Handmiad\'s Tale and Children of men Comparative Essay PDF

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Handmaids tale and Children of Men comparative essay...

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The power of speculative narratives lies in how they can spark new insights. To what extent is this statement reflected in your texts? Speculative fiction theories potential futures of current society, often changing the audience's view on what’s real or possible as well as allowing them to question the world they live in today. Narratives that emerge from speculation allow for criticism from society on issues affecting present-day lives and allow for these to spark new insights in the world of its audiences. Margaret Atwood's 1984 dystopian novel Handmaid’s Tale and Alfonso Cuaron’s 2006 film Children of Men both create awareness of a possible dystopian future and both explore themes of infertility, feminism and the detrimental impact of inequality of power and society. Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale explores many thematic concerns and raises many issues of the consequential impact of patriarchal structure, societal norms and gender roles on women. Children of Men, on the other hand, inflates the gap between fatalism and despair and hope and faith in the face of hopelessness. Both texts reveal how speculative fiction can offer different views and spark new insights into issues that prevail in our current world into the lives of our audience.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is an example of a patriarchal dystopia as it creates a speculative fiction novel that provides an insight into a society stricken with a lack of freedom, led by a totalitarian state. The 1980s novel invites the reader into the totalitarian theocracy of Gilead, where women are mistreated and are oppressed in every possible way, mostly through rape and the lack of control over their reproductive rights. Within the men dominated regime, women are disenfranchised and exploited and deprived of basic human rights to fulfil infertility in the town caused by pollution and war. Throughout the novel, women demonstrate

their lack of power through their speech, body language and lack of their autonomy. Atwood allows for new insights to be sparked through her speculative text through allowing for prevalent concerns in modern-day society to be shown through the main themes explored. Offred, one of the main characters throughout the novel offers incredible insight into the world as a first-person narrator. Offred’s language shapes the audience's insights and demonstrates how the women of Gilead lack control. “We are for breeding purposes: we aren't concubines, geisha girls, courtesans...We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices.” Women in the Gilead society are no longer seen as human beings but only by the fact that they possess reproductive organs. The use of metaphor and imagery encapsulated the beliefs of the dystopian regime of which women are dehumanised and are only seen as valuable due to their wombs. As a Handmaid, Offred is made to act as a breeder and along with the other Handmaids she is stripped of her freedom of making her own choices. "Every night when I go to bed I think, In the morning I will wake up in my own house and things will be back the way they were. It hasn't happened this morning, either.” Offred’s longing for her past is shown through the reminiscing of her memories. The audience can grasp how Offred’s sense of hope is slowly fading and how she now has to rely on her past to escape from reality. Handmaid’s Tale as a speculative text allows for new insights to be formed in the reader's head and allow for them to question the world around them by challenging their thoughts on gender, power and infertility in modern-day society.

Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men examines the past, present and future on many different levels throughout the film. Set in 2027, in a dystopian future Britain, the film offers many religious allusions and themes. The movie revolves around the themes

of hope, faith and infertility and is explored through the eyes of the main character Theo Faron. Throughout the novel, we are shown how infertility paved the way for an oppressive government and allowed for it to take control of the city. As a result of the film creating a lack of children and making infertility a known issue, the audience can gain insights into their world as children are a common feature in most people’s daily lives. “The world was stunned today by the death of Diego Ricardo, the youngest person on the planet, he was 18 years, 4 months, 20 days, 16 hours, and 8 minutes old” The harsh statement and use of accumulation at the beginning of the film, shock the audience and allows for them to decipher the infertility problem occurring in Britain. Theo is left hopeless when he realises that humanity is dying out due to the infertility of the women. Theo’s perspective on life changes when he meets a pregnant woman, Kee. The film shows how men continue to be the dominant figures in society. As the film progresses, Kee’s child becomes a metaphor for the idea of hope. This is further reinforced by the film’s continuous use of religious symbolism about Kee and her child. Theo throughout the novel is seen to lose and gain hope through the infertility of the women. “I can't really remember when I last had any hope, and I certainly can't remember when anyone else did either. Because really, since women stopped being able to have babies, what's left to hope for?” The rhetorical question allows the audience to gain insight into the lives of the people living in Britain and how their hope and faith are overridden by the face of hopelessness. The intense biblical story of Children of Men allows the audience to spark new insights through Cuaron’s speculative text and create their view of their world.

We can gather that although both speculative texts explore similar yet different

thematic concerns, both spark new insights in the viewers’ minds and allow for them to see and value the world in different ways. Through exploring the themes of power, hope and infertility in both Handmaid’s Tale and Children of Men the audience can gather information about their world’s and spark new ideas....