Term Paper on "Novel the Handmade's Tale"

Term Paper 4 pages (1035 words) Sources: 0

[EXCERPT] . . . .

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood tells the story of an America

suddenly run under a theocracy called Gilead. This theocracy is formed in

the United States after the US president and members of Congress are

assassinated. Written in the form of a memoir, the book is set in modern

times and tells the story of a woman who is taken into custody after she

attempts to escape the theocracy by escaping to Canada. She is then

assigned as a "handmaid" to a Commander of the Secret Police. She will act

as a breeder, attempting to become impregnated by the Commander so he can

have the children he has so far been unable to have with his own wife.

In the new world of Gilead, women have no rights. They are not allowed to

have credit cards, they are not allowed to have jobs outside of menial

tasks assigned to them by men and women who are "undesirable" such a

lesbians, feminists or those who have performed abortions are "resettled" -

to the Colonies (a radioactively contaminated area left over after a

nuclear war). Every fertile woman who either had an affair or were the

second wife on a man before the revolution are rounded up and sent to the

Rachel and Leah Indoctrination Center (named so because Rachel and Leah are

characters in the Bible who offered their own handmaids to their husbands,

so the handmaids could conceive children).

The main character is Offred. We do not know what her name was before she

becomes a slave to the commander. She is re-named Offred because her

Commander's name if Fred, and she is chattel to him. We learn that she was

a wife and mother before the revolution. When we first meet her she is

living in the house of the Commander and essentially spends her days

waiting to become impregnated, to provide offspring for the Commander and

his current wife. Though flashback, she describes her time in the Rachel

and Leah center, where she meets Moira - a strong willed friend from

University and the Matrons who care for and teach the handmaid's, Aunt

Lydia and Aunt Elizabeth. There is Janine, a woman who fiercely desires

approval by any means who tries to follow all the rules of the center and

eventually has a nervous breakdown. When Moira attempts to escape the

center by pretending she has appendicitis, she is beaten severely.

Eventually is able to escape.

Offred, as she reveals in later parts of the book, is living on borrowed

time. She has been assigned to another Commander before and she has not

been able to conceive. Should she not be able to bear a child for the

Commander, she runs the risk of being sent to the Colonies. Offred spends

her days shopping for food for the house, attending prayer groups and

mostly just sitting in her room waiting for the time she will be called to

the Commander once per month to attempt conception. In this gruesome

ritual, she has intercourse with the Commander (essentially a rape) with

the Commander's wife present.… READ MORE

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