Andres Sasaki
English 1A
Kottaras
March 20, 2016
Essay #3
The book The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, published in 1985 is an effective form of satire because of the unpleasant and horrific events that happened in the past and today’s society. One form of satire is exaggeration, as in the world and the language Atwood used is a bit exaggerated but not their ethics. Another form of satire is an anti-hero being that one person that is tagged as “Bad” helps the main character along her way through the book. The third and final form of satire is a conflicted universe between women who are living a life full of lies and deceptions to a government who will stop at nothing to have their rule in place and respected. Atwood currently states that women should have equal rights and shouldn’t be objects of sex but instead treated with respect just like anyone else. In this book we get to read that men and women are segregated and put into roles to work. Men as the over seers and women as chefs and maids. For example ”Now we walk along the same street, in red pairs, and no man shouts obscenities at us, speaks to us, and touches us.” Which is the segregated part. They don’t look at the or touch them because the government chose those rules and that men see women as just sex objects.
When Atwood uses exaggeration in her book she uses it in a way that surprises us all. From my understanding she explains this world (Gilead) that is just like ours but the government and society are totally different and crazy. Here you have a government who hangs and kills
people for not following people’s rules. In Gilead the handmaids are used for sex and looked upon as objects. For example in chapter 5 Atwood is talks about how they used to have freedom but now they do. As the book went by this “freedom” is just a lie to them so they have a reason not to rebel. The government Gilead uses power and fear to control their population. For one example Ofglen another character kills...