The handmaid’s tail essay

Individuality, identity and personality, these are the concepts we strive to live by. Our very conceptions of happiness move around their relevance in our life, and so do the principles of modern society. In the handmaids tale, we can see life without them, and a dark realism shows us this bleak life of those who are stripped of themselves. Freedom vanishes, women are dehumanized to numerical values. This all builds Margaret Atwood's reality through the Gilead regime. We will explain through this essay how the novel " The handmaid's tale " fits the thematic axis :" Expression and self-construction" ? To resolve this problematic, we will firstly explain the lack of identity in self-expression and then explain the lack of identity in the assigned gender roles and language.

In Gilead, the concept of identity is unthinkable for some people. The main character, Offred, only expresses her thoughts to herself at night. whereas in the day, they are pushed back. But, puzzling her memories isn't the only way she retrieves her identity , she also uses butter as a lotion for her skin, even though those products are not authorized for her. This is a symbol of her taking care of herself and maintaining traces of her pre-Gilead self, underlining her self-awareness. However , we can see that the brainwashing of Gilead have its effect on Offred. She describes herself as a container or minimizes herself to uterus which makes her feel empty. Furthermore, Offred compares her name to a phone number like she’s no more than a number. This oversimplification of her identity conveys to us how she views herself, struggling with her identity. She's unable to continue to suppress her true self, scared that the smallest thing she says could reveal something about her, expressing who she truly is. Her identity has become a burden she has to live with. We can also give another example of the lack of self-expression : Offred's room. She is barred from customizing her room which stops her from feeling that the room is hers. this is the home she has been given, so this is not her true-self. She's constantly trying not to forget who she was before the regime took over but, is falling apart. The novel also describes to us the struggles of being an individual in a punishing society. Offred is constantly putting on a false apparence in order to survive, trying to create another version of herself. We understand that the Offred that we know may not in fact be who she truly is. The Republic creates an environment in which individuals become objects to the authoritarian regime. For example, the clothes women are forced to wear in Gilead is a sign of their role in society, they are taught that their role is more important than who they are, their role defines them. For example, handmaids are forced to wear red cloaks, red gloves, and white bonnets.One of the first decisions we make in our daily lives is what we want to wear and Gilead denies the women the choice of what to wear, chipping away their identity, self-expression and the right to make simple decisions.

This leads us to our next point : assigned gender roles. There are groups like the wives, the Econowives, the Marthas, the Handmaids, and the Unwomen. Women are placed into these groups depending on their social ranking . For example, the Econowives wear cheap clothes

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