1. Compare the dystopia of Gilead with the Oceania of George Orwell’s 1984, the futuristic London of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the California setting of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and the imprisoning world of Ayn Rand’s Anthem. Enumerate characteristics and restrictions that repress, embitter, disenfranchise, and dishearten residents. Explain […]
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Aged Primipara an elderly first-time mother, as opposed to multipara, the medical term for a woman who has borne several children. Agent Orange a defoliant employed by the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War to strip the jungle of hiding places for Communist insurgents. Returning soldiers discovered that exposure to […]
Read more Study Help Full Glossary for The Handmaid’s TaleCritical Essays A Note on the Film Version of The Handmaids Tale
Filmed in Germany in 1990 for Cinecom, Director David Ray’s version of Atwood’s novel captures the desperation and duplicity of Gilead at the same time that it alters drastically the plot and style of the story. Some significant changes in the action include these: identity of Offred as Kate, a […]
Read more Critical Essays A Note on the Film Version of The Handmaids TaleCritical Essays Setting of The Handmaid’s Tale
Atwood draws settings evocative of a fast-paced shift of moods. By probing Offred’s pensive moments in the quiet of her Byzantine cell or on languorous walks to town by way of the cemetery or river, the author balances ennui and too much introspection with unforseen moments of unpredictability. Without warning, […]
Read more Critical Essays Setting of The Handmaid’s TaleCritical Essays Themes of The Handmaid’s Tale
Central to The Handmaid’s Tale is the failed attempt to produce stasis in the form of a one-dimensional, ultra-conservative society. Like the figures marching across Serena Joy’s knitting or the Handmaids walking two by two to the meat market, Gilead’s citizenry is the product of a fiasco: a mock factory […]
Read more Critical Essays Themes of The Handmaid’s TaleCritical Essays Women in The Handmaids Tale
Atwood, who is famous for depicting themes of betrayal and treachery through the creation of strong and vulnerable female characters, produces a vivid set of possibilities with the women of The Handmaid’s Tale. The interplay between Aunts and Handmaids-to-be creates an intense effort at subjugation and indoctrination. The creators of […]
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Like a portion of modern fiction writers — Ray Bradbury, Fred Chappell, and Toni Morrison — Margaret Atwood is, by nature, training, and profession, a poet. Her facile expression of thought processes and manipulation of language to probe the psychological perversions in Gilead produce fascinating, multi-level rhetorical maneuvers, often juxtaposing […]
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A one-of-a-kind tour de force, Margaret Atwood’s futuristic The Handmaid’s Tale refuses categorization into a single style, slant, or genre. Rather, it blends a number of approaches and formats in a radical departure from predictable sci-fi or thriller fiction or feminist literature. Paramount to the novel’s success are the following […]
Read more Critical Essays Literary Analysis of The Handmaid’s TaleMargaret Atwood Biography
Early Years Margaret Atwood, one of the twentieth century’s most forceful, innovative poets, novelists, and humanistic Cassandras, delights in a Connecticut relative, Mary Webster. After being hanged for witchcraft, Webster revived and escaped a second date with the noose. Such resilience and tenacity is the stuff of Atwood’s fiction, as […]
Read more Margaret Atwood BiographySummary and Analysis The Femaleroad
Termed “Byzantium in the extreme,” Gilead, a fascist republic shaped out of an unnamed New England city by a repressive cabal of the religious right, contains enough texture to suggest a college town reminiscent of Boston. Atwood mentions Massachusetts Avenue, students sculling the river, shoppers riding subways from the outskirts […]
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