back and forth in time creating a complicated picture. Douglass, on the other hand, writes in a straightforward style. He structured his narrative using lots of logic to assist his argument against slavery.

The novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a story about a society set in a future world where women’s rights have been revoked. Many values change with this new regime of controlled women and strict laws. Despite the changes in the world it maintains many conservative, religious beliefs while also containing liberal, feminist beliefs simultaneously. Society in the futuristic world of Gilead is structured heavily off of readings from the Bible and traditional views of gender that have been in place for a long time. An example of the Bible being an important part of society is the idea of the Handmaids came from a passage in the Bible about two women, Rachel and Leah.

Asia Ihsan Section 5 Professor: Alex Poppe 11/6/2015 Gilead Republic is Successful in Reeducating Women Margaret Atwood, in her novel The Handmaid's Tale describes a futuristic, dystopian society called Gilead republic in which the system imposes Christianity religion as the main source for their laws. At the root of the laws is Patriarchy by which roles of the women only condensed to the roles that are assigned to them in Old Testament. All of the events that happening in the Republic of Gilead have happened at some point in history. This makes the novel realistic and authentic so that the reader can have better understanding of the purpose of the novel and its messages.

Hook: Not all women can be treated the same in a dystopian world; only the ones lucky enough to stay in place and do as they are told have a chance of surviving. Thesis: Margaret Atwood's book, "The Handmaid's Tale" shows us different motifs in her book such as gender roles and to show how social status/gender impacts power structures. Along with fertility and women without children or unable to get punished, killed, or some consequences to harm them and their lives. Showing how women with children get special treatment and are at a higher level than the other girls. Claim: No matter the role of a woman they should all be treated with a level of respect and kindness not pushed away and tossed aside.

Siena Kriegel Ms. Buhr p.1 Handmaid’s Tale 16 May 2023 Identity Having a strong sense of identity can bring a sense of power by giving you self-worth and purpose. In Gilead the government seeks to control everyone's lives and sense of self. In The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood develops the idea of identity to show that it gives a sense of power.

The differences and similarities between Offred and Ofwarren aka Janine two characters featured in Margaret Atwood 's Handmaid 's Tale exhibit the conditions one has to endure in a dystopian society, and the challenges one has to face within the society. Ofwarren and Offred are two characters that have many things in common which consists what they are were currently in their lives of being handmaid 's. However the still do have differences between one another due to what they endured in their past lives prior to when Gilead was in existence. Ofwarren life prior to when Gilead came into existence consisted of her being gang raped at the age of 14. Due to this incident she became pregnant and had an abortion.

Jacobs' narrative, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl," is more personal and emotionally charged than Douglass' narrative, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. " Jacobs' narrative is written in a more conversational tone and focuses on the intimate details of her life, while Douglass' narrative is more political and focuses on the broader themes of slavery and freedom. This difference in style reflects the different experiences of these writers and their intended audiences. Jacobs' narrative was aimed at white women, who were more likely to empathize with her story, while Douglass' narrative was aimed at a broader audience, including abolitionists and

Throughout history, women have often been subjected to prejudice and an inferior status to men. Due to sexist ideologies of men believing that women are not capable of controlling their own lives, women have often been reduced to the status of property. This concept is prominent in many pieces of literature to demonstrate the struggles women have to go through in a predominantly, male structured world. In the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, the author illustrates a woman’s battle in an extreme society ruled by men to express the misogyny occurring in the time period when it was written, 1894. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia summarizes Atwood’s story as one that “depicts one woman’s chilling struggle to survive in a society ruled by misogynistic fascism, by which women are reduced to the condition of property.”

The novel

Women's Rights are Human Rights: A Feminist Study of Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale Famous actress and activist, Emma Watson, once said, “If you stand for equality then you’re a feminist. Sorry to tell you”. Clearly, Emma Watson acknowledges the inequality and stereotypes related to being a woman. It is a commonly held view of Atwood’s The Handmaid’s

In ‘1984’ and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, the destruction of the individual is due to a combination of the destruction of independence, language and totalitarian monopolistic control. Complete collectivism, despite separate political beliefs, is presented throughout dictatorial societal jurisdiction as being the predominant way to maintain eternal power. The regimes seek to control individuals and therefore engage in continuing reconnaissance or surveillance of the populace. The mind is the most individual source of power to any person and totalitarianism aims to create complete orthodoxy by controlling and manipulating the mind. Both Orwell in ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’ and Atwood in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ are examples of how dystopian literature presents

The society of both novel, “1984” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” shares familiar methods in order to maintain higher power to control lower class citizens. Their absolute goal to gain complete dominance is through removing or destroying a piece of humanity in order for disobedience or rebellion to be impossible. Gilead and Ingsoc constantly condition citizens by monitoring and invading their privacy. Both regimes employed similarly styles of monitoring, such as spies organisations or simply through the surveillance camera.

In Margaret Atwood’s novel, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, Moira is depicted as the symbol for resistance to authority and represents hope to the Handmaids. Atwood presents her as a polar opposite to Offred. She is independent, strong-willed, and outspoken. Conversely, the pair can be argued to be doubles in the fact that they both ‘resist’ to the oppressive Republic in Gilead.

Margaret Atwood has seamlessly woven a tapestry of feminist elements - mainly regarding gender oppression - within her works. With that, using two of Atwood’s texts, The Handmaid’s Tale and The Year of The Flood, as the foundation for our literary research, we will be focusing on the commodification of the female flesh in both similar dystopian contexts. Commodification refers to the action or process of treating an object, or a person, as a raw material or product that can be bought and sold, or even treated as an object of which sovereignty can be held over by one. In both works, women are victimized and treated as sexual beings whose bodies and physical expressions can be freely used by the men who have power over them against their will. The two texts illustrate how society brings about the oppression of women and this exacerbates the commodification of women.

I have decided to transform Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel ‘The Handmaids Tale’ into a museum brochure that would be available long after the events in the book. The novel highlights a focus on the repression and domination of women for example “such freedom now seems weightless”. This is something I channelled into my museum brochure as it is a theme that is emphasised (example: “Women had one duty which was to reproduce”. Furthermore, I decided to incorporate a charity “US voice for all women” in which the museum regularly donates to. This is to emphasise the treatment of women within Gilead whilst still keeping to the genre format as through research I discovered many museums offer donations to charities they sponsor.