Published in 1985, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale emerged during an auspicious time for dystopian fiction, following works such as Adoux Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. These dystopian narratives provided readers with captivating examinations into bleak,...
After the emergence of the Republic of Gilead, the real names of the handmaids, like all their past life, were banned. When a handmaid moves to a new house, she takes on the name of a commander. Fred’s handmaid becomes Offred, Glen’s is Ofglen, etc....
Imagine, for a moment, living in a society where public information is strictly controlled, propaganda being your only source of knowledge, independent thought is frowned upon, and your freedoms are restricted as you are perceived to be under constant watch. Although written nearly two and...
Dystopian literature questions the power of language, both Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty - four’ showcases a variety of qualities necessary to advocate one’s freedom. Whilst both novelists share the common theme of language limiting both freedom and knowledge the two texts...
Feminism is a political and social movement; it shares a recurrent goal which is to achieve political, economic, personal, and social equality of sexes (IWDA). A dystopia is a society that is crumbling, decaying or in a tyrannized and terrorized state. They divulge the public’s...
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In his book, Dystopian Literature: A Theory and Research Guide, Professor M. Keith Booker argues that the principle literary strategy that dystopian literature utilizes is defamiliarization. He states that 'by focusing their critiques of society on imaginatively distant settings, dystopian fictions provide fresh perspectives on...
The manipulation of religion is a key idea in both The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and The Power by Naomi Alderman. The novels both share this idea of religion being exploited for their own ends. The Handmaid’s Tale features frequent misuse of biblical language...
Plot Overview The novel takes place in a dystopian future in the republic of Gilhead, which is a totalitarian and theocratic state that has taken over the United States of America. In this dystopian future, fertility rate has potentially decreased as a consequence of pollution...