Response to The Handmaid’s Tale [5]

In the final Part of The Handmaid’s Tale, It’s lucky that I see Offred eventually escape from the Gilead. Of course, I know in text she didn’t narrate what happen after she escapes and whether her future was good or bad. I believe that it will be a good beginning for her to enjoy her future.

   To be honest, when I read Offred’s complex uncertain emotion, I was really angry and regretful because she seems to be assimilated by ridiculous environment. She is such a timid person that she is afraid of being found she has some resistant thought. However, she did not thoroughly give up freedom and thoughts, just pursuing fertility like Jenny. I used to believe she is a clever woman that all her disguise is for escaping Gilead one day. But she is not, all things are just my imagines that I believe she should be purposeful and brave. She started to rely on Nick and give up herself. Ofglenn came to persuad her and it is useless. Then when Ofglenn was found by eyes and suicide to keep secrets, I sighed she was a brave great woman. Compared to her, Offred is too flabby to change her misfortune by herself. Let us guess, If Nick was not undercover spy, what will the ending of novel become? Will Offred finally escape from Gilead, or stay in Gilead forever?

  Whatever, Offred is just a pitiful ordinary woman after all. She cannot be a hero like what I hope.

Response to The Handmaid’s Tale -Part 4

In this chapter, the commander wife’s mentality makes me surprised. Wife may be women's highest class in Gillead and her action is also driven by the social thought no matter how high rank she is. So what she does is not like what a real wise woman would do. Under her elegant appearance is a morbid thirst for fertility to ensure her and her family’s status. Thus the wife can openly talk to Offred, and told her that she should be pregnant with Nick. Her heart was not condemned by moral feeling; it also shows that the necessary obligations of fertility must be above the morality and emotion. consequentialism guides wife's idea, in other words, as long as her family got the child, no matter what way, even if this way is a little against ethics, it is ok to do it.

Response to Part 3 of The Handmaid’s Tale

     In the part 3 of The Handmaid’s Tale, the narrator Offred described the process of Janine’s pregnancy and childbirth in detail. In this part, Offred began to have doubts about her status and start thinking. She recalls her memory of content that in school the Martha brainwashed to all women. When they saw some propaganda film, Offred are anxious and doubted, because she fears the way in video that woman was treated so cruelly, but other women believe that it is right and normal. I think at this point she gradually awake her mind. On the one hand it is the effect of traditional thought and the reality which people believe the importance of fertility; Thus, when she had just experienced Janine’s birth process, the real experience made her uneasy to her own thoughts which different from social main sense. On the other hand, her subconsciously refute some improper ideas so her thought contradicted traditional education. In the case of this contradiction, she deepens her observations and reflections of her life; it will be an important beginning of her self-awareness.

Response to The Handmaid's Tale Part 2

In the second part of the novel, I am particularly concerned about the descriptions of the process of commander has sex with Offred in the text. It seems extremely savage and boring. In general, the sex will bring people pleasure of the senses, even if there is no love in the emotional impulse, but the physical pleasure is existence. In the text, sex has been described as the mating process, there is no pleasant feeling during the sex , but both people have to regularly conduct in order to make Offred conceive as soon as possible. Whether the commander, who should control sexual intercourse and get pleasure, or Offred who dis like it, the sex task is apathetic to them. Thus, we can find, Offred is not the only people who dislike social rules. Commander who is the beneficiary of male chauvinism also disgusts life without love. In other words, he is also affected by the oppressive system of religion in another form. However, even if people have realized that it is not right system, but no one dares to change, people still wrap themselves as pious defenders of religious system in the public.