'There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.'
Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' is an attempt by Atwood to shock. She draws together threads of superstitions and traditions and uses enough genuine societal belief to create a world that is shocking, upsetting and all to ready to imagine coming to fruit. Atwood's aim is to push at our cement views about civilisation and how civilised we are, she calls into question whether or not we are advanced, whether we've moved on from the misogynistic episodes of the past or whether we are merely waiting for a reason to go back. With this novel Atwood successfully questions human nature.
Another key tenant of our existence that Atwood questions is how our individual and collective identities are formed. How easy influenced are we? Are we as individual as we would like to believe? If, when push came to shove, our core beliefs were challenged, would we rebel understanding that the consequences would quite possibly be dire or would we, like Offred the protagonist of the novel, attempt to adapt and forget our previously held beliefs?
In the novel we follow Offred as she works her way through this new world, managing her previous life experience and slowly editing out the unhelpful or detrimental memories. Offering us only tenuous glimpses of her life, excluding such detail as her name and events actually leading up to this world wide change. This tenuous addition and omission of detail serves to titillate the reader with unknowns. The unknown becomes an entity driving everything within the narrative. It drives Offred's secrecy and her inability to confide in anyone, it shown through the daughter and her whereabouts, it is shown through our lack of insight into how the society came into existence. It is shown most of all through the ending, we are left bereft as a character we have analysed and interpreted throughout her progression is left with an unknown ending.
'The Handmaid's Tale' is truly tragic in more ways in more ways than one. It questions the small ideas and attitudes we take for granted and swells them and takes them to such an extreme that they become scary and different and very sinister. Atwood causes us to look at the assumptions we make daily, especially about gender, and question their validity, their origin and most of all their effect.
Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' is an attempt by Atwood to shock. She draws together threads of superstitions and traditions and uses enough genuine societal belief to create a world that is shocking, upsetting and all to ready to imagine coming to fruit. Atwood's aim is to push at our cement views about civilisation and how civilised we are, she calls into question whether or not we are advanced, whether we've moved on from the misogynistic episodes of the past or whether we are merely waiting for a reason to go back. With this novel Atwood successfully questions human nature.
Another key tenant of our existence that Atwood questions is how our individual and collective identities are formed. How easy influenced are we? Are we as individual as we would like to believe? If, when push came to shove, our core beliefs were challenged, would we rebel understanding that the consequences would quite possibly be dire or would we, like Offred the protagonist of the novel, attempt to adapt and forget our previously held beliefs?
In the novel we follow Offred as she works her way through this new world, managing her previous life experience and slowly editing out the unhelpful or detrimental memories. Offering us only tenuous glimpses of her life, excluding such detail as her name and events actually leading up to this world wide change. This tenuous addition and omission of detail serves to titillate the reader with unknowns. The unknown becomes an entity driving everything within the narrative. It drives Offred's secrecy and her inability to confide in anyone, it shown through the daughter and her whereabouts, it is shown through our lack of insight into how the society came into existence. It is shown most of all through the ending, we are left bereft as a character we have analysed and interpreted throughout her progression is left with an unknown ending.
'The Handmaid's Tale' is truly tragic in more ways in more ways than one. It questions the small ideas and attitudes we take for granted and swells them and takes them to such an extreme that they become scary and different and very sinister. Atwood causes us to look at the assumptions we make daily, especially about gender, and question their validity, their origin and most of all their effect.
