Different Voices: A Comparison of The Handmaid's Tale and Frankenstein Anonymous 12th Grade

‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by Margaret Atwood, and ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley use different voices within their novels to achieve greater success in delivering the messages of their texts. Shelley, through her novel, is warning readers about the transgressions of exploring science too deeply; this is in part due to her being a romantic writer, cautious of the Enlightenment era’s quest to push scientific knowledge to explain the world. However, Atwood warns her readers about the dangers of theocracies and the conflicts that occur when science and knowledge are not taken control of equally. This is most likely based on Atwood’s first hand experience with extreme dictatorships during her visits to Iran and Afghanistan, where she has witnessed the impacts of these restrictions. The two authors stress these warnings through the way in which they have constructed their respective texts.

Both novels use different narrative structures to portray the different voices the authors choose to use. In ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, the novel is narrated through a fragmented structure; Offred states throughout the novel that her retelling of the experiences she went through is a ‘reconstruction’ and that whilst she does not ‘want to be telling this...