Analysis Paper Literature Review

Amin Malak in her paper “Margaret Atwood's ‘The Handmaid's Tale’ And The Dystopian Tradition” discuss how Margaret Atwood describe dystopian, including “power, totalitarianism, war”, “dream-nightmare, fantasy, reality”, “binary oppositions”, “characterization”, “change and time”. She believes that Margaret Atwood’s story different from the classical dystopian work by its special focus on feminism. What is special in its story is that feminism become the embodiment of dystopian. Women become total articles, they are attachment to men and according to Simone de Beauvoir’s opinion in The Second Sex, and women are “absolute sex to men, only less”. Amin Malak points out at the end of her paper that feminism in Margaret Atwood’s description enable her to give “dystopian” a better and robust meaning. [1]

In Subject-Position as Victim-Position in The Handmaid's Tale, Jamie Dopp says that the handmaids’ tale has also provide some gender relationship between woman and man which woman is always passive and unchanging. According to Judith Newton's description of feminist patriarchal constructions of history to argue that Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale has did a good job in expressing the relationships which is always a tragic. Because Gilead is a religious country. The handmaids’ tale is not talking about the idea in the patriarchal society but a religious situation. So sometimes the reader cannot easily understand how passive and victim Offred is. Also, this is a dystopian story. The Gilead will be no longer into being in the story. [2]

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is the best English Canadian SF novel. The article "Margaret Atwood's" The Handmaid's Tale": A Contextual Dystopia has given the idea about generic term: "Contextual Dystopia." This kind of dystopia is distinguished from the traditional dystopia by using a certain and discontinuous historical progress but also succeed the dystopian regime which is Gilead. It is considering how to deal with the problem with the balanced explanation. Though Atwood has not realized the generic distinction and it can also be remedied by the negative view of the book. [3]

Focusing on Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Klarer explores the way that aspects of orality can be politically cultivated to prevent the destabilizing potential of written discourse and the way that concepts of orality and literacy are gender-coded. Like the book in the handmaids’ tale is forbidden to read, so how does the society do to deal with the purely oral (non-literate) cultures. Handmaids are considered "two-legged wombs" (176) and no other use expect for reproductive process. Also the women is like everything else in this dystopia, dominated by men. [4]

Since its publication in the mid-l980s, some readers have objected to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale on political grounds. The handmaids’ tale is not simply dystopian but antiutopian in that the novel's unknown ending, the “Historical Notes,” this is about the political profits. Some politician is still waiting for what will happen later and think about what is going to be. [5]

Work Cited

1.      Malak, Amin. "Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and the Dystopian Tradition." Canadian Literature 112.916 (1987): 139-48.

2.      Dopp, Jamie. "Subject-Position as Victim-Position in The Handmaid's Tale." Studies in Canadian Literature/Études en littérature canadienne 19.1 (1994).

3.      Ketterer, David. "Margaret Atwood's" The Handmaid's Tale": A Contextual Dystopia (" La servante écarlate" de Margaret Atwood: une dystopie contextuelle)." Science Fiction Studies (1989): 209-217.

4.      Klarer, Mario. "Orality and literacy as gender-supporting structures in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale." Mosaic: a Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 28.4 (1995): 129.

5.      Wagner-Lawlor, Jennifer A. "From Irony to Affiliation in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 45.1 (2003): 83-96.