A Modest Proposal And The Handmaids Tale - 1592 Words

Satire is used to criticize and point out society’s flaws. The criticism is usually masked in humour. The irony is commonly used in satires to expose flaws, an effective example is John Smith’s A Modest Proposal, he effectively uses irony, to communicate his argument about the poverty in Ireland at the time. Similarly, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale criticizes the society that women have to live in. Atwood uses allusions to the Old Testament and historical events to satirize the oppression of women in political, religious and social aspects. Atwood parallels the Cultural Revolution in China to the how the Gilead government gains power and control over the United States. The Chinese communist leader, Mao Zedong launched the†¦show more content†¦The trials took place in Salem in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1693. Accused witches were victims of mob mentality, mass hysteria and scapegoating. The trials began after a group of girls acted st rangely and a local doctor suggested they were bewitched. The girls accused a local slave and other women of bewitching them. The witch trials took place in front of the public. In the novel, dead bodies are hung on the wall for illegal acts. This puts fear into people and allows you to control them, which is how Gilead is able to control the people. Furthermore, Gilead society is very similar to the Taliban principles. Some of the principles Taliban put in place include women being not allowed to work, ban on female activity outside the house, women wear a long veil from head to toe, and ban on cosmetics, high heels, perfume, laughing and colourful clothing. These rules are very similar to how women have to behave in the novel, â€Å"By silencing women and taking all sorts of power from women, Gilead society remains in control.† (Yazdani 86). These bans are justified in Gilead, because they were put in place to protect women from dangerous men. Atwood parallels the Gilead so ciety to Taliban principles to show us that we should not take things literally from religious books because those books were written in a very different time from what we live in now. It serves as a warning to our world (the USA and Canada) and howShow MoreRelatedCultural Criticism In The Handmaids Tale By Margaret Atwood1011 Words   |  5 Pageswide range of topics to analyze literature. Cultural criticism considers a variety of perspectives and branches of knowledge to discover the compilation of beliefs and customs that characterize a group of people. For a cultural reading of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, a cultural critic would consider the historical background paired with theories such as Marxism and feminism to make assumptions about what culture engendered the creation of this novel. (104 words) Cultural criticismRead MoreControlling Reader Response in the Handmaids Tale1257 Words   |  6 PagesLONG ESSAY Conventions of a prose text may, to some extent, control reader response to themes within the text but the reader’s context may also influence the way the text is read. It is particularly evident in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale that by examining the experience of women within the world it is evident that women are more repressed. The characterisation of Offred may control reader response to theme because her own personal experiences are projected onto the reader. In GileadRead MoreThe Importance of Memory in Margaret Atwoods Handmaids Tale.2058 Words   |  9 Pagesshow the importance of memory and of remembering the past in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid’s Tale is a ‘speculative fiction’ first published in 1985 but set in the early 2000s. The novel was in response to changes in US politics with the emergence of Christian fundamentalism, the New Right. Atwood believed that society was going wrong and wrote this savage satire, similar to Jonathan Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’, depicting a dystopia which she uses as a mirror to hold up to societyRead MoreThe Importance of Memory in Margaret Atwoods Handmaids Tale.2065 Words   |  9 Pagesshow the importance of memory and of remembering the past in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood . The Handmaid’s Tale is a ‘speculative fiction’ first published in 1985 but set in the early 2000s. The novel was in response to changes in US politics with the emergence of Christian fundamentalism, the New Right. Atwood believed that society was going wrong and wrote this savage satire, similar to Jonathan Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’, depicting a dystopia which she uses as a mirror to hold up to societyRead MoreEssay on Silent Spring - Rachel Carson30092 Words   |  121 Pageshad been battling cancer. Author Biography 5 Plot Summary Chapter One Carsons survey of the research on pesticides opens in a most unscientific fashion with a tale about an American town that has suffered a series of plagues. At chapters end, Carson acknowledges that the town is an imaginary one, but lest the tale be dismissed as mere fantasy, she hastens to add that each of the catastrophes it catalogs has actually happened somewhere, and many real communities have already suffered