From Democracy to Totalitarian Theocracy in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale
From Democracy to Totalitarian Theocracy in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale

Summary/Abstract: Margaret Atwood’s science fiction novel The Handmaid’s Tale represents a prime example of political and religious transition. The democratic American society and all of its liberties is overthrown and a totalitarian theocracy violently replaces it. People are divided into new categories and the Republic of Gilead preaches a form of phoney morality based on an extreme version of the Old Testament. This new order is founded on terror and oppression. Various roles are designated to women. Such women as Offred, the protagonist of Atwood’s novel, have no choice but to lend their bodies to the goals of the new regime. Their sole function is to breed. However, this generation of transition remembers the past and is unwilling to blindly embrace the newly established order.Secret acts of rebellion become the norm and people try to keep their memories alive, no matter how much the Republic of Gilead strive at complete oblivion. The text of the novel is interspersed with flashbacks and the chronology is often broken, just as the individuals themselves are physically crushed under the burden of transition and change.

• Details
• Contents