Free Essays on The Handmaids Tale

Offred and Sir Gawain A hero is a person honored for his/her achievement of courage and nobility, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life. Offred from the The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood and Gawain from Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, by Anonymous are the protagonists in these works of literature who are admired for their good qualities. Offred and Sir Gawain show some traits of bravery. However neither Offred nor Sir Gawain did anything extremely brave, nor do they achieve anything great. These characters reveal qualities of fear, pride, selfishness, and when faced with the situation of death, act like any other ordinary human being, which means they cannot be honored as heroes. When the president was killed, the government suspended the constitution. â€Å"There wasn’t even rioting in the streets† (Atwood 172). Offred did nothing to even try to stop these events from occurring. Society began falling apart. Offred had her accounts suspended and lost her job. Offred did nothing to stop or even prevent this because she feared society. â€Å"Nobody wanted to be reported for disloyalty† (Atwood 180). There is no doubt that it would have been hard or even impossible to prevent these acts of oppression and persecution. A real hero would have at least tried and would have laid everything on the line even their life to accomplish their goal or cause. Offred instead of fighting tries to escape from Gilead, which means she tried to run away from her problems and her life. That is why Offred is not considered a hero but just another victim of persecution. Offred did try to rebel against the society and its rules in her own subtle ways, but nothing that actually made a difference. She sneaks out at night to walk around the hallways, which is against the rules and she also takes a withered daffodil. â€Å"What should I take? Something that will not be missed† (Atwood 98). Offred is scared and ... Free Essays on The Handmaid's Tale Free Essays on The Handmaid's Tale Offred and Sir Gawain A hero is a person honored for his/her achievement of courage and nobility, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life. Offred from the The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood and Gawain from Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, by Anonymous are the protagonists in these works of literature who are admired for their good qualities. Offred and Sir Gawain show some traits of bravery. However neither Offred nor Sir Gawain did anything extremely brave, nor do they achieve anything great. These characters reveal qualities of fear, pride, selfishness, and when faced with the situation of death, act like any other ordinary human being, which means they cannot be honored as heroes. When the president was killed, the government suspended the constitution. â€Å"There wasn’t even rioting in the streets† (Atwood 172). Offred did nothing to even try to stop these events from occurring. Society began falling apart. Offred had her accounts suspended and lost her job. Offred did nothing to stop or even prevent this because she feared society. â€Å"Nobody wanted to be reported for disloyalty† (Atwood 180). There is no doubt that it would have been hard or even impossible to prevent these acts of oppression and persecution. A real hero would have at least tried and would have laid everything on the line even their life to accomplish their goal or cause. Offred instead of fighting tries to escape from Gilead, which means she tried to run away from her problems and her life. That is why Offred is not considered a hero but just another victim of persecution. Offred did try to rebel against the society and its rules in her own subtle ways, but nothing that actually made a difference. She sneaks out at night to walk around the hallways, which is against the rules and she also takes a withered daffodil. â€Å"What should I take? Something that will not be missed† (Atwood 98). Offred is scared and ... Free Essays on The Handmaid's Tale In her novel The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood addresses the concept of different expression of romantic love through the eyes of Offred, a woman who has lost almost all her freedom to a repressive, dystopic society. Throughout her struggle against oppression and guilt, Offred's view evolves, and it is through this process that Atwood demonstrates the nature of love as it develops under the most austere of circumstances. The first glimses of romantic love one notes in this novel are the slivers of Offred's memeories of Luke, her husband from whom she has been separated. For the most part they are sense memoriesshe recalls most of all images of comfort: of lying in her husband's arms, of his scent, and of little details of his appearancebut also a sense of connectedness that gives her identity. And it is this that she misses the most. "I want Luke here so badly. I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable" (125-126). And yet already the person as a whole is beginning to slip away. The life she is leading now is driving him from her realityshe says, "Day by day, night by night he recedes, and I become more faithless" (346). Her love for her husband is marked with guilt and regret even in the beginningshe misses all the little characteristics about him that she never took time to appreciate when she was with him. She even misses the arg uments, and wonders, "How were we to know we were happy?" (67). The memory of her love for Luke, and her guilt at betraying him with other men, especially Nick, for whom she develops genuine affection, is a significant psychological factor throughout the course of the novel. Foreshadowing the fact that she will turn from her memories to the tangible comforts of a living man, she says of her unhappy predicament: "But this is wrong, nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from. There's nobody here I can love, all th...