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本文是一篇英语文学论文，在小说中，孤独和绝望几乎反映在每个人物身上。现代人的精神生态正面临着巨大的困难，如生态环境污染、社会动荡、极权主义压迫，这导致了信仰的丧失、人格的丧失、人性的扭曲、自我肯定的否定等等，这些困境使人物陷入了精神生态的危机，整个社会都被无助感和孤独感淹没。
Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Margaret Atwood and Her works

Margaret Eleanor Atwood was born in Ottawa,Canada,on 18 November 1939.Herfather Carl Edmund Atwood,as an entomologist,always brought the family to many placeson his scientific explorations.Due to this,Atwood spent an unusual childhood in the“bush”in different summers.Her mother Margaret Dorothy Killam,a dietitian and nutritionist,likedquietness.As Atwood recalled“no one ever told me I couldn’t read a book.My mother likedquietness in children,and a child who is reading is very quiet”(2002)7.So before Atwoodwent to school,she usually spent the spare time in reading from literature to fairy tales,frommyth to legends,which is far above her age.Besides these,she was keen on comic books aswell.She was also touched by works that told about the way of life of the Canadian pioneers,Roughing It in the Bush(1852)and Life in the Clearings(1853),which gave her a differentexperience that laid the foundation for her later creative writing.

As a second of three children in her family,Atwood had an older brother Harold LesleyAtwood and a younger sister Ruth Catherine Atwood.Atwood attended school when heryounger sister was born in 1951.In the period of eight to sixteen,she didn’t write any works.But at the age of sixteen,she had a clear mind that she wanted to be a writer.At that time,there was hardly anything called Canadian literature.With unflagging perseverance,she gotthe excellent score in high school and received the Bachelor’s degree in Victoria College,University of Toronto.During the university,she was influenced by the internationallyrenowned literary theorist Northrop Frye.In the following days,she continued to study andlater obtained the Master’s degree in literature from Radcliffe College in the USA.In 1961,she started her doctoral work at Harvard.The Ph.D.in her mind was about“Nature and Powerin the English Metaphysical Romance of the 19th and 20th century”(Macpherson,2010)2,and she continued her studies from 1962 to 1963 and from 1965 to 1967.In her spare time,she occupied herself with a number of jobs,such as the waitress,market research andteaching,but these jobs never changed her mind to be a writer.

1.2 The Handmaid’s Tale

The novel takes Massachusetts as the background and portrays American society at theend of the 20th century.The author uses literary imagination to create a creepy ecologicalfuture society.The river was polluted and contained toxic components.The air was full ofchemical and radioactive substances.Humans were faced with the threat of nuclear waste.The fertility rate was abnormally low.At the same time,violent crimes were ubiquitous.Pornography was spread everywhere,and the sexual relations were casual and tense.As aresult,the whole society was out-of-balance and full of precarious factors.In face of variousdisturbances and low fertility,a coup replaced the United States,where it was replaced byextremists,and then the Gilead,a totalitarian state,was established.In this country,totalitarians literally interpreted and imitated the way of life in the Bible to change the currentsituation.In addition,women were not allowed to read,write,hold property and work.Manyfertile women were then 本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。