The Breaking of Social Rules in The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

This thesis is a study about sociology of literature which describes the strict social rules in social life. Besides, The Handmaid’s Tale novel describes the perspective of someone to violate the strict social rule and how the novel relates with social real life. The objective of the study is, to explain the reason of main character who breaks the strict social rules to get satisfaction of herself and show the resemblance social condition between Republic of Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale novel and Afghanistan. The method used in this study is qualitative method. The source of data of this study was The Handmaid’s Tale novel. In collecting the data, the writer used reading, classifying and giving notes as an instrument to get data. The theory used in this study is Diana Laurenson and Alan Swingewood’s theory about sociology of literature which focuses on literary work as social documentation and can be reflect as social at an age. The study found that there is a strict social rule in social life. The novel describes and shows the character’s response to the strict social rules from totalitarianism. In this study, the writer concludes that the sociology of literature can give more understanding about social documentation of social conditions through literary work. The results of the study showed that the reason for dismantling the strict social rule carried out by the main character (Ofred) was because she wanted to get her rights as a social being that had the freedom to move. Besides, The Handmaid\'s Tale likewise shows that the social conditions in the novel have similarities to the social condition in Afghanistan.
Keywords: Sociology of literature, social documentation, literary work, social condition, breaking social rule.