The Handmaid’s Tale Essay -- Literature

Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids narrative, like so gentlemans gentlemany other dystopias before it, seeks to warn of disaster to come in through the lens of its authors society. In the breadth of its dystopian brethren, Huxleys Brave New World and Orwells 1984, The Handmaids Tale reflects not a society destroyed, but a society reorganized to disastrous effect. The reorganization of Offreds beingness is not one of simple misogyny, corruption, or political ideas, instead, as in 1984 the focus of this new world order lies in the destruction of the individual and with that, all concepts of personal gain, satisfaction, and desire. In its place, the new world order thrusts a quasi-communist idea of community. Personal sacrifice is instilled in the populace as the greatest good, and the death or misery of one individual is miserable when compared to the decided good of the community. In a true echo of communism, the handmaids bear children for those who cannot, truly in the stead o f from each according to their ability, to each according to their compulsion (Marx). In this Americanized distortion of communism, the community is placed on a pedestal above all else, and through this emphasis the cross-class destruction of individuality is assured. By utter the most prominent issue of the time, communism, and detailing it with unique aspects of American society, Atwood creates a realistic nightmare that warns not of the dangers of a particular political ideology, but of the redness of individual identity and the concept of self.The first people to have their individuality stripped away are, perhaps surprisingly, not the women of Offreds world, but the low be men. This destruction of masculine individuality begins long before the events of the book... ...as A Handmaids Tales most potent warning. With Gilead, the dangers of deifying society at the exist of its people are shown to be damning, dooming the society to eventual collapse and obscurity. In this , Atwood argues against excessive ideas community and for individualism and a reasonable amount of selfishness, as Ayn rand puts it, mans right to exist for his own rational self-interest (Rand 42). By creating a world of such individual belittlement, Atwood provides a powerful example of the dangers something lots like communism, the destruction of the self.Works CitedAtwood, Margaret Eleanor. The Handmaids Tale. New York Ballantine, 1985. Print.Marx, Karl Heinrich. Critique of the Gotha Program. Moscow Progress, 1970. N. pag. Print.Rand, Ayn. The Virtue of Selfishness. New York Signet, 1970. WorldCat. Web. 7 Feb. 2012.