Topic Proposal-The Handmaid's Tale

Question: Why is does it seem the women are blamed for everything? Why is the government acting like it’s the Middle Ages? What’s up with everything being the women’s fault, and why if the birth rate is down are the women not allowed to hook up with any guy they want to try to get pregnant? If babies are in such high demand shouldn’t people be copulating all the time to see if they can get pregnant, and for that matter, why are all the guys who are allowed to have sex old? Why not try using young men since they have a better chance of actually fertilizing an egg? I don’t get it, but I promise I will narrow down my questions for the essay; I just had too many questions floating around in my head about the text to just choose one…
I was planning on researching Margaret Atwood herself to try and get a better understanding of her mindset when she wrote this and her inspirations for this book, along with other books by her to see if there are any plot similarities between them. I thought I would research our government and the government of those during WWII since it seems that there are a few references to communism and dictatorships and tyrannical rules. And if I go with the other questions about the birth rates and the women being blamed and all of that, I’ll still research Atwood herself but I’ll research countries where women are still oppressed and the oppression of women in the U.S. too, along with their struggles to get ahead in the world. I chose these topics, the government and the women’s struggles in this world, because they are both interesting to me. The government is something that I want to always learn about, how a place is run can tell you about life, and when it comes down to it we are all just trying to figure life out. And being a woman, women’s studies have always fascinated me; I was raised independent so to see or read about a place, even make believe, is interesting. This will tell me a lot about Atwood and how she was raised and what her beliefs in the government and social systems are.