Handmaids Tale. Discuss The Contribution Made By One Major Characters In A Novel You Have Studied
Essay by 24 • May 26, 2011 • 666 Words (3 Pages) • 1,907 Views
Essay Preview: Handmaids Tale. Discuss The Contribution Made By One Major Characters In A Novel You Have Studied
Q. Discuss the Contribution made by ONE major characters in a novel you have studied
The main contribution made by the major character in the novel - The Handmaid's Tale is by the narrator- Offred. We suspect from various hints and clues that suggests that she is June. However, we are unable to confirm this with the book as the writer Margaret Atwood had decided not to tell us. Reason being that this source of text we were reading was an oral diary that the narrator - Offred wanted to leave down for other people to know but in the same time protect her and people that she cared for. So as a result of this all names were either disguised or changed to something else that had no similar meaning in common with the original name.
Offred is the narrator and the protagonist of the novel, and as readers we have been told the entire novel through her point of view, experiencing events and memories as vividly as she can. "I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will . . . Now the flesh arranges itself differently. I'm a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping." Offred's describing, explaining, discussing the events to us, showing us that of her knowledge proving that she is an educated women before the new formed government as she plays around with words all of the time. She tells the story as it happens and identifies what floats up in her mind through flashbacks and digressions.
Offred is intelligent and a kind person that possesses enough faults and feelings that makes her human and normal compared to the top officials in Gilead. "There is something subversive about this garden of Serena's, a sense of buried things bursting upwards, wordlessly, into the light, as if to say: Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently." That thinks they are the "normal" ones creating an Utopia world, which in world today we would classify them as dreamiest or sick minded people.
Although the narrator of the novel Offred is not a hero although she resists Gilead
...
...