Handmaiden's tale

The Commander comments in chapter 32 that men could not feel before Gilead, but it seems that Offred. Gilead erases the ability to fell anything like love or happiness. In depriving her and other women of the opportunity of love. Offred can't help the feeling what it was like to be loved like by Luke and her child. She can only cling to the memories that she shared and what loving him felt like. She thinks that the next generation will not memory of the feeling of love or anything happy. Which is that the kids of the next generation will not be able to experience  what love is like because in the new world love is useless.

This also I think that Aunt Lydia's comment on becoming ordinary. Is the fact that constantly being oppressed in this world is very normal and no one having feelings or freedom is not the kind of world I want to live in

I feel as though there is a reversal in gender roles and chain of power also in this chapter. The commanders think that now that Gilead is in order that getting sex from women is easy by say "There was nothing for them anymore..I'm not talking about sex..That was part of it, the sex was to easy." Now that the power of women's rights are taken away it makes sex meaningless and there is no feeling. By making men the head of things in society like soldiers or commanders make men seem like they have a purpose in life now and women are just taken advantage of that have no rights.  I feel as those both freedom of men and women freedom's are both because there are certain that everyone has to follow. The benefits of the new world where women don't really have much rights and men are the means of survival for the women to have kids is not really worth it.

Comments

  1. Paige ShrevesNovember 10, 2017 at 9:25 AM

    I enjoyed reading your post because you brought up some solid points that I had not considered in detail before. And relating to my last post about the Handmaid’s Tale, this is the strong effect we can see from totalitarian states. I believe that Atwood purposely created the text to be this way prove a point that societies that are male dominated and women are ignored then removes all sources of love from it. Also, in your last paragraph you discuss the idea of how this society removes woman’s rights which then creates meaningless sex. This is also no coincidence that Atwood is making this point on purpose.

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