Offred’s Thymotic Resistance in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale

Haleh Zargarzadeh; Samrand Avestan

doi:10.28914/Atlantis-2025-47.2.9

Authors

Haleh Zargarzadeh Urmia University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3892-5258
Samrand Avestan University of North Texas https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0118-9912

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.28914/Atlantis-2025-47.2.9

Keywords:

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred, discipline, Francis Fukuyama, thymos

Abstract

Drawing on Francis Fukuyama’s notion of thymos or the “desire for recognition,” this article aims to examine Offred’s resistance in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). Women categorised as the Handmaids live under the strict surveillance of the state of Gilead; deprived of their human rights, the state only values their body’s fertile organs. The Handmaids’ resistance to this demeaning reduction, particularly Offred’s, has been mainly examined from feminist, dystopian or Foucauldian perspectives but not from Fukuyama’s critical perspective. By examining Offred’s perceptive insight and courage, this article argues that her strong thymotic urge is the primary impetus behind her defiance of Gilead. The findings suggest that by dismantling the Gileadean disciplinary codes sexually, emotionally, intellectually and above all aesthetically, Offred qualifies to become recognised as a full human being with diverse capacities. Her thymos gains her due recognition as an author and a historian and due respect for her fellow Handmaids who, despite the panoptic gaze they are subject to, share with each other a legacy of resistance. By deploying Fukuyama’s concept of thymos in The Handmaid’s Tale, it is hoped that this article will contribute to novel conceptions of the power-resistance dyad in Atwood’s oeuvre and in resistance literature more broadly.

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Author Biographies

Haleh Zargarzadeh, Urmia University

Haleh Zargarzadeh is an assistant professor in the Department of English at Urmia University, Iran. She recently published a book review entitled “Derek Walcott and the creation of a classical Caribbean” in Textual Practice (2025).

Samrand Avestan, University of North Texas

Samrand Avestan is a Ph.D. candidate and a Teaching Fellow at the University of North Texas, USA. Samrand’s academic pursuits center around colonial, postcolonial and speculative fiction. He has published an article entitled “The ‘Roaring Flame’: Pursuing Thymos in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart” in International Dialogue (2022).

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