Margaret Atwood’s

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Sit Dolor Amet The Contemporary, Emergent, and Popular Literature
Contents
 About Novelist
 Characters
 Themes
 Critical Analysis
 Conclusion
 Margaret Eleanor Atwood
November 18, 1939 (age 80)
Born /Residence Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
University of Toronto(BA)
Education Harvard University (MA)

Period 1961–present
Historical fiction  speculative fiction  science
Genre fiction  dystopian fiction
 Surfacing (1972)
 Cat's Eye (1988)
Notable works  Alias Grace (1996)
 The Blind Assassin (2000)
 Oryx and Crake(2003)

1985 – Governor General's Award for English-

language fiction (winner)
 1986 – Booker Prize (nominated)
 1986 – Nebula Award (nominated)
 1987 – Arthur C. Clarke Award (winner)
Awards  1987 – Prometheus Award (nominated)
 Commonwealth Literature Prize (winner)
 Welsh Arts Council International Writer's Prize
(winner)
 Characters

Offred The Commander Serena Joy

Offred is the protagonist and narrator. The Commander says that he is a Serena Joy is a former
In trying to escape Gilead, she was sort of scientist and was televangelist and the
separated from her husband and
previously involved in something Commander's wife.
daughter. She is part of the first
generation of Gilead's women, proved similar to market research before
fertile, she has been placed as a Gilead's inception. His first name
"handmaid" in the home of "the is "Fred".
Commander" and his wife Serena Joy,
to bear a child for them.
 Characters

Ofglen Nick Moira

Ofglen is a neighbor of Nick is the Commander's Moira has been a close friend of
Offred's and a fellow chauffeur, who lives above Offred's since college. She
Handmaid. She is partnered the garage. escapes by stealing an Aunt's pass
and clothes, but Offred later finds
with Offred to do the daily
her working as a prostitute in a
shopping. party-run brothel.
 Characters

Luke
Luke was Offred's husband
before the formation of Gilead.
Since their attempt to escape to
Canada, Offred has heard nothing
of Luke. She wavers between
believing him dead or
imprisoned.
Themes
 Power
One of the most important themes of The Handmaid's Tale is the presence and manipulation of
power. Gilead is a theocratic dictatorship, so power is imposed entirely from the top. There is no
possibility of appeal, no method of legally protecting oneself from the government, and no hope
that an outside power will intervene. One of the characteristics of this kind of power is that it is
extremely visible., in Gilead, the government must cover the streets and even individual homes
with guards and guns. The possibility of surveillance must be constant. The only place that people
are free is in their own heads, creating a significant amount of isolation between individuals.
Despite the Gilead regime's success at imposing order, Atwood's characters demonstrate that , they
will still find a way to maintain control over themselves and other individuals. Through her
relationship to the Commander, Offred gains real power, but she is afraid to test its limits.
Ultimately she discovers that her powers over him were useless, as he will do nothing to save her
from the wrath of his wife.
 Sexuality

The focus of the Gileadean regime is on the control of sex and sexuality. They execute gays
and lesbians; they destroy pornography and sexual clothing; they kill abortion doctors; they outlaw
divorce and second marriages; and they ritualize bizarre sexual relations that they believe are
supported by the Bible. It is unsurprising at the end of the novel to learn that the Gileadean regime
eventually destroys itself. Illicit sexual practices undermine the regime quickly becomes clear. The
Commander reveals not only that he carried out a series of affairs with his Handmaids, but that
there is a more or less "secret" club where higher-ups consort with women solely for sexual
purposes. These actions demonstrate that the government cannot expunge illicit sexual acts merely
by threatening fearful punishments. In fact, by destroying the privacy of even condoned sexual
acts, the government seems to encourage those in power to act out against these regulations.
 The Place of the Individual in Society

Gileadeans are acting under the idea of Utilitarianism: they are attempting to
do what they think is best for them. One of the major problems is The Gileadeans
decide that fertility is always a problem in the woman, never in the man, as was
the case in the Bible. As a result, the regime wastes many fertile handmaids on
clearly infertile Commanders. This reasoning drives handmaids to violate the
sexual mores of the new society and make use of doctors or other accessible men
to get pregnant. Ultimately, the Gileadean leaders place their religious beliefs over
the rights of the individual or the survival of the group.
 Feminism
While Atwood is widely viewed as a feminist writer, The Handmaid's Tale presents a complex
view of feminism. Atwood stresses in many interviews that the extreme nature of Gilead is a
result of the conservative and feminist viewpoints simultaneously being espoused during the
time that she wrote the novel. Moira is the novel's mouthpiece for many of these ideas, and
when Offred remembers the arguments they had, she is reiterating many of the ideas that
influenced the novel. The most important idea was Moira's belief that living solely with
women would solve many of the problems women were currently facing. Most women have
very little contact with men. Women are expected to support each other in times of birth,
death and sickness. The utopian ideal of this community is far from the reality. Offred's
mother serves as a mouthpiece for a different sort of feminism. Offred's mother marched for
abortion rights, the banning of pornography, and many other women's issues before the
institution of the new regime. Offred didn't consider herself a feminist. She feared feminism
would alienate her from men. She did not like it when her mother argued with Luke, trying to
get him to admit that the only reason he cooked was because of feminism.
 Gender Conflict
While Atwood asks a great many questions about gender conflict, she does not seem to
provide readers with any concrete answers. The Commander tries to explain to Offred why
the new regime is better for men. Would the Commander think the new regime was better if
his survival was not bound up with his support of the new regime?.
The overarching question is whether gender conflict exists at all. Is there actually more
conflict between men and women than between women and women or men and men?
Though there is little discussion of the relationships between men in The Handmaid's Tale,
relationships between women are not necessarily superior to those between women and men.
In general, relationships between men and women are not shown in an even remotely
positive light. The exception is the relationship between Offred and Nick: the strength of that
relationship lies in Nick's sacrifice of his own safety in order to be with and help Offred.
Critical Analysis
The Handmaid’s Tale- a dystopian novel with some aspects of
science fiction covers many themes such as:

identity, love, helplessness, femininity and

freedom, but most prominently, it highlights the
issues of subjugation of women, of their minds
and bodies
 Twentieth century elements

 War , environment pollution, radiation, capitalism are depicted in the novel

 Political power is in the hand of radical political group and a totalitarian
military government
 Limited citizens’ right

 State limited right of citizen especially of women.

 Like the second phase of feminist movement women are unable to
hold property, forbidden to read and write above all considered as
property of patriarchal society
 Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses

The colonizers in Gilead state created a class called Aunts to govern

over the handmaids and to teach them their ideology.
 Repressive State Apparatuses

If anyone is proved against the lay of the land should be sent to work
as a prostitute or to clear radiational dust.
 Politics

 Women bodies are politicized and controlled by the state. Everything is

controlled by the government.
 Secret police is always looking for the rebel.
 State control freedom of speech so people don’t have to speak over publicly.
 Those who disobey law are given strict punishment to terrorize people.
 Power owners have the right to do everything which is prohibited for common
mass.
 Feminism

 Atwood wrote the novel on the basis of her imagination that how
women will face the future world.
 In future she imagines women will lose there basic rights and
identity by the patriarchal power owners.
 Religion
 State impose rules in the name of religion but in reality not interested in
religion, they are interested in power.
 They legitimate everything in the name of religion and force women to serve as
Handmaid but adultery is strictly punishable
 The concept of good & bad is state determined
 If any handmaid is unable to provide baby to the appointed master will face
strict punishment. If she take a baby with the help of other both will be
punished brutally. So there is no way to get out of the scenario rather death is
sure for the handmaid.
 Dystopian novel

 Dystopia is an imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or

injustice, typically one that is totalitarian or postapocalyptic. Masculine system
is the major cause of social and political problems and responsible for women
suppression.
 In Gilead is a state where a fundamentalist group is running the state in the
name of religion and imposing law to suppress the people and people don’t have
the basic human rights.
 Censorship

 Totalitarian government sensors media and media works as a

shadow of government’s voice to regulate people’s view.
 According to Michel Foucault’s Power-Knowledge-Discourse, a
social discourse is determined by power owners as they determine
the knowledge of good and bad.
 Conclusion

 Atwood explains that her novel is a critique of power structures; how they
work and how they manipulate people’s minds in a tragic way.
 Offred’s suffering is more psychological than physical.
 Atwood herself belongs to a Puritan background, thus it can be fairly said
that The Handmaid’s Tale is a study of power, and how it operates and
how it deform or shapes the people who are living within that a kind of
regime.