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Totalitarian Society In The Handmaids Tale By Margaret...
In the book The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood, the storyââ¬â¢s setting takes place in a totalitarian city, in which the government forces their will upon on the citizens and chooses what they will do in the future, especially for women. The decreasing birth rates causes the formation of this civilization, but the reader soon learn that the way the government tries to fix this problem is wrong, as it leads to more problems such as trust issues, and the inability to see others as equal. The characters in Margaret Atwoodââ¬â¢s The Handmaidââ¬â¢s Tale all have unique symbolism that represent a real-world problem of having a totalitarian society and how people would act towards it, that can be seen in their personalities, which allows for the readerâ⬠¦show more contentâ⬠¦Throughout the story, Moira stands for a symbol of hope to our narrator. She expresses this feeling when she says, ââ¬Å"Just to catch sight of a face like that is encouragement. If I could just see Moira, just see her, know she still exists.â⬠(73.) It is clear that one of the motivations for surviving and getting through this way of life is her friend. But as the story goes on we find out that the totalitarianism eventually breaks her down in the end. Offred finds out she is still in the society working a place called Jezebelââ¬â¢s (a strip club), and once she sees that not even Moira who has a ââ¬Å"strong and perseverantâ⬠personality couldnââ¬â¢t make it out, she herself begins to lose hope. Moira represents that after a while, a society built like this one, structured after a totalitarian government can break down even the strongest of spirits. She shows the difficulty of escaping this sexual totalitarian government, and how once a part of this society it is hard to escape; But Offred tries to fight this way of thinking, but because everyone is so ââ¬Å"on guardâ⬠due to this society structure it eventually leads to trust issues with everyone. The way the society is set up in the story, it has lead to nobody knowing really who they can trust. This especially applies to Offred, since her mind set is â⬠Iââ¬â¢ve crossed no boundaries, Iââ¬â¢ve given no trust, all is safe.â⬠(160) With thisShow MoreRelatedFeminism In The Handmaids Tale1709 Words à |à 7 PagesRepublic of Gilead, a dystopian world with a patriarchal society, is displayed in Atwoodââ¬â¢s, The Handmaidââ¬â¢s Tale. More specifically, the novel takes place in what used to be considered the United States but is now being called the Republic of Gilead where freedoms and rights have been excluded, especially for women. The society nurtures a ââ¬Å"theocratic, patriarchal, nightmare world created by men, with the complicity of womenâ⬠(ââ¬Å"Margaret (Eleanor) Atwoodâ⬠). The separation of the freedoms between the gendersRead MoreOppression Of Women In The Handmaids Tale1732 Words à |à 7 Pagesshown in The Handmaidââ¬â¢s Tale When describing the newly established society in The Handmaidââ¬â¢s Tale, the Commander states that ââ¬Å"better never means better for everyone [...] it always means worse, for someâ⬠(Atwood, 244). This accurately describes the nature of patriarchal societies, such as the society that is described by Margaret Atwood in The Handmaidââ¬â¢s Tale. The Republic of Gilead is a patriarchal society that has religious, and patriarchal values that benefit the men in the society, at the expensesRead MoreHandmaids1019 Words à |à 5 Pagesalso its language and construction. This notion articulates profoundly within Margaret Atwoodââ¬â¢s novel A Handmaidââ¬â¢s Tale as it is, after all, the authorââ¬â¢s manipulation of the language and construction which enacts as vehicles towards the readerââ¬â¢s understanding of the content. A Handmaidââ¬â¢s Tale is a confrontational post-modern work of feminist dystopian fiction; it depicts a protagonistââ¬â¢s struggle to adapt to a totalitarian and theocratic state where language has become corrupted. Without any doubtRead MoreThe Handmaid s Tale By Margaret Atwood1060 Words à |à 5 PagesIn a modern-day society, there are ideologies that select groups of people are to be subjugated. The Handmaidââ¬â¢s Tale by Margaret Atwood plays on this idea dramatically: the novel describes the oppression of women in a totalitarian theocracy. Stripped of rights, fertile women become sex objects for the politically elite. These women, called the Handmaids, are forced to cover themselves and exist for the sole purpose of providing children. The Handmaidââ¬â¢s Tale highlights the issue of sexism while alsoRead MoreThe Handmaidââ¬â¢s Tale by Margaret Atwood Essay2490 Words à |à 10 Pagesfreedom from,â⬠(Atwood 24). The Handmaidââ¬â¢s Tale, written by Margaret Atwood, is a novel set in the near future where societal roles have severely changed. The most notable change is that concerning women. Whereas, in the past, women have been gaining rights and earning more ââ¬Å"freedom toââ¬â¢sâ⬠, the women in the society of The Handmaidââ¬â¢s Tale have ââ¬Å"freedom fromsâ⬠. They have the freedom from being abused and having sexist phrases yelled at them by strangers. While this may seem like a safer society, all of theRead MoreFeminism in Top Girls and The Handmaids Tale Essay1635 Words à |à 7 PagesBoth Top Girls and The Handmaidââ¬â¢s Tale relate to contemporary political issues and feminism. Top Girls was written by Caryl Churchill, a political feminist playwright, as a response to Thatcherââ¬â¢s election as a first female British Prime Minister. Churchill was a British social feminist in opposition to Thatcherism. Top Girls was regarded as a unique play about the challenges working women face in the contemporary business world and society at large. Churchill once wrote: ââ¬ËPlaywrights donââ¬â¢t give answersRead MoreThe Handmaid s Tale By Margaret Atwood1709 Words à |à 7 PagesOne of Atwoodââ¬â¢s bestselling novel is Th e Handmaidââ¬â¢s Tale, a disturbing dystopian fiction novel. The Handmaidââ¬â¢s Tale is a complex tale of a womanââ¬â¢s life living in a society that endorses sexual slavery and inequality through oppression and fear. The female characters in Margaret Atwoodââ¬â¢s novel demonstrates how these issues affects womenââ¬â¢s lives. Offred is the individual with whom we sympathize and experience these issues. In The Handmaidââ¬â¢s Tale, Margaret Atwood addresses her perception of the ongoingRead MoreThe And The Handmaid s Tale By Margaret Atwood1260 Words à |à 6 PagesTherefore, societies should ensure that citizens are free to follow their individual desires for property because property is what ultimately determines the personality and value of each person in society. Nevertheless, totalitarian regimes are forced to restrain both intellectual and private property in order to ensure citizens follow the governmentââ¬â¢s revolutionary and oppressive rhetoric. Hence, this paper explores the role of property in two of the most well known fundamentalist societies in literatureRead MoreFeminism Lost in Margaret Atwoodââ¬â¢s A Handmaidââ¬â¢s Tale Essay1527 Words à |à 7 PagesIn Margaret Atwoodââ¬â¢s A Handmaidââ¬â¢s Tale, the human spirit has evolved to such a point that it cannot be subdued by complacency. Atwood shows Gilead as an extremist state with strong religious connotations. We see the outcome of the reversal of womenââ¬â¢s rights and a totalitarian government which is based on reproduction. Not only is the government oppressive, but we see the female roles support and enable the oppression of other female characters. ââ¬Å"This is an open ended text,â⬠¦conscious of the possibilitiesRead MoreMargaret Atwood : A Social Activist1225 Words à |à 5 PagesMargaret Atwood: a Social Activist Through Feminist Literature The 1980s signified the continuation of an era of social and political upheaval in the United States of America. At the forefront was a socially conservative agenda that aimed to rescind womenââ¬â¢s rights only ratified less than a decade before, a marked display of the nationââ¬â¢s desire to uphold traditional values that defined the preceding generation (Franà §oise). Among the devastating political climate, however, was Margaret Atwood:
Culture Vs Race Essay Research Paper Anthropologists free essay sample
Culture Vs. Race Essay, Research Paper Anthropologists have ever had their disagreements with the word civilization and its background significance. There have been legion definitions that have filtered through the field, yet non one that everyone can accept or hold with. Franz Boas, an anthropologist in the early twentieth Century, and his pupils, had a hard clip calculating out the aim of what civilization is. Culture is about larning and shared thoughts about behavior. Although Boas and his pupils had a somewhat different thought in head. They finally reached a decision, a definition of civilization in their position that is a contradiction in footings. Boas sates that, ? civilization was expressed through the medium of linguistic communication but was non reducible to it ; more significantly, it was non race. Culture became everything race was non, and race was seen to be what civilization was non ; given, unchangeable biological science, ? ( Visweswaran, p. 72 ) . Not merely concentrating on civilization, but anthropology has a significant connexion every bit good. Anthropology is the field in which the survey of cultural and biological fluctuations among human groups is studied. The trouble that some people have with characterizing civilization 2 is that they associate it with race, whereas that is non the instance. The two are unusually distinguishable. Race is something biological, a familial trait that is unconditioned, while civilization is something that is educated and experienced. Kamala Visweswaran and Lila Abu-Lughod are two good distinguished anthropologists that are presently learning at Universities in the United States. In their ain articles, they speak about civilization through an anthropologists position and detail their ain sentiments within. They may hold some different sentiments but each has their ain strong statements that prove their points. Lila Abu-Lughod? s article? Writing Against Culture, ? was written in 1991, and was published inside the book, Recapturing Anthropology. Within the article, she discusses civilization and many jobs with it. The rubric of her article speaks for itself, composing against civilization. There are many issues that she brings up about civilization, and assorted influential schemes for switching over from the civilization construct. She reflects on civilization and its demand to be redefined. In her treatment of civilization and difference she opens with, ? most American anthropologists believe or act as if? civilization, ? notoriously immune to definition and equivocal of referent, is however the true object of anthropological enquiry, ? ( Abu-Lughod, p. 143 ) . She illustrates how indispensable civilization is to anthropology and how anthropology helps to equilibrate civilization, every bit good as its ties with race. She considers civilization and race as antonyms. ? Culture is learned a nd can alter, ? ( Abu-Lughod, p. 144 ) , and 3 race is something congenital. Although she can merely picture and explicate the construct of civilization, and how it has become necessary and non the grounds behind it. Lila Abu-Lughod besides writes about feminism in respect to civilization. ? It has been of import for most womens rightists to turn up sex differences in civilization, non biological science or nature, ? ( Abu-Lughod, p. 144 ) . There have been many cultural differences between adult females and work forces, ? a different voice? possibly from Anglo-American womens rightist Gilligan and her followings, ( Abu-Lughod, p. 145 ) , every bit good as an account of the differences, ? whether through a socially informed psychoanalytic theory, a Marxist-derived theory of the effects of the division of labor and adult females? s function in societal reproduction, an analysis of maternal pattern or even a theory of sexual development, ? ( Abu-Lughod, p. 145 ) . With that there has been an progressively big demand for more adult females orientated civilization, a topographic point where they can show themselves and larn about their gender civilization, and non that of work forces. ? That is to st ate, if adult females portion something in common, it is non the consequence of a cosmopolitan bodily maturational procedure but of reciprocally experient insertions of race, category, and sexual orientation through patriarchal formations, ? ( Visweswaran, p. 79 ) . One of the schemes that Abu-Lughod provinces is descriptive anthropology of the specific, which in portion is assumed to upset the civilization construct. It is a fact that anthropologists write about what they study and in bend many generalise that what they are detecting is rather the same or similar throughout. ? Generalization, the characteristic manner of operation and 4 manner of authorship of the societal scientific disciplines, can no longer be regarded as impersonal description, ( Abu-Lughod, p. 149-150 ) . Furthermore, composing against civilization is to switch from composing in generalised footings. Ethnography of the peculiar is a manner to compose in more familiar footings every bit good as to compose about the specifics. ? And the specifics suggest that other unrecorded as we perceive ourselves populating, non as automatons programmed with? cultural? regulations, but as people traveling through life agonizing over determinations, doing errors, seeking to do themselves look good, digesting calamities and personal losingss, basking others, and happening minutes of felicity, ? ( Abu-Lughod, p.158 ) . The 2nd article is written by Kamala Visweswaran, ? Race and the Culture of Anthropology, ? which was published in the American Anthropologist Magazine, in March of 1998. She discusses civilization, although in a somewhat different mode so Abu-Lughod and she elaborates more on the connexion with race. Her chief statement within the article she states clearly at the beginning, ? Multiculturalism and civilization surveies have emerged as counterdisciplinary formations that radically foreground race and racial individuality exactly because the modern anthropological impression of civilization can non so make, ? ( Visweswaran, p. 70 ) . She quotes and inside informations a batch of what Franz Boas studied and wrote in his books and incorporates it with her ain positions on race and civilization. Boas himself had more of a? race theory, ? so a theoretical position on civilization, although he subsequently fixed that. ? It was instead the differentiations Boas made between race, linguistic communication, and civilization that provided the foundation 5 of a Americanist anthropology, with each term be givening toward the birthplace of a peculiar subdiscipline, ? ( Visweswaran, p. 71 ) . Although Boas was a really racialist and bias adult male, he did act upon much idea about civilization and anthropology. When discoursing the Negro job in society in concurrence with antisemitism, ( since he was a member if the Nazi party ) , he associated it with blood, since he is comparing blood towards a secondary race. His ideas on the black population was that if they got plenty white blood in their organic structures through transmittals, that their coloring material would fade out and go white, which would work out the racial and cultural job. In other words, if civilization which represents race and racial individuality, were to be Aryan so the blood would be superior and the race would hold high biological quality. A topographic point where Boas wanted everyone to be the same and there would be no racial or cultural jobs. With this new connexion to anthropology, the American Anthropological Association, ? passed a declaration denouncing Nazi racism: ? Anthropology provides no scientific footing for favoritism against any people on the land of racial lower status, spiritual association or lingual heritage, ? ( Visweswaran, p. 71 ) . ? The solution is non to replace civilization with race but to maintain the two footings in contructivist tenseness with one another, ? ( Visweswaran, p. 79 ) . Anthropology can non endeavor without civilization, yet there must be a differentiation with race. Culture is something that society is taught and learned, while race is something biological, and something to be 6 proud of. Boas and his thoughts were non yet educated as to what civilization means. He was overlooking and merely saw his ain position. Culture creates this diverse universe and in bend race creates life with civilization. Bibliography 7 Mentions Abu-Lughod, Lila. ( 1991 ) Writing Against Culture. Recapturing Anthropology. Richard Fox, erectile dysfunction. P, 137-162. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Visweswaran, Kamala. ( March, 1998 ) Race and the Culture of Anthropology. American Anthropologist. p. 70-83. American Anthropological
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