In Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood writes about a dystopian society. Atwood used situations that were happening around the time she started writing her novel, such as women's rights, politics, and religious aspects. Atwood's novel is relevant to contemporary society. There are similarities between Atwood's novel and our society today, which gives the possibility that our modern society may be heading towards a less intense version of this dystopian society. In the novel Atwood writes how Offred, the main character, transitions from her previous life to a Handmaid. Offred was not her real name but the name she was given when the Gilead society was formed. Before the formation of Gilead, Offred lived with her husband and daughter. Offred and her husband worked and had a social life. Offred didn't realize what was happening as Gilead was forming, her bank account was frozen and only men had access to the accounts; women were fired from their jobs. Offred's husband was killed, her daughter was taken away, and she was imprisoned to be re-educated as a handmaid. Just like us, they live our lives day by day: getting up, going to work, taking care of children, husbands and having a social life. We tend to lose sight of what is happening in our government, we call it ignorance, not all of us but most of us are not aware of what is happening in our government; like Offred who wanted to ignore any impulse to resist the increasingly repressive actions that led to the coup that started Gilead. We also ignore the actions that are or have happened in our society, for example, the problems related to our health insurance that are happening now. Many of us don't know what it's really about; we accept what we are told and choose to trust the... middle of paper... k then' (27) As Offred's story unfolds, she becomes harsher towards her previous life. “We lived,” he says, “in ignorance. Ignoring is not the same as ignorance; you have to work on it. … We lived in the gaps between stories' (53) There are similarities between Gilead's society and our society today that raise the possibility that our modern society may be moving towards a less intense version of this dystopian society. Today things in society have changed, women have more rights, we can now vote and in the United States women can run for political office, with a woman running for vice president in one of our recent elections. We're moving towards a less intense version, maybe just maybe in other ways not so much in women's rights here in the United States but maybe in other ways, like in politics; being a willful ignorance on our part. Works Cited The Handmaid's Tale