Handmaid\'s Tale: An Unfathomable Future

¶ … Handmaid's Tale: An Unfathomable Future

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood manages to combine two opposing themes into a single motif. What I mean by this is that the importance of women's role in the universe as the only gender able to bear children is highly glorified. Yet the importance of women in any other capacity is entirely diminished. So on the one hand, we have the understanding of the men that the human race will die without women, which seems to categorize women as an integral and necessary part of society. Yet on the other hand, the few women who are still able to bear children are treated as if they are nothing more than vessels. They are not allowed to vote, read, hold jobs or think for themselves -- a state of existence that strongly resembles slavery.

Offred, the protagonist of the novel, is essentially a slave and a vessel for the couple she is assigned to bear a child for in the vastly barren nation of Gilead, which is alleged to be the future replacement for America. Offred is not only stripped of her dignity as she is forced to have sex with the Commander in the presence of his wife, Serena Joy, but she is also stripped of her identity. Her real name has in fact been replaced by her ownership by the Commander, whose name is Fred. So the name Offred is just a combination of the words "of" and "Fred." He owns her. And yet he cannot bear a child without her. So in a way, he is enslaved to her as well.

Offred does not feel at all "honored" to be in the position she is in, even though those that surround her think she should feel that way. Before Gilead became stricken with such a highly infertile female population, and before non-sterile females became such a valuable commodity, Offred had a life of her own. She had a husband and a child, whom she had not seen for years because they were separated when attempting to flee the new Republic, which was determined to stifle any rights that women had accrued over the years. Now she is forced to accept her demeaning role as a handmaid and forget that she ever had a family, a voice to speak out, or any rights at all.

Offred's past is ultimately what makes her present so unbearable. If she had never known any other way to live, then it would be easier for her to accept her lot in life as a handmaid. However the fact that she had experienced so many more freedoms before the coup and the chemicals and the pollution that changed everything, makes it all the more difficult for her to adjust. Her situation is not unlike someone who has lived free and then suddenly finds themselves spending life in prison. Had they lived their whole life in prison, they would not know what it is like to live free, so they would likely handle it much better than someone who had to make the adjustment from one way of life to a much less desirable one.