Margaret Atwood, the Handmaids Tale Term Paper

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How different it was to be from the loose ungoverned part I had acted before, and how much happier a life of virtue and sobriety is, than that which we call a life of pleasure."(moll Flander, Chapter 38). By this choice of words, Defoe contrasts sobriety and pleasure and the conclusion could be that there is no pleasure for the virtuous. By "life of pleasure," he means, of course, rather the life a whore than anything else, but the ambiguity remains. At that stage, like Offred, Moll, who could also be called "Ofthebanker" lived through all the various possibilities a woman had at her time. By using her most powerful tool, her sexuality, she attracted all kinds of men and manipulated them into taking care of her, one way or another. She also used her intelligence to manipulate the women around her, but her success in doing it was also because those women were not as innocent as one might think. She remained an outsider just as Offred remained an outsider in Gilead. Both of them would he done almost anything to stay alive, in constant fear of being exposed for their real inner thoughts and severely punished for that. The people, especially the women in Gilead, although all of them not in charge for their own destinies anymore, including Offred, were manipulated to the point of taking pleasure in hurting each other.

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The most dangerous thing that both Dafoe and Atwood saw in a society was the incapability to feel. "The problem wasn't only with the women, he says. The main problem was with the men. There was nothing for them anymore... I'm not talking about sex, he says. That was part of it, the sex was too easy... You know what they were complaining about the most? Inability to feel. Men were turning off on sex, even. They were turning off on marriage. Do they feel now? I say. Yes, he says, looking at me. They do."(the handmaid's Tale, Chapter 32). That was the Commander's explanation-excuse for having founded the horrible society Offred became the unfortunate part of and this time Moll may be compared to him when it comes to the lack of feelings. She also acted mostly without feeling anything at all and the consequences of her way of living were as disastrous as those of the Commander's and of others like him. Only he was part of a world he helped building that reduced half of its people, the women, to he state of animals and some of the men to criminals, while Moll's conduct only affected the life of those around her and herself.

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