Favorite Fictional Heroes

Create a blog post that describes one of your favorite fictional heroes. Make sure you:

1. Spell check

2. Include a relevant photo

3. Introduce your hero

4. Explain why they are one of your favorite heroes

5. What is so special about this hero (to you or to others?)

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Offred from the book the Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood is one of my favorite fictional heroes. She lives in the near future in a totalitarian theocracy. 99% of women are sterile but Offred is not, so she is controlled by the government because of her ability to have children. Her husband was murdered and her own child was taken from her to be raised by another rich family that can't have kids of their own.

She has always been one of my favorite female heroes because of her gut wrenching internal strength. She's not a super-hero; she has long, long periods of depression and despair, but when it comes down to the wire, she takes action that would frighten weaker people and helps the cause of the rebels in the book. Offred is what happens when oppressed people fight back against their oppressors. There may not be happy endings, but there is movement in the right direction that eventually leads to cataclysmic change.

Offred is striking to those who read this book because of the way she writes her story as a personal narrative. You are reading her thoughts in a journal format and you feel like you're peeking inside her brain. Sometimes it gets almost awkward as a reader as you experience things she is submitted to that should be kept private, instead you feel the pain she goes through right as it is happening.

The author has written this book so it is believable. You feel like it could be any country in the not so distant future after a potential chemical or nuclear attack wipes much of the population out. Offred is what happens to the "little people" in that society and yet, she becomes one of the most important players in the rebel movement.