Book Review: Creating Effective Teams Essay

Creating Effective Teams: a Guide for Members and Leaders is a book by Wheelan (2013) designed to do as the title states; guiding members and leaders to create effective teams. Wheelan (2013) begins the book by highlighting the reasons that groups are important. Wheelan (2013) states that throughout history, â€Å"Groups have played a major role in both the survival of human beings and the development of human culture† (p. 1). The majority of the book is based on 4 stages that create a group of individuals into an effective team. The first stage is called dependency and inclusion. According to Wheelan (2013), the first stage of the group is characterized by group members becoming dependent upon the group leader. During this first stage, members must learn to trust each other. Wheelan (2013) highlights three goals that should come out of the first stage. The first goal is to have group members begin to develop a sense of belonging as well as recognize predictable patterns of interaction. The next goal is to develop loyalty to the group. The final goal is to create a safe environment for members in order for them to share and contribute ideas and suggestions. The second stage is called counterdependency and flight (Wheelan, 2013). This stage is the natural transition from reaching the goals of stage 1; members will begin to feel that they don’t need to be dependent upon the leader, which results in group members fighting amongst themselves. This is an inescapable part of the process and is actually healthy for the group if managed properly. With the proper management, Wheelan (2013) identifies one goal for stage 2: creating a cohesive set of goals, values and operational procedures. According to Wheelan (2013), the third stage is called trust and structure. If the group is able to work through the conflicts and is abiding by the goals set in stage 2, then group members begin to trust each other, become more committed to the group and cooperation greatly increases. There are two goals identified by Wheelan (2013). The first goal of stage three is to solidify positive relationships between members. The second goal is to engage in more mature negotiations about group roles and organizational procedures. Once the three are stages are worked through the n the fourth stage, Work (Wheelan, 2013), can be accomplished. Wheelan (2013) identifies the fourth stage as a time of intense team productivity and effectiveness. This is the stage that is the result of creating the effective team. Once the four stages have been identified and understood, Wheelan (2013) goes on to elaborate on how a group leader can keep the team effective. Wheelan (2013) speaks of 10 keys to productivity (goals, roles, interdependence, leadership, communication and feedback, [discussion, decision making and planning], implementation and evaluation, norms and individual differences, structure, cooperation and conflict management). Wheelan (2013) also shares the ways that group members become effective team members (don’t blame others, support the leader, promote effective problem-solving, etc†¦) as well as how a leader can be an effective team leader (be direct and confident, involve members in leadership, adjust your leadership style to the group, etc†¦). Finally, Wheelan (2013) highlights effective organizational support for teams, which includes an organization support checklist. Concrete Response There really wasn’t a video roll that played in my head, but I can apply this concept to my job. Currently, I am a supervisor for a wellness center that works with people living with a mental illness. I see the group that I work with as a team because we are working toward one goal. This goal is to help the members living with a mental illness learn to gain independence, work on social skills and work on personal goals that they would like to establish. I feel as if my job is to create and effective team, first with my co-workers and then next with the members of the wellness center. As I was reading the four stages of a group, I can definitely see how that works out. When I first started there, I was definitely in the first stage with my co-workers and the members. Eventually stage two did happen and conflicts began because as a new supervisor, I had changed some rules and regulations that were received poorly at first. Eventually we were all able to work through the new changes and developed trust, stage 3. Once trust was developed, then we were able to get to the task at hand, which was achieving the goals set by each member and are now in the working stage of the team. It was interesting to read the text and apply to my personal life. The one thing that I did notice is that I’ve been there for almost a year and I can confidently say that it took a few months of hard work to be where I am not with the members and my co-workers. Reflection I really enjoyed the book and I can definitely see how a team can become effective when each stage is performed properly. The questions that I had with reading the book were; what happens if I am not able to complete a stage? What happens if the group members are not cooperative? And how do you handle a group that is there voluntarily versus involuntarily? While the book offers great advice and ideas, there didn’t seem to be much room for error. Even when it came to the four checklists (team performance, effective member, effective leader and organization support) there were grades, but there was no explanation or tips on how to turn your poor grade into a positive grade. This book is a great conceptual book and a good book for advice but I feel as if Wheelan (2013) designed the book to be used as a resource that should be worked with other books and your own personal viewpoint. I don’t think that I am trying to outsmart Wheelan (2013); but for me as a reader, my assumptions of the book based on the title were not what I had expected. I was partially correct that this was a how-to book, but what I did not expect was that there wouldn’t really be anything about how to correct problems. This is almost like a user’s manual for group leaders; it tells you what to do, but not what to do when you make a mistake. I would use this book with another resource. Action So what am I going to do about it? How will I take this book and apply it to my life? What is a 3 step action plan that I can take? There are a lot of different steps that I can take with this book, but what hit me the most is the chapter on how I can be an effective team leader. So the first step that I would like to do is learn how to apply the leadership skills applied for each stage. According the Wheelan (2013), during the first stage I need to learn to me a directive and confident leader. During the second stage, I need to understand that when members begin to demand more participation in running the group, I must slowly begin to empower them to have it. During the third stage I need to be able to involve members in the leadership of he group. Finally, during stage four, I must be able to participate as an expert member of the team. Being able to master those skills will greatly help me when it comes to team leadership. The second action plan that I will do is to take those checklist and actually fill them out and see if I need to change in the areas of team performance, effective membership, effective leadership and organizational support. I feel as if what I will do what the checklists are to make copies of them or look for them online and pass it out to my team members and the wellness center members also. Finally, what I would like to do is to audit the productivity of the team based on the 10 factors highlighted by Wheelan (2013); (goals, roles, interdependence, leadership, communication and feedback, [discussion, decision making and planning], implementation and evaluation, norms and individual differences, structure, cooperation and conflict management). As stated in the section above, I will be using this book as an additional resource to really help improve my leadership abilities; especially at work, but also in other aspects of my life.

A brief for an awareness campaign

For my project, I have chosen to create an awareness campaign, about child abuse, which can come under the marketing and advertising part of the course. My campaign is going to be mainly focused on sexual abuse, as it is quite a sensitive topic and not many people choose to do it. I am aware that it is going to be challenging, and that I would have to use some very effective techniques in order to give out the right message. The main aim is to educate people and inform them about what is going on in the world, as well as marketing for the charity organisation. These are very covert marketing techniques, as it is quite subtle and focused on the organisation's activities rather than the organisation itself. The project is going to be consisted of 4 posters that could be used in either magazine pages or on billboards. They will all have the same layout as well as the same idea, to make it as simple as possible for readers yet effective. Enigma will play a big role in my posters, as they will all be linked, as if it is like a series of pages and they all complete each other. By looking at advertisements by organisations such as NSPCC, I have realised that the use of dull and dark colours are very common, same as the close up shots. However, my use of innovative ideas will make the campaign more appealing, and the enigmatic factors will attract many readers. I will use the idea of including a child's picture in the poster, however unlike the others I will use as much bright colours as I possibly can, that will then be contrasted with the background. The main background is going to be an old diary opened, in quite gloomy and dark colours. The wordings â€Å"dear diary†¦ † are going to be used on the first three posters. The diary connotes that it is real life events, and just like how the book is opened, a person is opening their life for us to look at and go into it. Diaries are usually symbols of truth, as they are very secretive and owned by one person, so the fact that it is the main background connotes that the organisation is very honest about its activities, and that it is simply showing the viewers nothing but the reality. In the middle, there is going to be a very simple, yet colourful picture of a child, each one showing the situation developing, and then followed by short sentences beneath it, symbolising the child writing in their diaries. It shows a sequence of events as it starts by a picture of a girl happily sleeping in her bed, with the word â€Å"My first night in my new bed. he said I was a princess†. The enigma in the text makes the audience wonder who the â€Å"he† is and what the advert is about. The second poster shows a little boy at the park smiling and enjoying his time, however this time there is a hand holding onto his hands. It is then followed by the words â€Å"went to the park today, he played with me on the swings†. There we can immediately feel the enigmatic meaning of the next, where the audience feel the worry and almost know what it really wants to show, especially with the pun on the word â€Å"playing with me†. Even though it builds up tension, the readers would still want to get to the end and know what it is about. The third one is a picture of a little girl with two man hands on her shoulder, and again with the words â€Å"He said no one would understand†¦ he is my only best friend†. Now, it gets clearer to the readers, as the point would have been successfully showed. The last picture consists of the organisations name, followed by some facts, a helpline and then the slogan which is â€Å"This smile†¦ this child†¦ ead between the lines†. The slogan refers back to the smiles of the children in the pictures, and the appearance of a diary supports the idea of reading between the lines, in order to find the truth. The logo of the organisation is going to be placed on every single poster, adding to the confusion and enigmatic effect, but also helping the readers to understand. The advert is very disturbing to readers, as they are seeing innocent childhoods being taken away without realising, and how brainwashed the children get. The contrast in colours shows the active and bright life of children however surrounded by the gloomy colours connoting the dangers around them. The idea is targeted to a more educated, and clever audience, as it is based on challenging the readers to get to the point instead of giving it to them. This means that the advert is targeted at ABC1 audience from both genders, however since it is common for children to get abused in the lower class if society, then the advert is very important to appeal to them too. So overall it appeals to both ABC1 and C2DE audiences, with a very wide range, starting from young children to old grandparents both reporting the same problem. The billboards are going to be created using the same pictures, however with all of them stitched together, making it seem like a storyboard. It could be placed anywhere, however it would be best put at a place such as a shopping centre where viewers can stand and read all of the writing. Stickers are also going to be created with the logo of the campaign and distributed around. I am working in a pair with Kirstie Browne, and we have both decided to equally divide the work, and use a program called â€Å"Easy media creator 10 Suite† to help us create our posters, and make them seem professional. We will start by taking the pictures we need on digital cameras then use them for our final piece. The organisation that we will most probably choose is going to be â€Å"NSPCC† as it is mainly focused of the sexually abused children.

Evaluation of External Envoirment and Business Etnics. Apple Assignment

Evaluation of External Envoirment and Business Etnics. Apple Corporation - Assignment Example PESTEL analysis is used for the external environment analysis here. Moreover, the marketing strategies for the firm to be adopted if they want to invest in these markets are examined with the help of Ansoff matrix. Recommendations regarding the appropriateness of investment in both markets by Apple Corporation are made based on the analysis here. This essay consists of the following sections. Section 2 discusses the results of PESTEL analysis for these two nations. Section 3 discusses the recommendations based on the analysis and the marketing strategies to be adopted by the firm for investment using Ansoff matrix. Section 4 concludes the essay. PEST analysis means the analysis of Political, Economic, Social and Technological (PEST) factors that assess the strategic decisions of a company (Oxford University, 1998;Bennet,1999).This analysis is also called STEP analysis(Peng and Nunes,2007).PESTEL Analysis is an updated form of PEST analysis which includes analysis of Environmental and Legislative factors also. This analysis is very important in assessing the external environment factors affecting an organization.... EST analysis means the analysis of Political, Economic, Social and Technological (PEST) factors that assess the strategic decisions of a company (Oxford University, 1998;Bennet,1999).This analysis is also called STEP analysis(Peng and Nunes,2007).PESTEL Analysis is an updated form of PEST analysis which includes analysis of Environmental and Legislative factors also. This analysis is very important in assessing the external environment factors affecting an organization. Here the PESTEL analysis of both Brazil and China are done to examine the most appropriate destination for investment by Apple Corporation. The analysis of Political, Economic, Social and Technological, legal and environmental factors that assess the strategic decisions of a company are examined in both the cases. 2.1. PESTEL Analysis China Political Factors China has a stable political system with only one party ie Communist party (Cui, 2009). In the recent years, however, China has reported a trend towards democrati c form of government while Communist party still remain the single party here without any change (Price Water House Coopers, 2005). This stable political system is an important factor conducive for international investment in China (Word Press, 2011).The political environment for international investors is very favourable in China due to the various incentives provided by the government in spite of the complexity of norms for the new investors. Reports show a preferential treatment towards foreign invested enterprises since 1979 by Chinese government (Tian, 2007). Approval procedure is complicated while after getting approval, it is easy there (Word Press, 2011). Economic Factors A very good indicator of the strength of Chinese economy is its GDP of 10.1 percent which shows the continuous

Semantic change Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Semantic change - Case Study Example During the etymological period of the name â€Å"journey†, the meaning was attached to time or period. One of the meaning at the time was a long process in work. Secondly, the word journey could mean the days travel. The time frame of day was always attached. For that reason, it was always used to show a process. Thirdly, the name means traveling in modern time English without necessarily considering the period attached to it. The present time meaning of the name journey represent a narrowing semantic shift. The name journey during its etymological period had time frame attached to it but currently, in the modern time English, it has been narrowed down to travelling from one point to another regardless of the time frame. Additionally, the name has shifted semantically in meaning in a metaphorical fashion where it refers to a process in the modern time English. The journey as process can refer to change that occur in a period of time in somebody such as â€Å"character journey† ‘Queer’ originally meant strange or peculiar. In the year 1811 the name queer affairs was used with an intention of meaning strange as in the following context: Its devilish queer behavior about a man was going to be buried alive. However in the year 1935 semantic shift took place with the meaning evolving and was connected with sexuality to mean homosexuality. However, the strangeness of homosexuality made the semantic shift in meaning, but the word also retained its original meaning. The use now modifies the harshness of the name homosexuality. In modern time of years 2000, the meaning became core and as modifier amongst the homosexuals. The name is currently being used in the context of queer rights, queer bashing, and others that reduces the negativity that is seen in the name such as gay and homosexuals. The regular use of the name queer in the modern time English has been associated with the gay community. According to COHA, in

Discuss the key features of effective corporate decision making and Essay - 1

Discuss the key features of effective corporate decision making and access how well these are being applied in an organisation y - Essay Example Contextually, it can be stated that effective decision-making is a systematic process through which business managers select alternative sources and implement it in an efficient manner in order to attain their various business purposes and objectives by a significant level (Harvey, 2007). Police forces of the United Kingdom (UK) can be recognised according to the set of ranks under which several types of departments are operated in an effective manner. The UK police comprise British police force and City of London Police where various sorts of job responsibilities are distributed according to the departmental requirement. In general, the core mission of entire police forces is to prevent crime and protect community people against the conduct of any uncertain criminal assaults. It has been apparently observed that the UK police forces perform their job responsibilities according to the community requirements (Association of Chief Police Officers, 2011). In this paper the key features of an effective corporate decision-making process will be taken into concern. Moreover, the application of this process relating to the UK police force has also being discussed. ... n to determine the workplace objectives of the police force of the UK, it has been viewed that the core workplace objective of the UK police is to maintain equality that helps them to create and make essential decisions in order to improve their operational performance. In this regard, the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) of the UK formulates certain equality objectives in order to evaluate diversity as well as equality amid the entire police forces. Through this aspect, departmental heads understand the behavioural attitudes of entire police force and also comprehend their acceptance capability towards fulfilling their different job responsibilities (Assistant of Chief Police Officer, 2011; Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, 2013). There are several equality objectives that are implemented within the workplace of the UK police force through which they can improve their operational performance. These equality objectives include delivering fair, responsive as well as favou rable services to every community member and engaging all the community members in listening as well as responding their respective problems. Additionally, the other objectives comprise developing an effective workforce in order to become more responsible towards the community members and preserving equality standards while performing and delivering services to the community members (Assistant of Chief Police Officer, 2011; Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, 2013). After acquiring a brief idea about the workplace objectives of the UK police force, it has been viewed that at present, UK police department face several types of workplace issues that impose considerable impact upon their operational activities. Since the past few years, ‘Public disorder’ is one of the challenging issues

Timber Frame Houses Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Timber Frame Houses - Assignment Example The hardness and strength of timber is dependent on its cell structure. The more the cell are closed to each other, there will be more strength in timber. And if the cells are a little apart from each other timber will be soft and lighter. Strength also depends on some other factors. If there are knots, cracks or decay in the timber, the strength of the timber will be reduced. Elasticity is also a property of timber that is linked to its cell structure. More elasticity means that the timber is more durable and can handle more pressure. But the type of timber is utilized according to the use. If the cell walls of the timber are thick, the timber will be harder that will make it a better building material, similarly if the cell walls are thin, the timber is soft and can be utilized where it is required to use soft wood. Moisture in the timber also plays part to the hardness of the timber. More moisture in the timber makes it softer. Hardwood is prepared over softwood for building purpo ses because it is more resistant to softwood. Trapped air inside the timber makes the property known as density of timber. More trapped air means timber will be less dense and less trapped air means timber will be denser. Timber from the sustainability managed forests contributes much to the timber industry. The color of the timber is due to the time that it takes to dry. Some timber types becomes pale or lighter in color by the passage of time but some types of timber become darker by the passage of time as Cedar darkens but sapwood becomes pale with the time. Some time timber odor plays an important role while using for certain purpose, like some wood have pleasant smell and some have not, some can repel insects and some can attract. The odor is due to the presence of oils present in the wood (Interiordezine.com, 2011). These oils are sometimes utilized too in making dyes and insect repellents. Dying or waxing the timber or sometimes using some preservatives increases the life of the timber by making it to sustain the environmental effects. Using special type of varnish and synthetic waxes uses makes timer sustain even the worst weather. Some dyes are made such that the timber can even resist fire. Some timbers have fire resistant qualities too. These types of timber can resist fire for a longer time as compared to the other types of timber (Interiordezine.com, 2011). Wood logs are cut in different shapes and sizes to get the maximum required shapes from a log. The wood logs are then seasoned to increase the resistance of the timber. Sometimes corrosion in the metals that are attached to the timber occurs, which is the result of less seasoned of the timber. Wood cells swell and contract in different weather conditions. Persevered or treated timber has almost the same strength as that of untreated or unpreserved timber but the treated timber has more resistance to different weather conditions (Greenhalgh, 1929). For building purposes timber is graded into thr ee categories. The three categories in which timber is graded are structural, structural appearance and appearance. In structural grading, different types of timber are graded according to their strength. Structural grade is sometimes also referred as stress grading. The other two are classified as their appearance and strength. Timber framings of houses have many parts and sections. Some of the major parts of timber frame are rafters, truss, studs and sometimes lintels. These are

Current issues in financial reporting Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Current issues in financial reporting - Essay Example Because of this, there is a huge interest as well as apprehension regarding the basis upon which accounting data is collected and reported. Thus, the statement made by Solomons (1991) that ‘[i]f accounting is to retain any credibility – and without credibility it is worthless – its guiding light must be neutrality in financial reporting’, surely, assumes that the records on a balance sheet or profit and loss statement ought to be a precise indication of a business’s performance. This, unarguably, is the function of accounting. It is a language that explains as well as communicates features of company to its owners along with other concerned parties. The goals of financial statement turn out to be intricate during current years as the quantity and complication of disclosures have risen, and the users of financial statement have become even more demanding. Accounts are no longer merely a description of earlier activity and existing solvency. In the pre sent day, investors as well as other users of accounts anticipate to be able to utilize them to estimate business’s potential and to predict its success. Accounting information within financial statement may well be precise in the solely legal aspect but may not expose fiscal or business truth. Clearly, there is nothing novel regarding this condition; the regulations that guide the preparation of an account are â€Å"legion† (Pounder, 2009, p. 102), and a few of them are practical whereas a number of them seem very flexible and difficult to deal with; thus, accountants attempt to understand the regulations in the best manner that matches the principles. Nonetheless, there are reasons for considering that something will currently have to be done regarding the situation. The latest wave of abrupt as well as unanticipated failure and crash of major financial institutions has tended to destabilize assurance in audited account. Lately, it has been noticed that well-informed chief executives of banks show reluctance regarding their enormous â€Å"paper profits† (Botzem, 2012, p. 76). This is a sign that financial reports all over the globe are considered to be misleading and not telling the real position and that by large, inaccuracies could surface in later years. This reality indicates a somewhat sorry image of the condition of the accounting work and reliability of available financial reporting. In spite of all this, there is still a word of support due to several truthful and straightforward accountants who press for telling reality in their accounts and whose approach has support from their boards and their auditors, therefore guaranteeing that the â€Å"black art of cosmetic reporting† (Botzem, 2012, p. 76) in accounting is at least lessened if not eradicated. Accounting information is consistent if it is reasonably exempt from inaccuracy and partiality and truly reveals what it intends to reveal. Information is dependable when it h as representational authenticity and is confirmable as well as neutral. Representational authenticity is the level of connection between the stated accounting measurements or depictions and the financial sources and commitments as well as the dealings and events creating alterations in these items (Alexander et al., 2011, p. 120). Having a high level of representational authenticity is helpful in decreasing measurement prejudice. Verifiability is the capability of measurers to agree that the chosen technique has been

An Arab from Qatar in the Middle East Assignment

An Arab from Qatar in the Middle East - Assignment Example A great abundance of my family resides in the metro Detroit, MI area. My family came from Qatar in the 1970s and have been relatively successful in the small business sector. My family owns a variety of small businesses spanning from liquor stores to restaurants. One of the fundamental successes of my family is the continuous reinforcement of unity and our strong family bond. Although my family in the metro Detroit area still adhere to fundamental beliefs of our culture, there are notable differences and the impact of western culture can be measured. My family from both the Qatar and America strongly believe in the sanctity of marriage and the strength of family unity. It is heavily believed that marriage is meant to be entered into for life duration and that the man is the head of the family. It is my family's belief that a big family should be sought as an abundance of children ensures perpetual family strength. Sons are heavily desired as the son will carry on the family's name and take of the elders in their ripe age. The religion of Islam which is learned and studied from the holy book Quran is practiced by the entire family in both Qatar and the United States. We strongly believe in Allah and his faithful messenger the prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) and his divine revelation of Gods word. It is the desire of my family in both Qatar and the United States to make the pilgrimage of Hajj and visit the holy lands of Mecca and Medina at least once in our lifetime. The men in Qatar adorn the flowing robes and some opt to wear casual attire. Those who do choose to wear the adorning robes typically accompany them with hijab head garb. Most of the men from my family in the United States have adapted to the western culture of clothing. They choose to wear casual attire such as blue jeans and tee shirts, however, the overall belief system is still strong.

Dispatches Paper Essay Example for Free

Dispatches Paper Essay As I read Dispatches by Michael Herr, there is an overwhelming sense of fear and horror. His dispatches are populated by soldiers called grunts, whose enemy was everywhere and nowhere. Their maps were blank; their names for the enemy, Charlie or VC, told them nothing. How do you recognize them? They all wear black pajamas; they are all alien to us. They are everywhere. Thats where the paranoia began. Herrs dispatches are disturbing because he writes from inside the nightmare, with all the tension and terror that turned these young men into killing machines. It is all the more frightening because, emptied of any concerns for justice, or ethics, or solidarity, they opened fire anywhere, everywhere. After all, who could know where or who the enemy was? Herrs use of brutal imagery absorbed me into his savage surroundings. From the soldier who cant stop drooling as a result of a particularly dreadful gun battle, to the scenes of the dead, American and Vietnamese, adult and infant, on battlefields and village streets. The characters are real people in a situation that most of them neither like nor understand. They are young men who invoke the same shortcomings we all have. They are professional soldiers and act that way despite their misgivings. They push past the boundaries of fear and into the realms of heroism or insanity or death. Everyone that he introduces is individual. There are no carbon copy soldiers here. They are funny or musical or religious or delusional. I felt as though I was being introduced to people I knew throughout the book. From time off in Saigon and Hong Kong to his time spent in a bunker during the siege of Khe Sanh, Herr covers every aspect of the war. He shows how so many soldiers were so drastically affected by the war. He describes the strange, fearful moments when at night the jungle suddenly goes silent. Herr tells tales of Marines throwing themselves on top of him with incoming fire, people he has only just met minutes or hours before that are risking their lives to protect his. This book is very descriptive and one of the best examples of this is this sentence, Every fifth round was a tracer, and when Spooky was working, everything stopped while that solid stream of violent  red poured down out of the black sky. In this sentence Herr is retelling the feelings felt by everyone as they watched the gunships flying overhead, unleashing the fury of gatling-guns that could fire thousands of rounds per minute. Not only does Herr convey the impact of such a sight; he does it in such a manner that a vivid image is formed in the readers mind. One of the more disturbing and insightful quotes in the book comes when a Marine at Khe Sanh learns that his wife is pregnant, but not with his child. Herr retells with this account, Oh dont worry, Orrin said. Theres gonna be a death in my family. Just soons I git home. And then he laughed. It was a terrible laugh, very quiet and intense, and it was the thing that made everyone who heard it believe Orrin. This quote shows how badly some soldiers were transformed during the war. A man who used to be very peaceful and calm would now snap at the slightest provocation. He would now plan the death of his wife for cheating on him. With these examples I would definitely say that one of the strengths of this book is its vivid descriptions. The other strength of this book is probably how it covers the emotional and physical aspects of the war. Still it is difficult to reconcile Herrs disregard for the grunts brutality and his apparent admiration that surfaces. Herr feeds on the death and carnage of the battlefield. It is difficult to grudge a person for their attachment to the most exciting times of their life. Herrs is almost an addiction to the life of the thrill seeker, but as he frequently mentions, unlike the grunts, he could always take the next chopper back to an air-conditioned hotel room in Saigon, or leave altogether. (Not that an air-conditioned room in Saigon would be necessarily safer than Khe Sahn) He describes Vietnam as a jumbled, confused, mess of a living hell. Herr also wrote the narration for Apocalypse Now, so what more do you need to know? It is crucial to understand that this book is not a political or military history of the war. Instead, Herr tried to portray the experience of what it was like to be in Vietnam; you wont find a handy map and glossary in the back. (If you honestly dont know what words like di di, zip, grunt, 16, and DMZ mean, I suggest you bone up on your history.) There are two major downfalls to this book: rambling and fiction. His writing style, disjointed and confused, makes the book a little hard to get used to. But when you do get used to it only then can you see that Herr is trying to give the reader an accurate account rather than a moral lecture. In terms of fiction the problem with writers is that they are writers. As such they are basically dishonest. This is not Vietnam as told by a soldier. This is Vietnam as told by a journalist who is in-country to the precise extent he cares to be and hotfoots it out of there when the going gets rough. In the beginning of the book Herr describes the horrors of night patrol by describing his own fear. He then informs the bewildered reader that this is a bit too much for him and therefore takes his journalistic eye somewhere else. The difference between a journalist and a soldier is that the soldier cant leave when he feels like it and so he doesnt have the luxury of drama. Unfortunately, most of this book is drama.

Le Petit Chef Essay Example for Free

Le Petit Chef Essay I believe she should take on the projects that have visible differentiation and also take on the high-end microwave oven with the fuzzy intelligence. It is apparent the competing companies are utilizing technologies that are cheaper and are still maintaining their success. Le Petit Chef products are perceived as quality products, which is something that the executives know and something their current customers know. Despite the company’s low returns, I still believe Gagne should go forward with the new high-end microwave oven because it will enhance the ease of use with minimal incremental costs. This microwave oven can also solve the problem with the variation in food quality, which should entice Gagne to go forward with the project. As far as other projects, they need to develop other projects that are all different from each other, which are visible to the retailer and potential customer. As far as handling the executive meeting, Gagne needs to tell them that she is scrapping those several projects in order to free up more funds, allowing more money to be used in other projects and enabling them to differentiate their line. Le Petit Chef’s poor performance can be attributed to a few things. The competition of the other companies developing products that directly competes with them such as Electrolux and Bosch-Siemens. Both companies have developed low-end microwave ovens that are seemingly very attractive to potential customer because of their brand recognition and the price of the products. Another explanation for their poor performance is the company’s lack to differentiate their lines. It is important to have visible differentiation for products so the retailer sees the difference of their products. If a product has a lack of visible differentiation, the retailer and potential client will question what is different with the product and why it is more expensive than the previous model. In order for the company to remedy the situation I feel they need to implement the 18-month project for their high-end microwave oven with fuzzy intelligence technology and further advertise and market the glitches that have been fixed. Further, they need to develop differentiated products in order to promote to their retailers and potential clients of their differences.

Competition in the Hearing Aid Market

Competition in the Hearing Aid Market Managerial Economics The number of Americans who have hearing difficulties is too many and is still expected to rise as time goes on. This is a challenge that most people undergoing the same ordeal are expected to face under all the circumstances that aid may be available if not totally to cure hearing loss. Hearing aid is a device that can lessen the burden of auditory impairment but it can only do so much. There are still implications that the use of such can be rather viewed as a supplement only and not a corrective tool. This view alone stands actually as a deficient selling point, as people who already have the difficulty will not always depend on these aids and most probably diverge themselves from buying the product. Hence, this situation definitely hurts the sale capacity of the hearing aid industry. Lowering the Price Naturally, as the demand may not be as considerably successful, the prices of hearing aids remain static as against its normally opined high pricing. The idea of lowering the price is a positive idea but not totally a remarkable one. To take for consideration, marketing plays a pivotal role. Product innovation is still under watch as the product continues to address misconceptions about its use and its price. It can be assumed that people who need such may have to be considered based on their actual individual needs. Lowering the price is not only and always the best solution at whatever product is being marketed. Apart from the actual study conducted, it must be analyzed there upon that actual users must be first educated of the many facets of its use and the impact that it may have if chosen as a summative solution to their auditory problems. It has already been mentioned that the implication of social stigma is above the issue of purchase and poor market reception. In as much as g oing through the usual and most careful market analysis, the firms should maintain a higher standard of psycho-social research to come up with a market campaign that is devoted to curing the disease of social stigma for those who use the product if not to give false hopes of entirely curing the malady of their situation. There are market theories available to stand up as resolution before the poor market reception of hearing aids among its target users. However, there should be a critical analysis between price indices and the actual consideration of buyer’s behavior apart from all the equations and variables given as a cardinal rule. The sensitivity to the issues whether they are psychological, social, or economical – must be placed under a more profound handling of the situation. Firms must take a firm hand on the derivation of serious market analysis before any insinuations that price variability is a stand alone solution to the predicament they are experiencing at the time being. Conclusion A regular consumer still considers product innovations such as unique features and warranted efficiency and necessity. Therefore, elasticity in the demand is considerable in effect that demand answers upon these mentioned industry quantifiable. It can be summarized that since economic recession is still in the midst of all considerations, lowering prices is definitely attractive but in foremost opinion product assurance of quality and effectiveness remains to be the most potent market solution in any given situation. 2. Evaluate different possible strategies that companies could implement to gain a sound position among their competitors in this hearing aids market. Use relevant theoretical concepts discussed in chapters The industry of hearing aids is said to be inelastic for most identifiable factor that it does not have too many options and features. But in the advent of market competition, market shares continue to reward the much needed product options – meaning, there are indeed sensible market campaigns that need to be launched to rise above the competition. To understand this point of view, it is already introduced and implied earlier that price variability is a matter of fact the most convenient solution to be competitive in any given market. On the other hand, the real competition begins when a firm understands thoroughly the purchasing behavior of target consumers. It is to be understood that price indices are not only the deciding factors to be considered if firms desire to be at front of the market line. There are still aspects, which include market segmentation and full market analysis, which can only be attained through accurate SWOT analysis. Market Strategies Strategies can be indicated based on the given practices that identify with the rapport involving standard value and capacity which in turn have the maximum probability to improve its market reception and therefore increase its takings. It is also recommended that firm’s standard industry applications can evaluate the magnitude and outlay needed to capitalize on their income prospective, as specified by the price inelasticity of requirement in the market.  While studying the basic product mix in the market of hearing aids, it is also most helpful to introduce new features and innovations in order to entice users and buyers to purchase with loyalty and assurance. This idea will definitely maximize the growth potential and leadership in the market. Gaining a sound and comfortable position is no easy task as it takes a lot of hard work and patience. In realizing this endeavor, it should be analyzed thereon the sensitivity of the target consumers of the implications and sustaina bility of the product upon consumption. Therefore, a creative and definitive market research is important to establish a rapport among consumers and the improvement of the product itself. As stated above, lowering the prices is just one of the solutions but it cannot withstand the whole competition given all the variables of market and the social behavior of the target consumers. Recommendation Like any market competition, SWOT analysis is much reassuring. To depend on more focused research is actually being guided by the tried and tested steps and factors that will handle all the given situations if the market remains stiff and uncontrollable. Perhaps, one example that can be listed is the principle of managerial economics, which employs a wide variety of economic concepts, tools, and techniques in the decision-making process. These concepts are incorporated to be congruent in the following: the theory of the firm, which describes how businesses make a variety of decisions; the theory of consumer behavior, which describes decision making by consumers; and the theory of market structure and pricing, which describes the structure and characteristics of different market forms under which business firms operate. It can be learned that profit maximization also naturally follows when competition gets in to the right mode of market potentiality. 3. What  economic conditions  are relevant in managerial decision-making and how they are related with the typical types of risk faced by a firm? Briefs Economic conditions Basically, managerial economic is about decision-making. It is what managers decide on the matters that make the atmosphere critical for the success of firms. In this light, it is important to stress that economic conditions truly affect the disadvantage that most firms may encounter as they carry on with the principles of economics and business. Definitely in this bracket are issues regarding market structure, conditions of supply and demand, technology, government regulations, international dimensions, future conditions, and macroeconomic factors. On the other hand, profit maximization is adherent to the idea that it can be liable to different concerns about restrictions encountered by the firm such as supply insufficiency, machinery, contractual clauses and liabilities, and laws and government policies. In their attempt to maximize the present value of profits, business managers must consider not only the short-term and long-term implications of decisions made within the firm, but also the many facets of external limits that their firms may experience on their way to achieve its organizational goals. Scarcity issues concern essential inputs (including skilled labor), key raw materials, energy, specialized machinery and equipment, warehouse space, and other resources. Managers naturally experience situations that may limit their ability to sustain balance in the plant capacity, which is worsened by the lack of enough resources that can make a difference in innovation, expansion and market intensification. Contractual obligations also restrict managerial decisions. Labor contracts, for example, may constrain managers flexibility in worker scheduling and work assignment. Finally, laws and regulations have to be observed. The legal restrictions can constrain decisions regarding both production and marketing activities. Examples of laws and regulations that limit managerial flexibility are: the minimum wage, health and safety standards, fuel efficiency requirements, antipollution regulations, and fair pricing and marketing practices. When it was first argued that perfect competition is the idealized version of the market structure that provides a foundation for understanding how markets toil in a capitalist-based economy, it is also understood primarily that conditions are desired to be reached and accomplished. This is in order to consider that market structure is aggressive: product mix and versatility in the market, well-developed and realized consumers and trader’s condition, and a veritable flow of economic mode of production and its all aspects therein. For example, it is required that the product uniqueness must not at full deny their identical nature with other lines as consumers will become oblivious of brand concerns if everything else seems to be the same from one product to another – this is also true with the same price competitions. When a good number of trade participants prevail, this follows through a significant effect on the revenue as the idea that the population of buyers or sel lers cannot make such a significant effect and therefore will not hurt the price control in any given condition. Finally, resources and materials have already become a staple in most competitive business as agricultural products do. This in conclusion, closes the arguments about having a perfect economic condition regardless of any situation. 6. Analyze the effects of the  law of diminishing returns  to a modern-day business. Why this law is considered a short-run phenomenon? Use appropriate examples Briefs The law of diminishing returns is definitely a short-term success, if not totally a phenomenon. It is a matter of theories between labor and capital and how things go at hand with the aspects of demand and supply. It is real and understandable that when a variable resource (labor) is added a fixed resource (capital) will dramatically augment manufacture quantity for a short time. Understandably, at a given time expected the rate of increase will fluctuate and is expected to turn more abysmal.  This is to explain that diminishing returns impinge on both the manufacture of labor and cost of production. As an example, duplication of labor and overproduction only descend to more unfavorable result as mode of production goes in the direction of surplus value. When Malthus postulated that land becomes a variable input when population becomes erratic and unstable, hence, the Law of Diminishing Returns explains further that when a fixed input like land and machineries, is joint in assembly with a changeable input, using a given technology, is expected to amplify the magnitude of the variable input, and therefore will eventually lower the efficiency of the variable contribution. One good example that can be given is the problem of overproduction in the industry of cars and other automobiles. The capitalist ideals about putting more production output each time to arrest the higher market demands come to a lull when the economic condition deepens and starts to affect the consumer behavior. In this event, it could be noted upon that the conversion of inputs into outputs is only realized based on the technology available in use. As a result, inadequate amount of inputs will produce only narrow number of productivity. Another example that can be stated herein is the labor-to-produce inputs as against the number of days and materials exhausted. Supposed that there are numbers of labor force working in a firm and produce a result given, additional input will just approximate a divisive response as against the total produce. Diminishing returns is exact in thought that it plays an important component in the proficient distribution of capitals. This is by significant turn the real concern of firms and that it ultimately desires to bestow more resources to the use in which they are more prolific. Although, as production outlays more resources to an exacting use, it can be observed that diminishing returns presents itself in which it becomes less productive. This is actually a disappointing outcome but in reality it reveals important aspects of arresting difficulties of resourceful provision of capitals. In the time of economic slowdown, it is important to establish the practical facts that diminishing returns are not what the macroeconomic future of any country needs as of the moment. This in fact argues strongly that excesses in times of recession and unscrupulous economic postulations are definitely unhealthy. However, given enough market analysis and putting more confidence to product and technological innovation, all doubts about this particular economic principle will in turn come out advantageous for the full recovery of the economic force. As strongly as it is exact with its intention, allocation of resources must be critically scrutinized in regular runs so as not to receive more losses than the expected outcomes. It is very much possible that the firms as a guiding thought and principle must not bank too much on economic principles that have no material and realistic basis.

Science vs Aging Essay -- Research Papers Essays

Science vs Aging Thesis Statement: Health care and science resources should be conservatively allocated to our aging population, focusing on providing quality to the aging years without draining assets in a reckless attempt to extend life. Introduction: The demographic projections in the United Sates are significant. Between 1982 and 2030 the median age will move from 30.6 to 40.8 years and the proportion of the population over 65 will go from 11.6 to 21.1 percent (Committee on the Aging Society, 1985). Persons over 85 are the fastest growing age group, 21 times more numerous than in 1900 (Callahan, 1995). This is also an international issue; by 2040 most developed countries will have 30 percent of their population over 60 (Hanson, 1994). These figures demand our attention on issues of aging. Most elderly need economic assistance and are significantly dependent on lower age groups. In the 1930's most of the elderly lived below the poverty line. Social Security helped reduce this figure to 15.7 percent by 1980. 80 year-olds receive 50% percent of their yearly income from social security (Committee on the Aging Society, 1985). The rest of their income often comes from pension plans or family funds. Elderly populations consume significantly more medical resources than other age groups. In 1984 elderly were 12% of our population, but consumed 31% of medical resources; by 2040 they are expected to consume 45 %. The Federal Government currently spends approximately $200 billion on health care for the elderly, which still only covers 67% of the expenditures. The remaining 33%, or $100 billion, must be covered by elderly and their families (Callahan, 1995). These economic expenditures have social conseq... ...the Aging Society. (1985). Aging America: Health in a Older Society. Washington DC: National Academic Press. 7. Finch, C. E. (1978). The Brain and Aging. In The Biology of Aging (pp.301-309). New York: Plenum Press. 8. Fries, James F. (1986). The Compression of Morbidity. Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, 61: 3, 347-355. 9. Hanson, Mark J. (1994). How we Treat the Elderly. Hastings Center Report, 24:5, 4-8. PMID: 8002311 10. Harley, Calvin B. (1996). Telomeres. In Encyclopedia of Gerontology (Vol. 2, pp. 539-543). Washington DC: Academic Press. 11. Kirkwood, T. B. (1977). Evolution of Aging. Nature, 270:2, 301-304. 12. May, William F. (1996). Testing the Medical Covenant. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing. 13. Moody, Henry H. (1994). Four Scenarios for an Aging Population. Hastings Center Report, 24:5, 32-34. PMID: 8002308

The Young Offenders Act Debate :: Free Essay Writer

Under fire from the date of its creation, the debate over the validity of the Young Offender’s Act continues. Should the YOA remain in its current form as a part of the Canadian legal system? An examination of the reasons it is seen as being ineffective, the need for change, and the suggested amendments and substitutes will provide an accurate picture of the situation from which a conclusion can be drawn. The young offenders act in its current form is nearly optimal. However, there enough reasons for its alteration that a serious consideration of amendments should be considered. There are a number of reasons why the YOA has been seen as ineffective. There is, in the public, a widespread perception that the YOA is not working at all. This is due to the large amount of misinformation that is sensationalized ruthlessly by the media (Good 1998 7). High profile cases of violent offenders leak, and, lacking details, the media presents an incomplete account of details to the public. As a result some people think that there are kids who know how to â€Å"beat the system† and are now out committing crimes with no fear of being seriously reprimanded. But, as one analyst and researcher reports â€Å"There are virtually no data †¦ that would permit an examination of this assumption† (Peterson-Badali and Koegl 1998 p127). Since once of the functions of the act is to protect the public, their fears are one a problem that needs to be addressed in any amendments that may go forward. There is, however, debate over the need for change. Some say the current act is much too easy on youths and that they’re getting away with too much. There are reasons situations, such as these misinterpreted ones, have come about. The YOA was designed keeping youth protection in mind, and experts in the area tend to refer to the fact that â€Å"†¦repeated studies have shown that it is not the severity of punishment which deters crime, but the certainty of it† (Daunt 1998 7). Therefore it is not surprising that thousands of good kids have been helped, and not hindered, by the current legislation on their way to a productive life (Good 1998 171). As well, the current YOA does have serious consequences for violent offenders, many of them ending up in adult court (Daunt 1998 7). One may also begin to see a bit of a trend: The introduction of the YOA in 1984 was to assuage the publics perception of a weak Juvenile Delinquents Act and promised increased penalties for you th offenders (Daunt 1998 7).

Ethics Reflections Paper

Ethics Reflection Paper Nadine C. Brown STR/581 Strategic Planning and Implementation University of Phoenix Jose L. Hernandez, MBA November 15, 2010 Ethics Reflection Paper During this age of philosophy in which people exercise their freedom of speech and is concerned with their personal development, it becomes a challenge to remain ethical while considering one’s social responsibilities. People are striving to become more successful without being dishonest or disrespectful.With more emphasis on moral and ethical issues, equality and fair trade, â€Å"businesses are under pressure to be fair and ethical to satisfy not only government standards, but also consumers, and additionally, to attract more discerning employees† (Hughes, 2010, p. 1). Many factors can affect one’s ethical decision-making process. For example, one’s own values and ideology about right and wrong can make one doubt one’s own beliefs if the outcome is unfavorable. The interaction with family and friends can greatly influence decision-making because of the emotions involved.One can experience conflict with socialization in the community when it goes against one’s religious beliefs. In addition, businesses want to be successful and honest while competing in a struggling economy. Conflict can exist with one’s own values and ethics. Organizations want to remain competitive but also practice honesty with consumers and stakeholders who want to receive a return on their investment. To ensure employees remain ethically aware of the company’s values, obligations to customers, society and stakeholders, organizations should develop a code of ethics and incorporate its principles in its strategic plan.The Importance of Ethics in an Organization A code of ethics incorporated in the strategic plan is especially important for leaders. When leaders make decisions, they must consider the impact their decisions will have on others. â€Å"Leaders are ofte n put in decisions where they must choose among options that vary in their degree of ethical behavior† (Sherwin, 1983, p. 1). This is true because of the competition of priorities. For example, the goal of any organization is to generate a profit for its stakeholders.To reach this goal, some may apply unethical methods to generate that profit, such as increasing proceeds or cutting expenses. On the other hand, the same stakeholders who work and invest in the organization are a part of the general makeup of the community. If cutting costs harms the individuals who make up the community, it would be harming the stakeholders as well. The decision made is then unethical because it is not for the greater good. Therefore, leaders should (Sherwin, 2010, p. 2): 1. Recognize all perspectives when making an ethical decision. . Define who you are, your company and personal values. 3. Don‘t allow personal gains to outweigh the good of the organization. Changes in My Ethical Perspect ives While attending University of Phoenix, my ethical perspectives have changed. This is evident when required to write essays. Many essays exist online to be used by all. The decision to avoid using them demonstrates my values of honesty and integrity. The university strives to keep its student honest by posting its own code of Ethics.Temptations that will allow me to take the easy way out always exist. Because students benefit more from doing their own work, possessing the moral courage to do what is right, even when one is unsure of the results, demonstrates one’s ethical values. According to my William Institute Ethical Awareness Inventory, the results or consequence of my actions stems from my ethical perspective. I know turning in the work of others for my own benefit is wrong and will have consequences that may appear later. ConclusionThe pressure of trying to remain ethical to stakeholders and society may result in businesses making unethical decisions. Businesses wa nt to make a profit for stakeholders but may hurt the people in the community in the process. â€Å"Leaders are often put in decisions where they must choose among options that vary in their degree of ethical behavior† (Sherwin, 1983, p. 1). To ensure leaders and employees remain ethically aware of the impact of their decisions; organizations should develop a code of ethics and ncorporate its principles in its strategic plan. As a result, leaders will remain ethically aware of the company’s values and its obligations to customers, society and stakeholders when making decisions.References Hughes, S. (2010). Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethical Business. Retrieved on November 14, 2010 from http://www. squidoo. com/CSR-ethicalbiz Sherwin, D. (1983). Work-Place Ethics. Retrieved on November 15, 2010 from http://www. chsbs. cmich. edu/leader_model/Development/media/Targeted%20Lessons/workplace_ethics. htm

An Analysis of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood Context Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, on November 18, 1939. She published her first book of poetry in 1961 while attending the University of Toronto. She later received degrees from both Radcliffe College and Harvard University, and pursued a career in teaching at the university level. Her first novel, The Edible Woman, was published in 1969 to wide acclaim. Atwood continued teaching as her literary career blossomed. She has lectured widely and has served as a writer-in–residence at colleges ranging from the University of Toronto to Macquarie University in Australia.Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale in West Berlin and Alabama in the mid-1980s. The novel, published in 1986, quickly became a best-seller. The Handmaid’s Tale falls squarely within the twentieth-century tradition of anti-utopian, or â€Å"dystopian† novels, exemplified by classics like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orw ell’s 1984. Novels in this genre present imagined worlds and societies that are not ideals, but instead are terrifying or restrictive. Atwood’s novel offers a strongly feminist vision of dystopia.She wrote it shortly after the elections of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain, during a period of conservative revival in the West partly fueled by a strong, well-organized movement of religious conservatives who criticized what they perceived as the excesses of the â€Å"sexual revolution† of the 1960s and 1970s. The growing power of this â€Å"religious right† heightened feminist fears that the gains women had made in previous decades would be reversed. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood explores the consequences of a reversal of women’s rights.In the novel’s nightmare world of Gilead, a group of conservative religious extremists has taken power and turned the sexual revolution on its head. Feminists argu ed for liberation from traditional gender roles, but Gilead is a society founded on a â€Å"return to traditional values† and gender roles, and on the subjugation of women by men. What feminists considered the great triumphs of the 1970s—namely, widespread access to contraception, the legalization of abortion, and the increasing political influence of female voters—have all been undone. Women in Gilead are not only forbidden to vote, they are forbidden to read or write.Atwood’s novel also paints a picture of a world undone by pollution and infertility, reflecting 1980s fears about declining birthrates, the dangers of nuclear power, and -environmental degradation. Some of the novel’s concerns seem dated today, and its implicit condemnation of the political goals of America’s religious conservatives has been criticized as unfair and overly paranoid. Nonetheless, The Handmaid’s Tale remains one of the most powerful recent portrayals of a totalitarian society, and one of the few dystopian novels to examine in detail the intersection of politics and sexuality.The novel’s exploration of the controversial politics of reproduction seems likely to guarantee Atwood’s novel a readership well into the twenty-first century. Atwood lives in Toronto with novelist Graeme Gibson and their daughter, Jess. Her most recent novel, The Blind Assassin, won Great Britain’s Booker Prize for literature in 2000. Plot Overview Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian and theocratic state that has replaced the United States of America. Because of dangerously low reproduction rates, Handmaids are assigned to bear children for elite couples that have trouble conceiving.Offred serves the Commander and his wife, Serena Joy, a former gospel singer and advocate for â€Å"traditional values. † Offred is not the narrator’s real name—Handmaid names consist of the word â€Å"of† f ollowed by the name of the Handmaid’s Commander. Every month, when Offred is at the right point in her menstrual cycle, she must have impersonal, wordless sex with the Commander while Serena sits behind her, holding her hands. Offred’s freedom, like the freedom of all women, is completely restricted.She can leave the house only on shopping trips, the door to her room cannot be completely shut, and the Eyes, Gilead’s secret police force, watch her every public move. As Offred tells the story of her daily life, she frequently slips into flashbacks, from which the reader can reconstruct the events leading up to the beginning of the novel. In the old world, before Gilead, Offred had an affair with Luke, a married man. He divorced his wife and married Offred, and they had a child together. Offred’s mother was a single mother and feminist activist. Offred’s best friend, Moira, was fiercely independent.The architects of Gilead began their rise to power in an age of readily available pornography, prostitution, and violence against women—when pollution and chemical spills led to declining fertility rates. Using the military, they assassinated the president and members of Congress and launched a coup, claiming that they were taking power temporarily. They cracked down on women’s rights, forbidding women to hold property or jobs. Offred and Luke took their daughter and attempted to flee across the border into Canada, but they were caught and separated from one another, and Offred has seen neither her husband nor her daughter since.After her capture, Offred’s marriage was voided (because Luke had been divorced), and she was sent to the Rachel and Leah Re-education Center, called the Red Center by its inhabitants. At the center, women were indoctrinated into Gilead’s ideology in preparation for becoming Handmaids. Aunt Lydia supervised the women, giving speeches extolling Gilead’s beliefs that women shou ld be subservient to men and solely concerned with bearing children. Aunt Lydia also argued that such a social order ultimately offers women more respect and safety than the old, pre-Gilead society offered them.Moira is brought to the Red Center, but she escapes, and Offred does not know what becomes of her. Once assigned to the Commander’s house, Offred’s life settles into a restrictive routine. She takes shopping trips with Ofglen, another Handmaid, and they visit the Wall outside what used to be Harvard University, where the bodies of rebels hang. She must visit the doctor frequently to be checked for disease and other complications, and she must endure the â€Å"Ceremony,† in which the Commander reads to the household from the Bible, then goes to the bedroom, where his Wife and Offred wait for him, and has sex with Offred.The first break from her routine occurs when she visits the doctor and he offers to have sex with her to get her pregnant, suggesting that her Commander is probably infertile. She refuses. The doctor makes her uneasy, but his proposition is too risky—she could be sent away if caught. After a Ceremony, the Commander sends his gardener and chauffeur, Nick, to ask Offred to come see him in his study the following night. She begins visiting him regularly. They play Scrabble (which is forbidden, since women are not allowed to read), and he lets her look at old magazines like Vogue.At the end of these secret meetings, he asks her to kiss him. During one of their shopping trips, Ofglen reveals to Offred that she is a member of â€Å"Mayday,† an underground organization dedicated to overthrowing Gilead. Meanwhile, Offred begins to find that the Ceremony feels different and less impersonal now that she knows the Commander. Their nighttime conversations begin to touch on the new order that the Commander and his fellow leaders have created in Gilead. When Offred admits how unhappy she is, the Commander remarks, â⠂¬Å"[Y]ou can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. †After some time has gone by without Offred becoming pregnant, Serena suggests that Offred have sex with Nick secretly and pass the child off as the Commander’s. Serena promises to bring Offred a picture of her daughter if she sleeps with Nick, and Offred realizes that Serena has always known the whereabouts of Offred’s daughter. The same night that Offred is to sleep with Nick, the Commander secretly takes her out to a club called Jezebel’s, where the Commanders mingle with prostitutes. Offred sees Moira working there. The two women meet in a bathroom, and Offred learns that Moira was captured just before she crossed the border.She chose life in Jezebel’s over being sent to the Colonies, where most political prisoners and dangerous people are sent. After that night at Jezebel’s, Offred says, she never sees Moira again. The Commander takes Offred upstairs after a few hours, and th ey have sex in what used to be a hotel room. She tries to feign passion. Soon after Offred returns from Jezebel’s, late at night, Serena arrives and tells Offred to go to Nick’s room. Offred and Nick have sex. Soon they begin to sleep together frequently, without anyone’s knowledge.Offred becomes caught up in the affair and ignores Ofglen’s requests that she gather information from the Commander for Mayday. One day, all the Handmaids take part in a group execution of a supposed rapist, supervised by Aunt Lydia. Ofglen strikes the first blow. Later, she tells Offred that the so-called rapist was a member of Mayday and that she hit him to put him out of his misery. Shortly thereafter, Offred goes out shopping, and a new Ofglen meets her. This new woman is not part of Mayday, and she tells Offred that the old Ofglen hanged herself when she saw the secret police coming for her.At home, Serena has found out about Offred’s trip to Jezebel’s, and s he sends her to her room, promising punishment. Offred waits there, and she sees a black van from the Eyes approach. Then Nick comes in and tells her that the Eyes are really Mayday members who have come to save her. Offred leaves with them, over the Commander’s futile objections, on her way either to prison or to freedom—she does not know which. The novel closes with an epilogue from 2195, after Gilead has fallen, written in the form of a lecture given by Professor Pieixoto. He explains the formation and customs of Gilead in objective, analytical language.He discusses the significance of Offred’s story, which has turned up on cassette tapes in Bangor, Maine. He suggests that Nick arranged Offred’s escape but that her fate after that is unknown. She could have escaped to Canada or England, or she could have been recaptured. Character List Offred – The narrator and protagonist of The Handmaid’s Tale. Offred belongs to the class of Handmaids, fertile women forced to bear children for elite, barren couples. Handmaids show which Commander owns them by adopting their Commanders’ names, such as Fred, and preceding them with â€Å"Of. Offred remembers her real name but never reveals it. She no longer has family or friends, though she has flashbacks to a time in which she had a daughter and a husband named Luke. The cruel physical and psychological burdens of her daily life in Gilead torment her and pervade her narrative. Read an in-depth analysis of Offred. The Commander – The Commander is the head of the household where Offred works as a Handmaid. He initiates an unorthodox relationship with Offred, secretly playing Scrabble with her in his study at night.He often seems a decent, well-meaning man, and Offred sometimes finds that she likes him in spite of herself. He almost seems a victim of Gilead, making the best of a society he opposes. However, we learn from various clues and from the epilogue that the Comm ander was actually involved in designing and establishing Gilead. Read an in-depth analysis of The Commander. Serena Joy – The Commander’s Wife, Serena worked in pre-Gilead days as a gospel singer, then as an anti-feminist activist and crusader for â€Å"traditional values. In Gilead, she sits at the top of the female social ladder, yet she is desperately unhappy. Serena’s unhappiness shows that her restrictive, male-dominated society cannot bring happiness even to its most pampered and powerful women. Serena jealously guards her claims to status and behaves cruelly toward the Handmaids in her household. Read an in-depth analysis of Serena Joy. Moira – Offred’s best friend from college, Moira is a lesbian and a staunch feminist; she embodies female resourcefulness and independence. Her defiant nature contrasts starkly with the behavior of the other women in the novel.Rather than passively accept her fate as a Handmaid, she makes several escape att empts and finally manages to get away from the Red Center. However, she is caught before she can get out of Gilead. Later, Offred encounters Moira working as a prostitute in a club for the Commanders. At the club, Moira seems resigned to her fate, which suggests that a totalitarian society can grind down and crush even the most resourceful and independent people. Read an in-depth analysis of Moira. Aunt Lydia – The Aunts are the class of women assigned to indoctrinate the Handmaids with the beliefs of the new society and make them accept their fates.Aunt Lydia works at the â€Å"Red Center,† the re? education center where Offred and other women go for instruction before becoming Handmaids. Although she appears only in Offred’s flashbacks, Aunt Lydia and her instructions haunt Offred in her daily life. Aunt Lydia’s slogans and maxims drum the ideology of the new society into heads of the women, until even those like Offred, women who do not truly believe i n the ideology, hear Gilead’s words echoing in their heads. Nick – Nick is a Guardian, a low-level officer of Gilead assigned to the Commander’s home, where he works as a gardener and chauffeur.He and Offred have a sexual chemistry that they get to satisfy when Serena Joy orchestrates an encounter between them in an effort to get Offred pregnant. After sleeping together once, they begin a covert sexual affair. Nick is not just a Guardian; he may work either as a member of the Eyes, Gilead’s secret police, or as a member of the underground Mayday resistance, or both. At the end of the novel, Nick orchestrates Offred’s escape from the Commander’s home, but we do not know whether he puts her into the hands of the Eyes or the resistance.Ofglen – Another Handmaid who is Offred’s shopping partner and a member of the subversive â€Å"Mayday† underground. At the end of the novel, Ofglen is found out, and she hangs herself rather than face torture and reveal the names of her co-conspirators. Cora – Cora works as a servant in the Commander’s household. She belongs to the class of Marthas, infertile women who do not qualify for the high status of Wives and so work in domestic roles. Cora seems more content with her role than her fellow Martha, Rita.She hopes that Offred will be able to conceive, because then she will have a hand in raising a child. Janine – Offred knows Janine from their time at the Red Center. After Janine becomes a Handmaid, she takes the name Ofwarren. She has a baby, which makes her the envy of all the other Handmaids in the area, but the baby later turns out to be deformed—an â€Å"Unbaby†Ã¢â‚¬â€and there are rumors that her doctor fathered the child. Janine is a conformist, always ready to go along with what Gilead demands of her, and so she endears herself to the Aunts and to all authority figures.Offred holds Janine in contempt for taking the easy w ay out. Luke – In the days before Gilead, Luke had an affair with Offred while he was married to another woman, then got a divorce and became Offred’s husband. When Gilead comes to power, he attempts to escape to Canada with Offred and their daughter, but they are captured. He is separated from Offred, and the couple never see one another again. The kind of love they shared is prohibited in Gilead, and Offred’s memories of Luke contrast with the regimented, passionless state of male-female relations in the new society.Offred’s mother – Offred remembers her mother in flashbacks to her pre-Gilead world—she was a single parent and a feminist activist. One day during her education at the Red Center, Offred sees a video of her mother as a young woman, yelling and carrying a banner in an anti-rape march called Take Back the Night. She embodies everything the architects of Gilead want to stamp out. Aunt Elizabeth – Aunt Elizabeth is one of t he Aunts at the Red Center. Moira attacks her and steals her Aunt’s uniform during her escape from the Red Center. Rita – A Martha, or domestic servant, in the Commander’s household.She seems less content with her lot than Cora, the other Martha working there. Professor Pieixoto – The guest speaker at the symposium that takes place in the epilogue to The Handmaid’s Tale. He and another academic, working at a university in the year 2195, transcribed Offred’s recorded narrative; his lecture details the historical significance of the story that we have just read. Analysis of Major Characters Offred Offred is the narrator and the protagonist of the novel, and we are told the entire story from her point of view, experiencing events and memories as vividly as she does.She tells the story as it happens, and shows us the travels of her mind through asides, flashbacks, and digressions. Offred is intelligent, perceptive, and kind. She possesses enough faults to make her human, but not so many that she becomes an unsympathetic figure. She also possesses a dark sense of humor—a graveyard wit that makes her descriptions of the bleak horrors of Gilead bearable, even enjoyable. Like most of the women in Gilead, she is an ordinary woman placed in an extraordinary situation. Offred is not a hero. Although she resists Gilead inwardly, once her attempt at escape fails, she submits outwardly.She is hardly a feminist champion; she had always felt uncomfortable with her mother’s activism, and her pre-Gilead relationship with Luke began when she became his mistress, meeting him in cheap hotels for sex. Although friends with Ofglen, a member of the resistance, she is never bold enough to join up herself. Indeed, after she begins her affair with Nick, she seems to lose sight of escape entirely and suddenly feels that life in Gilead is almost bearable. If she does finally escape, it is because of Nick, not because of anything she does -herself.Offred is a mostly passive character, good-hearted but complacent. Like her peers, she took for granted the freedoms feminism won and now pays the price. The Commander The Commander poses an ethical problem for Offred, and consequently for us. First, he is Offred’s Commander and the immediate agent of her oppression. As a founder of Gilead, he also bears responsibility for the entire totalitarian society. In person, he is far more sympathetic and friendly toward Offred than most other people, and Offred’s evenings with the Commander in his study offer her a small respite from the wasteland of her life.At times, his unhappiness and need for companionship make him seem as much a prisoner of Gilead’s strictures as anyone else. Offred finds herself feeling sympathy for this man. Ultimately, Offred and the reader recognize that if the Commander is a prisoner, the prison is one that he himself helped construct and that his prison is heaven compared to th e prison he created for women. As the novel progresses, we come to realize that his visits with Offred are selfish rather than charitable.They satisfy his need for companionship, but he doesn’t seem to care that they put Offred at terrible risk, a fact of which he must be aware, given that the previous Handmaid hanged herself when her visits to the Commander were discovered. The Commander’s moral blindness, apparent in his attempts to explain the virtues of Gilead, are highlighted by his and Offred’s visit to Jezebel’s. The club, a place where the elite men of the society can engage in recreational extramarital sex, reveals the rank hypocrisy that runs through Gileadean society.Offred’s relationship with the Commander is best represented by a situation she remembers from a documentary on the Holocaust. In the film, the mistress of a brutal death camp guard defended the man she loved, claiming that he was not a monster. â€Å"How easy it is to inve nt a humanity,† Offred thinks. In other words, anyone can seem human, and even likable, given the right set of circumstances. But even if the Commander is likable and can be kind or considerate, his responsibility for the creation of Gilead and his callousness to the hell he created for women means that he, like the Nazi guard, is a monster. Serena JoyThough Serena had been an advocate for traditional values and the establishment of the Gileadean state, her bitterness at the outcome—being confined to the home and having to see her husband copulating with a Handmaid—suggests that spokeswomen for anti-feminist causes might not enjoy getting their way as much as they believe they would. Serena’s obvious unhappiness means that she teeters on the edge of inspiring our sympathy, but she forfeits that sympathy by taking out her frustration on Offred. She seems to possess no compassion for Offred. She can see the difficulty of her own life, but not that of another woman.The climactic moment in Serena’s interaction with Offred comes when she arranges for Offred to sleep with Nick. It seems that Serena makes these plans out of a desire to help Offred get pregnant, but Serena gets an equal reward from Offred’s pregnancy: she gets to raise the baby. Furthermore, Serena’s offer to show Offred a picture of her lost daughter if she sleeps with Nick reveals that Serena has always known of Offred’s daughter’s whereabouts. Not only has she cruelly concealed this knowledge, she is willing to exploit Offred’s loss of a child in order to get an infant of her own.Serena’s lack of sympathy makes her the perfect tool for Gilead’s social order, which relies on the willingness of women to oppress other women. She is a cruel, selfish woman, and Atwood implies that such women are the glue that binds Gilead. Moira Throughout the novel, Moira’s relationship with Offred epitomizes female friendship. Gi lead claims to promote solidarity between women, but in fact it only produces suspicion, hostility, and petty tyranny. The kind of relationship that Moira and Offred maintain from college onward does not exist in Gilead. In Offred’s flashbacks, Moira also embodies female resistance to Gilead.She is a lesbian, which means that she rejects male-female sexual interactions, the only kind that Gilead values. More than that, she is the only character who stands up to authority directly by make two escape attempts, one successful, from the Red Center. The manner in which she escapes—taking off her clothes and putting on the uniform of an Aunt—symbolizes her rejection of Gilead’s attempt to define her identity. From then on, until Offred meets up with her again, Moira represents an alternative to the meek subservience and acceptance of one’s fate that most of the Handmaids adopt.When Offred runs into Moira, Moira has been recaptured and is working as a pro stitute at Jezebel’s, servicing the Commanders. Her fighting spirit seems broken, and she has become resigned to her fate. After embodying resistance for most of the novel, Moira comes to exemplify the way a totalitarian state can crush even the most independent spirit. Themes, Motifs & Symbols Themes Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. Women’s Bodies as Political Instruments Because Gilead was formed in response to the crisis caused by dramatically ecreased birthrates, the state’s entire structure, with its religious trappings and rigid political hierarchy, is built around a single goal: control of reproduction. The state tackles the problem head-on by assuming complete control of women’s bodies through their political subjugation. Women cannot vote, hold property or jobs, read, or do anything else that might allow them to become subversive or independent and thereby undermine their husbands or the state. Des pite all of Gilead’s pro-women rhetoric, such subjugation creates a society in which women are treated as subhuman.They are reduced to their fertility, treated as nothing more than a set of ovaries and a womb. In one of the novel’s key scenes, Offred lies in the bath and reflects that, before Gilead, she considered her body an instrument of her desires; now, she is just a mound of flesh surrounding a womb that must be filled in order to make her useful. Gilead seeks to deprive women of their individuality in order to make them docile carriers of the next generation. Language as a Tool of Power Gilead creates an official vocabulary that ignores and warps reality in order to serve the needs of the new society’s elite.Having made it illegal for women to hold jobs, Gilead creates a system of titles. Whereas men are defined by their military rank, women are defined solely by their gender roles as Wives, Handmaids, or Marthas. Stripping them of permanent individual na mes strips them of their individuality, or tries to. Feminists and deformed babies are treated as subhuman, denoted by the terms â€Å"Unwomen† and â€Å"Unbabies. † Blacks and Jews are defined by biblical terms (â€Å"Children of Ham† and â€Å"Sons of Jacob,† respectively) that set them apart from the rest of society, making their persecution easier.There are prescribed greetings for personal encounters, and to fail to offer the correct greetings is to fall under suspicion of disloyalty. Specially created terms define the rituals of Gilead, such as â€Å"Prayvaganzas,† â€Å"Salvagings,† and â€Å"Particicutions. † Dystopian novels about the dangers of totalitarian society frequently explore the connection between a state’s repression of its subjects and its perversion of language (â€Å"Newspeak† in George Orwell’s 1984 is the most famous example), and The Handmaid’s Tale carries on this tradition. Gilea d maintains its control over women’s bodies by maintaining control over names.The Causes of Complacency In a totalitarian state, Atwood suggests, people will endure oppression willingly as long as they receive some slight amount of power or freedom. Offred remembers her mother saying that it is â€Å"truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations. † Offred’s complacency after she begins her relationship with Nick shows the truth of this insight. Her situation restricts her horribly compared to the freedom her former life allowed, but her relationship with Nick allows her to reclaim the tiniest fragment of her former existence.The physical affection and companionship become compensation that make the restrictions almost bearable. Offred seems suddenly so content that she does not say yes when Ofglen asks her to gather information about the Commander. Women in general support Gilead’s existence by willingly participatin g in it, serving as agents of the totalitarian state. While a woman like Serena Joy has no power in the world of men, she exercises authority within her own household and seems to delight in her tyranny over Offred. She jealously guards what little power she has and wields it eagerly.In a similar way, the women known as Aunts, especially Aunt Lydia, act as willing agents of the Gileadean state. They indoctrinate other women into the ruling ideology, keep a close eye out for rebellion, and generally serve the same function for Gilead that the Jewish police did under Nazi rule. Atwood’s message is bleak. At the same time as she condemns Offred, Serena Joy, the Aunts, and even Moira for their complacency, she suggests that even if those women mustered strength and stopped complying, they would likely fail to make a difference.In Gilead the tiny rebellions of resistances do not necessarily matter. In the end, Offred escapes because of luck rather than resistance. Motifs Motifs ar e recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes. Rape and Sexual Violence Sexual violence, particularly against women, pervades The Handmaid’s Tale. The prevalence of rape and pornography in the pre-Gilead world justified to the founders their establishment of the new order.The Commander and the Aunts claim that women are better protected in Gilead, that they are treated with respect and kept safe from violence. Certainly, the official penalty for rape is terrible: in one scene, the Handmaids tear apart with their bare hands a supposed rapist (actually a member of the resistance). Yet, while Gilead claims to suppress sexual violence, it actually institutionalizes it, as we see at Jezebel’s, the club that provides the Commanders with a ready stable of prostitutes to service the male elite.Most important, sexual violence is apparent in the central institution of the novel, the Ceremony, which compe ls Handmaids to have sex with their Commanders. Religious Terms Used for Political Purposes Gilead is a theocracy—a government in which there is no separation between state and religion—and its official vocabulary incorporates religious terminology and biblical references. Domestic servants are called â€Å"Marthas† in reference to a domestic character in the New Testament; the local police are â€Å"Guardians of the Faith†; soldiers are â€Å"Angels†; and the Commanders are officially â€Å"Commanders of the Faithful. All the stores have biblical names: Loaves and Fishes, All Flesh, Milk and Honey. Even the automobiles have biblical names like Behemoth, Whirlwind, and Chariot. Using religious terminology to describe people, ranks, and businesses whitewashes political skullduggery in pious language. It provides an ever-present reminder that the founders of Gilead insist they act on the authority of the Bible itself. Politics and religion sleep in the same bed in Gilead, where the slogan â€Å"God is a National Resource† predominates. Similarities between Reactionary and Feminist IdeologiesAlthough The Handmaid’s Tale offers a specifically feminist critique of the reactionary attitudes toward women that hold sway in Gilead, Atwood occasionally draws similarities between the architects of Gilead and radical feminists such as Offred’s mother. Both groups claim to protect women from sexual violence, and both show themselves willing to restrict free speech in order to accomplish this goal. Offred recalls a scene in which her mother and other feminists burn porn magazines. Like the founders of Gilead, these feminists ban some expressions of sexuality.Gilead also uses the feminist rhetoric of female solidarity and â€Å"sisterhood† to its own advantage. These points of similarity imply the existence of a dark side of feminist rhetoric. Despite Atwood’s gentle criticism of the feminist left, her re al target is the religious right. Symbols Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts. Cambridge, Massachusetts The center of Gilead’s power, where Offred lives, is never explicitly identified, but a number of clues mark it as the town of Cambridge.Cambridge, its neighboring city of Boston, and Massachusetts as a whole were centers for America’s first religious and intolerant society—the Puritan New England of the seventeenth century. Atwood reminds us of this history with the ancient Puritan church that Offred and Ofglen visit early in the novel, which Gilead has turned into a museum. The choice of Cambridge as a setting symbolizes the direct link between the Puritans and their spiritual heirs in Gilead. Both groups dealt harshly with religious, sexual, or political deviation. Harvard UniversityGilead has transformed Harvard’s buildings into a detention center run by the Eyes, Gilead’s secret po lice. Bodies of executed dissidents hang from the Wall that runs around the college, and Salvagings (mass executions) take place in Harvard Yard, on the steps of the library. Harvard becomes a symbol of the inverted world that Gilead has created: a place that was founded to pursue knowledge and truth becomes a seat of oppression, torture, and the denial of every principle for which a university is supposed to stand. The Handmaids’ Red HabitsThe red color of the costumes worn by the Handmaids symbolizes fertility, which is the caste’s primary function. Red suggests the blood of the menstrual cycle and of childbirth. At the same time, however, red is also a traditional marker of sexual sin, hearkening back to the scarlet letter worn by the adulterous Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s tale of Puritan ideology. While the Handmaids’ reproductive role supposedly finds its justification in the Bible, in some sense they commit adultery by having sex with the ir Commanders, who are married men. The wives, who often call the Handmaids sluts, feel the pain of this sanctioned adultery.The Handmaids’ red garments, then, also symbolize the ambiguous sinfulness of the Handmaids’ position in Gilead. A Palimpsest A palimpsest is a document on which old writing has been scratched out, often leaving traces, and new writing put in its place; it can also be a document consisting of many layers of writing simply piled one on top of another. Offred describes the Red Center as a palimpsest, but the word actually symbolizes all of Gilead. The old world has been erased and replaced, but only partially, by a new order. Remnants of the pre-Gilead days continue to infuse the new world.The Eyes The Eyes of God are Gilead’s secret police. Both their name and their insignia, a winged eye, symbolize the eternal watchfulness of God and the totalitarian state. In Gilead’s theocracy, the eye of God and of the state are assumed to be one and the same. Chapters 1–3 Summary: Chapter 1 The narrator, whose name we learn later is Offred, describes how she and other women slept on army cots in a gymnasium. Aunt Sara and Aunt Elizabeth patrol with electric cattle prods hanging from their leather belts, and the women, forbidden to speak aloud, whisper without attracting attention.Twice daily, the women walk in the former football field, which is surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Armed guards called Angels patrol outside. While the women take their walks, the Angels stand outside the fence with their backs to the women. The women long for the Angels to turn and see them. They imagine that if the men looked at them or talked to them, they could use their bodies to make a deal. The narrator describes lying in bed at night, quietly exchanging names with the other women. Summary: Chapter 2The scene changes, and the story shifts from the past to the present tense. Offred now lives in a room fitted out with curtains, a pillow, a framed picture, and a braided rug. There is no glass in the room, not even over the framed picture. The window does not open completely, and the windowpane is shatterproof. There is nothing in the room from which one could hang a rope, and the door does not lock or even shut completely. Looking around, Offred remembers how Aunt Lydia told her to consider her circumstances a privilege, not a prison.Handmaids, to which group the narrator belongs, dress entirely in red, except for the white wings framing their faces. Household servants, called â€Å"Marthas,† wear green uniforms. â€Å"Wives† wear blue uniforms. Offred often secretly listens to Rita and Cora, the Marthas who work in the house where she lives. Once, she hears Rita state that she would never debase herself as someone in Offred’s position must. Cora replies that Offred works for all the women, and that if she (Cora) were younger and had not gotten her tubes tied, she cou ld have been in Offred’s situation. Offred wishes she could alk to them, but Marthas are not supposed to develop relationships with Handmaids. She wishes that she could share gossip like they do—gossip about how one Handmaid gave birth to a stillborn, how a Wife stabbed a Handmaid with a knitting needle out of jealousy, how someone poisoned her Commander with toilet cleaner. Offred dresses for a shopping trip. She collects from Rita the tokens that serve as currency. Each token bears an image of what it will purchase: twelve eggs, cheese, and a steak. Summary: Chapter 3 On her way out, Offred looks around for the Commander’s Wife but does not see her.The Commander’s Wife has a garden, and she knits constantly. All the Wives knit scarves â€Å"for the Angels at the front lines,† but the Commander’s Wife is a particularly skilled knitter. Offred wonders if the scarves actually get used, or if they just give the Wives something to do. She remem bers arriving at the Commander’s house for the first time, after the two couples to which she was previously assigned â€Å"didn’t work out. † One of the Wives in an earlier posting secluded herself in the bedroom, purportedly drinking, and Offred hoped the new Commander’s Wife would be different.On the first day, her new mistress told her to stay out of her sight as much as possible, and to avoid making trouble. As she talked, the Wife smoked a cigarette, a black-market item. Handmaids, Offred notes, are forbidden coffee, cigarettes, and alcohol. Then the Wife reminded Offred that the Commander is her husband, permanently and forever. â€Å"It’s one of the things we fought for,† she said, looking away. Suddenly, Offred recognized her mistress as Serena Joy, the lead soprano from Growing Souls Gospel Hour, a Sunday-morning religious program that aired when Offred was a child. Analysis: Chapters 1–5The Handmaid’s Tale plunges im mediately into an unfamiliar, unexplained world, using unfamiliar terms like â€Å"Handmaid,† â€Å"Angel,† and â€Å"Commander† that only come to make sense as the story progresses. Offred gradually delivers information about her past and the world in which she lives, often narrating through flashbacks. She narrates these flashbacks in the past tense, which distinguishes them from the main body of the story, which she tells in the present tense. The first scene, in the gymnasium, is a flashback, as are Offred’s memories of the Marthas’ gossip and her first meeting with the Commander’s Wife.Although at this point we do not know what the gymnasium signifies, or why the narrator and other women lived there, we do gather some information from the brief first chapter. The women in the gymnasium live under the constant surveillance of the Angels and the Aunts, and they cannot interact with one another. They seem to inhabit a kind of prison. Offre d likens the gym to a palimpsest, a parchment either erased and written on again or layered with multiple writings. In the gym palimpsest, Offred sees multiple layers of history: high school girls going to basketball games and dances wearing miniskirts, then pants, then green hair.Likening the gym to a palimpsest also suggests that the society Offred now inhabits has been superimposed on a previous society, and traces of the old linger beneath the new. In Chapter 2, Offred sits in a room that seems at first like a pleasant change from harsh atmosphere of the gymnasium. However, her description of her room demonstrates that the same rigid, controlling structures that ruled the gym continue to constrict her in this house. The room is like a prison in which all means of defense, or escape by suicide or flight, have been removed.She wonders if women everywhere get issued exactly the same sheets and curtains, which underlines the idea that the room is like a government-ordered prison. We do not know yet what purpose Offred serves in the house, although it seems to be sexual—Cora comments that she could have done Offred’s work if she hadn’t gotten her tubes tied, which implies that Offred’s function is reproductive. Serena Joy’s coldness to Offred makes it plain that she considers Offred a threat, or at least an annoyance. We do know from Offred’s name that she, like all Handmaids, is considered state property.Handmaids’ names simply reflect which Commander owns them. â€Å"Of Fred,† â€Å"Of Warren,† and â€Å"Of Glen† get collapsed into â€Å"Offred,† â€Å"Ofwarren,† and â€Å"Ofglen. † The names make more sense when preceded by the word â€Å"Property†: â€Å"Property Offred,† for example. Thus, every time the women hear their names, they are reminded that they are no more than property. These early chapters establish the novel’s style, which is charac terized by considerable physical description. The narrator devotes attention to the features of the gym, the Commander’s house, and Serena Joy’s pinched face.Offred tells the story in nonlinear fashion, following the temporal leaps of her own mind. The narrative goes where her thoughts take it—one moment to the present, in the Commander’s house, and the next back in the gymnasium, or in the old world, the United States as it exists in Offred’s memory. We do not have the sense, as in some first-person narratives, that Offred is composing this story from a distanced vantage point, reflecting back on her past. Rather, all of her thoughts have a quality of immediacy. We are there with Offred as she goes about her daily life, and as she slips out of the present and thinks about her past.Chapters 4–6 Summary: Chapter 4 As she leaves the house to go shopping, Offred notices Nick, a Guardian of the Faith, washing the Commander’s car. Nick liv es above the garage. He winks at Offred—an offense against -decorum— but she ignores him, fearing that he may be an Eye, a spy assigned to test her. She waits at the corner for Ofglen, another Handmaid with whom Offred will do her shopping. The Handmaids always travel in pairs when outside. Ofglen arrives, and they exchange greetings, careful not to say anything that isn’t strictly orthodox.Ofglen says that she has heard the war is going well, and that the army recently defeated a group of Baptist rebels. â€Å"Praise be,† Offred responds. They reach a checkpoint manned by two young Guardians. The Guardians serve as a routine police force and do menial labor. They are men too young, too old, or just generally unfit for the army. Young Guardians, such as these, can be dangerous because they are frequently more fanatical or nervous than older guards. These young Guardians recently shot a Martha as she fumbled for her pass, because they thought she was a man in disguise carrying a bomb.Offred heard Rita and Cora talking about the shooting. Rita was angry, but Cora seemed to accept the shooting as the price one pays for safety. At the checkpoint, Offred subtly flirts with one of the Guardians by making eye contact, cherishing this small infraction against the rules. She considers how sex-starved the young men must be, since they cannot marry without permission, masturbation is a sin, and pornographic magazines and films are now forbidden. The Guardians can only hope to become Angels, when they will be allowed to take a wife and perhaps eventually get a Handmaid.This marks the first time in the novel we hear the word â€Å"Handmaid† used. Summary: Chapter 5 In town, Ofglen and Offred wait in line at the shops. We learn the name of this new society: â€Å"The Republic of Gilead. † Offred remembers the pre-Gilead days, when women were not protected: they had to keep their doors closed to strangers and ignore catcalls on the s treet. Now no one whistles at women as they walk; no one touches them or talks to them. She remembers Aunt Lydia explaining that more than one kind of freedom exists, and that â€Å"[i]n the days of anarchy, it was freedom to.Now you are being given freedom from. † The women shop at stores known by names like All Flesh and Milk and Honey. Pictures of meat or fruit mark the stores, rather than lettered signs, because â€Å"they decided that even the names of shops were too much temptation for us. † A Handmaid in the late stages of pregnancy enters the store and raises a flurry of excitement. Offred recognizes her from the Red Center. She used to be known as Janine, and she was one of Aunt Lydia’s favorites. Now her name is Ofwarren. Offred senses that Janine went shopping just so she could show off her pregnancy.Offred thinks of her husband, Luke, and their daughter, and the life they led before Gilead existed. She remembers a prosaic detail from their everyday l ife together: she used to store plastic shopping bags under the sink, which annoyed Luke, who worried that their daughter would get one of the bags caught over her head. She remembers feeling guilty for her carelessness. Offred and Ofglen finish their shopping and go out to the sidewalk, where they encounter a group of Japanese tourists and their interpreter. The tourists want to take a photograph, but Offred says no.Many of the interpreters are Eyes, and Handmaids must not appear immodest. Offred and Ofglen marvel at the women’s exposed legs, high heels, and polished toenails. The tourists ask if they are happy, and since Ofglen does not answer, Offred replies that they are very happy. Summary: Chapter 6 This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary. (See Important Quotations Explained) As they return from shopping, Ofglen suggests they take the long way and pass by the church. It is an old building, decorated inside with paintings of what seem to be Puritans from the colonial era.Now the former church is kept as a museum. Offred describes a nearby boathouse, old dormitories, a football stadium, and redbrick sidewalks. Atwood implies that Offred is walking across what used to be the campus of Harvard University. Across the street from the church sits the Wall, where the authorities hang the bodies of executed criminals as examples to the rest of the Republic of Gilead. The authorities cover the men’s heads with bags. One of the bags looks painted with a red smile where the blood has seeped through.All of the six corpses wear signs around their necks picturing fetuses, signaling that they were executed for performing abortions before Gilead came into existence. Although their actions were legal at the time, their crimes are being punished retroactively. Offred feels relieved that none of the bodies could be Luke’s, since he was not a doctor. As she stares at the bodies, Offred thinks of Aunt Lydia telling them that soon their new life would seem ordinary. Analysis: Chapters 4–6 The theocratic nature of Offred’s society, the name of which we learn for the first time in these chapters, becomes clear during her shopping trip.A theocracy exists when there is no separation between church and state, and a single religion dominates all aspects of life. In Gilead, state and religion are inseparable. The official language of Gilead uses many biblical terms, from the various ranks that men hold (Angels, Guardians of the Faith, Commanders of the Faith, the Eyes of God), to the stores where Offred and Ofglen shop (Milk and Honey, All Flesh, Loaves and Fishes), to the names of automobiles (Behemoth, Whirlwind, Chariot). The very name â€Å"Gilead† refers to a location in ancient Israel. The name also recalls a line from the Book of Psalms: â€Å"there is a balm in Gilead. This phrase, we realize later, has been transformed into a kind of national motto. Atwood does not describe the exact details of Gilead’s state religion. In Chapter 2, Offred describes her room as â€Å"a return to traditional values. † The religious right in America uses the phrase â€Å"traditional values,† so Atwood seems to link the values of this dystopic society to the values of the Protestant Christian religious right in America. Gilead seems more Protestant than anything else, but its brand of Christianity pays far more attention to the Old Testament than the New Testament.The religious justification for having Handmaids, for instance, is taken from the Book of Genesis. We learn that neither Catholics nor Jews are welcome in Gilead. The former must convert, while the latter must emigrate to Israel or renounce their Judaism. Atwood seems less interested in religion than in the intersection between religion, politics, and sex. The Handmaid’s Tale explores the political oppression of women, carried out in the name of God but in large part moti vated by a desire to control women’s bodies.Gilead sees women’s sexuality as dangerous: women must cover themselves from head to toe, for example, and not reveal their sexual attractions. When Offred attracts the Guardians, she feels this ability to inspire sexual attraction is the only power she retains. Every other privilege is stripped away, down to the very act of reading, which is forbidden. Women are not even allowed to read store signs. By controlling women’s minds, by not allowing them to read, the authorities more easily control women’s bodies. The patriarchs of Gilead want to control women’s bodies, their sex lives, and their reproductive rights.The bodies of slain abortionists on the Wall hammer home the point: feminists believe that women must have abortion rights in order to control their own bodies, and in Gilead, giving women control of their bodies is a horrifying crime. When Offred and Ofglen go to town to shop, geographical clues and street names suggest that they live in what was once Cambridge, Massachusetts, and that their walk takes them near what used to be the campus of Harvard University. The choice of Cambridge for the setting of The Handmaid’s Tale is significant, since Massachusetts was a Puritan stronghold during the colonial period of the United States.The Puritans were a persecuted minority in England, but when they fled to New England, they re-created the repression they suffered at home, this time casting themselves as the repressors rather than the repressed. They established an intolerant religious society in some ways similar to Gilead. Atwood locates her fictional intolerant society in a place founded by intolerant people. By turning the old church into a museum, and leaving untouched portraits of Puritan forebears, the founders of Gilead suggest their admiration for the old Puritan society. Chapters 7–9 Summary: Chapter 7I would like to believe this is a story I’m tel ling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. (See Important Quotations Explained) At night, Offred likes to remember her former life. She recalls talking to her college friend, Moira, in her dorm room. She remembers being a child and going to a park with her mother, where they saw a group of women and a few men burning pornographic magazines. Offred has forgotten a large chunk of time, which she thinks might be the fault of an injection or pill the authorities gave her.She remembers waking up somewhere and screaming, demanding to know what they had done with her daughter. The authorities told Offred she was unfit, and her daughter was with those fit to care for her. They showed her a photograph of her child wearing a white dress, holding the hand of a strange woman. As she recounts these events, Offred imagines she is telling her story to someone, telling things that she cannot write down, because writi ng is forbidden. Summary: Chapter 8 Returning from another shopping trip, Ofglen and Offred notice three new bodies on the Wall.One is a Catholic priest and two are Guardians who bear placards around their necks that read â€Å"Gender Treachery. † This means they were hanged for committing homosexual acts. After looking at the bodies for a while, Offred tells Ofglen that they should continue walking home. They meet a funeral procession of Econowives, the wives of poorer men. One Econowife carries a small black jar. From the size of the jar, Offred can tell that it contains a dead embryo from an early miscarriage—one that came too early to know whether it was an â€Å"Unbaby. † The Econowives do not like the Handmaids.One woman scowls, and another spits at the Handmaids as they pass. At the corner near the Commander’s home, Ofglen says â€Å"Under His Eye,† the orthodox good-bye, hesitating as if she wants to say more but then continuing on her way. When Offred reaches the Commander’s driveway she passes Nick, who breaks the rules by asking her about her walk. She says nothing and goes into the house. She sees Serena Joy out in the garden and recalls how after Serena’s singing career ended, she became a spokesperson for respecting the â€Å"sanctity of the home† and for women staying at home instead of working.Serena herself never stayed at home, because she was always out giving speeches. Once, Offred remembers, someone tried to assassinate Serena but killed her secretary instead. Offred wonders if Serena is angry that she can no longer be a public figure, now that what she advocated has come to pass and all women, including her, are confined to the home. In the kitchen, Rita fusses over the quality of the purchases as she always does. Offred retreats upstairs and notices the Commander standing outside her room. He is not supposed to be there. He nods at her and retreats. Summary: Chapter 9Offred remember s renting hotel rooms and waiting for Luke to meet her, before they were married, when he was cheating on his first wife. She regrets that she did not fully appreciate the freedom to have her own space when she wanted it. Thinking of the problems she and Luke thought they had, she realizes they were truly happy, although they did not know it. She remembers examining her room in the Commander’s house little by little after she first arrived. She saw stains on the mattress, left over from long-ago sex, and she discovered a Latin phrase freshly scratched into the floor of the closet: Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.Offred does not understand Latin. It pleases her to imagine that this message allows her to commune with the woman who wrote it. She pictures this woman as freckly and irreverent, someone like Moira. Later, she asks Rita who stayed in her room before her. Rita tells her to specify which one, implying that there were a number of Handmaids before her. Offred says, gue ssing, â€Å"[t]he lively one . . . with freckles. † Rita asks how Offred knew about her, but she refuses to tell Offred anything about the previous Handmaid beyond a vague statement that she did not work out. Analysis: Chapter 7–9Atwood suggests that those who seek to restrict sexual expression, whether they are feminists or religious conservatives, ultimately share the same goal—the control of sexuality, particularly women’s sexuality. In the flashback to the scene from Offred’s childhood in which women burn pornographic magazines, Atwood shows the similarity between the extremism of the left and the extremism of the right. The people burning magazines are feminists, not religious conservatives like the leaders of Gilead, yet their goal is the same: to crack down on certain kinds of sexual freedom.In other words, the desire for control over sexuality is not unique to the religious totalitarians of Gilead; it also existed in the feminist anti-porn ography crusades that preceded the fall of the United States. Gilead actually appropriates some of the rhetoric of women’s liberation in its attempt to control women. Gilead also uses the Aunts and the Aunts’ rhetoric, forcing women to control other women. Again and again in the novel, the voice of Aunt Lydia rings in Offred’s head, insisting that women are better off in Gilead, free from exploitation and violence, than they were in the dangerous freedom of pre-Gilead times.In Chapter 7, Offred relates some of the details of how she lost her child. This loss is the central wound on Offred’s psyche throughout the novel, and the novel’s great source of emotional power. The loss of her child is so painful to Offred that she can only relate the story in fits and starts; so far the details of what happened have been murky. When telling stories from her past, like the story of her daughter’s disappearance, Offred often seems to draw on a partial o r foggy memory. It almost seems as if she is remembering details from hundreds of years ago, when we know these things happened a few years before the narrative.Partly this distance is the product of emotional trauma—thinking of the past is painful for Offred. But in Chapter 7, Offred offers her own explanation for these gaps: she thinks it possible that the authorities gave her a pill or injection that harmed her memory. Immediately after remembering her daughter, Offred addresses someone she calls â€Å"you. † She could be talking to God, Luke, or an imaginary future reader. â€Å"I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling,† Offred says. â€Å"Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance . . A story is a letter. Dear You, I’ll say. † In the act of telling her imagined audience about her life, Offred reduces her life’s horror and makes its oppressive weight endurable. Also, if she can think o f her life as a story and herself as the writer, she can think of her life as controllable, fictional, something not terrifying because not real. We learn in Chapter 8 that Serena used to campaign against women’s rights. This makes her a figure worthy of pity, in a way; she supported the anti-woman principles on which Gilead was founded, but once they were mplemented, she found that they affected her as well as other women. She now lives deprived of freedom and saddled with a Handmaid who has sex with her husband. Yet Serena forfeits what pity we might feel for her by her callous, petty behavior toward Offred. Powerless in the world of men, Serena can only take out her frustration on the women under her thumb by making their lives miserable. In many ways, she treats Offred far worse than the Commander does, which suggests that Gilead’s oppressive power structure succeeds not just because men created it, but because women like Serena sustain it.Nolite te bastardes carbo rundorum—the Latin phrase scrawled in Offred’s closet by a previous Handmaid—takes on a magical importance for Offred even before she knows what it means. It symbolizes her inner resistance to Gilead’s tyranny and makes her feel like she can communicate with other strong women, like the woman who wrote the message. In Chapter 29 we learn what the phrase means, and its role in sustaining Offred’s resistance comes to seem perfectly appropriate. Chapters 10–12 Summary: Chapter 10 Offred often sings songs in her head—â€Å"Amazing Grace† or songs by Elvis.Most music is forbidden in Gilead, and there is little of it in the Commander’s home. Sometimes she hears Serena humming and listening to a recording of herself from the time when she was a famous gospel singer. Summer is approaching, and the house grows hot. Soon the Handmaids will be allowed to wear their summer dresses. Offred thinks about how Aunt Lydia would describe t he terrible things that used to happen to women in the old days, before Gilead, when they sunbathed wearing next to nothing. Offred remembers Moira throwing an â€Å"underwhore† party to sell sexy lingerie.She remembers reading stories in the papers about women who were murdered and raped, but even in the old days it seemed distant from her life and unrelated to her. Offred sits at the window, beside a cushion embroidered with the word Faith. It is the only word they have given her to read, and she spends many minutes looking at it. From her window, she watches the Commander get into his car and drive away. Summary: Chapter 11 Offred says that yesterday she went to the doctor. Every month, a Guardian accompanies Offred to a doctor, who tests her for pregnancy and disease.At the doctor’s office, Offred undresses, pulling a sheet over her body. A sheet hangs down from the ceiling, cutting off the doctor’s view of her face. The doctor is not supposed to see her fac e or speak to her if he can help it. On this visit, though, he chatters cheerfully and then offers to help her. He says many of the Commanders are either too old to produce a child or are sterile, and he suggests that he could have sex with her and impregnate her. His use of the word â€Å"sterile† shocks Offred, for officially sterile men no longer exist. In Gilead, there are only fruitful women and barren women.Offred thinks him genuinely sympathetic to her plight, but she also realizes he enjoys his own empathy and his position of power. After a moment, she declines, saying it is too dangerous. If they are caught, they will both receive the death penalty. She tries to sound casual and grateful as she refuses, but she feels frightened. To revenge her refusal, the doctor could falsely report that she has a health problem, and then she would be sent to the Colonies with the â€Å"Unwomen. † Offred also feels frightened, she realizes, because she has been given a way ou t. Summary: Chapter 12It is one of Offred’s required bath days. The bathroom has no mirror, no razors, and no lock on the door. Cora sits outside, waiting for Offred. Offred’s own naked body seems strange to her, and she finds it hard to believe that she once wore bathing suits, letting people see her thighs and arms, her breasts and buttocks. Lying in the bath, she thinks of her daughter and remembers the time when a crazy woman tried to kidnap the little girl in the supermarket. The authorities in Gilead took Offred’s then-five-year-old child from her, and three years have passed since then.Offred has no mementos of her daughter. She remember